A human being captured in the course of several years and under different political regimes and sociological changes is very attractive for viewers. What specific features and difficulties did this process bring to you as director? What are the pros and the cons?
Making films over a long-time-horizon is my specialty. I have always been interested in time and the way it flows, and at some point I started my pragmatic work with it. With a slight exaggeration I can say that I am betting on uncertainties. You bet on someone in the beginning of the whole process and then you wait to see what life does with him or her. It could end up as a highly interesting and dramatic storm or as subtle whisps that are hard to capture. You never know in the beginning and you cannot influence things. You can only watch and sometimes intervene in an unsubstantial matter. The good thing is that there is always something that happens. The bad thing is that sometimes you do not understand correctly what actually happened. Sometimes you do not grasp things, you do not evaluate them correctly and then you can’t capture them and transmit them in a film. The most crucial process is that in the cutting room. There, you create a final form after you already know what each episode should mean. You look at it with a retrospective point of view.
You have been following René since 1989. What brought you to make a film in a juvenile prison? Why did you choose René?
In 1989, I started working on a long-time-horizon film cycle under the title “The Youth”. I was supposed to follow different groups of young people for five years – trainees, high school students, young handicapped people, artists and juvenile offenders. We started shooting in the juvenile prison in Libkovice. Their psychologist selected a few boys who were capable of speaking on the camera and of reflecting their life. And one of them was René.
René’s first prison sentence at the age of 16 for 2-and-a-half years for stealing at his army school seems too strict for a young person…Do you think that he is a victim of a system that made him live as an incorrigible criminal?
It ‘s hard to tell how much the system is to be blamed. Today, young delinquents are treated more carefully. At first they face suspended sentences or they are sentenced to public service work.
You exchanged dozens of letters in course of the years with René. They guide the viewers through the film. What came first – the letters or the dramaturgy plan?
René always liked writing so I decided to use his letters in the first film. Then later I started working with them on purpose. I have kept them archived. At the end of the filming, I picked the most important texts and René read them out loud.
René has written two books that have been published. The third one is about to be published. What was your role in this process? Why did you get involved?
Based on his letters, René seemed to be a talented writer. When he was sentenced to six years in prison in 1993, I wrote to him that he should try to fill his time in prison with writing. I told him to write about himself, his experience and his life in prison. René took it seriously and he really started writing. I had his first manuscript, called “Runner on the Track to…”, rewritten and I offered it to several publishers. After some back and forth we succeeded and the book was published by Agave, a publisher from Český Těšín. Shortly after that they also published his second book “Gods Ltd.” René continued with his writing. He finished some more manuscripts. Now the publisher Nakladatelství Lidové noviny is working on a new book based on René’s recent texts.
The film includes archive footage from television news and other sources which map out social and political turning points in Czech Republic and Europe. What were you trying to observe with this?
The film about René roughly 20 years. During that time, our country went through a regime change, the common state of Czechoslovakia fell apart, governments and presidents alternated. René spent almost all of that time behind bars. I wanted to capture the contrast of fast-paced history with the time-free zone of prison life. René watched history happen on TV, this ever-present magical “eye of God”. We could not spend too much of the film footage with TV news so we decided to only use certain symbols of the time. One of them is the returning presidential election.
In the beginning of the 1990’s, he breaks into your house. Why do you think that he chose you? Didn’t you, at that time, decide to stop filming this kind of person?
His breaking into my house is one of the most dramatic scenes of our story. It took place when I was finishing up the first film about him for TV. I used that as a point for the film. Viewers’ reactions made me believe that it was a powerful point. I had many contradicting feelings after he robbed us, starting with anger and ending with a feeling that this all was just a message from René that I was supposed to decode. And that is when the idea started to emerge in my head that I should continue with filming. René kept in touch and we sorted out a couple things in the letters. René returned to this kind of action later, so it seems that he has not solved it yet for himself.
Sometimes you talk with René through the prison bars. Was it difficult to get permission to visit René with a film camera?
We visited several different prisons. In the last shooting period it was mainly Valdice. Relations with prison administrations changed during the years, as everything else did. There were times when we couldn’t shoot anywhere else except in the visitor’s room and behind the bars. My whining that such a situation was a disaster for the film-making process did not help. They had directives and they stuck to them. There was nothing we could do. We were lucky that in the last phase of filming, René was in a “transitional department” where we could visit him thanks to the helpful director of Valdice. I think it was also because we already had a name and it was clear that we were not trying to be sensationalistic.
The film shows René in prisons, court rooms and a few times on the street, hanging out in the city after he was released. He never invited you over to his home?
He had no home. René stayed with people he knew and at different women’s. His accommodation was always only provisional and he didn’t want us to come and shoot there. He repeatedly said that he would invite us when he had something stable. But that never happened.
You have filmed a person who turned from a young boy into a man in front of your eyes. What’s your answer to the question that René once asked you in the film: Do you see him just as an object for observation?
I tell him in the film that “no one is just an object for observation”. That is how I see it. I have worried a lot since I met him because of his returns to prison. I have always believed that he could use his intelligence for his well-being instead of hanging around with idiots and antisocial men in the prison. I feel disappointed and hopeless. I feel sorry and also angry about his disgusting, asocial, cunning nature. I felt happy when his books were published. But my main feeling about the film is a feeling of human ambiguity. Watching the ambiguity is actually an adventure.
You lent a digital camera to René in the last phase of filming. He was supposed to film his first ten days outside of prison. What kind of results did you expect?
I offered René the chance to become a co-author of the film, to shoot the end of the film – his first couple days out of prison, his vision of freedom. I promised to pay him. René was really excited and he promised to “really revive” the film.
Did you ever meet René without a film crew? When was the last time?
I met up with him a few times without a camera. Once he visited me at home, shortly before he broke in. The last time we were supposed to meet without the film crew was three years ago. I ended up waiting for him for two hours in a café and then he called and said that he couldn’t make it…
Aren’t you worried that the film will turn René into a hero? Aren’t you afraid that he will use the situation and take advantage of his popularity?
I would be glad if the film made people more interested in his books or helped him use his skills and intelligence in a constructive manner instead of abusing them. But that is up to him. I can’t help him anymore, I can’t solve his problems, and I can’t live his life. It would be bad if the film glorified antisocial behavior and criminals.
What is this film mainly about? How would you describe it?
That is the toughest question. For me, it is an attempt to portray some other form of life and to contrast our fast-paced era with the time-free life that exists in prison. It should stimulate us to think about our own life. It is a portrait of ambiguity. The protagonist is not a person that is easy to describe. He makes you think more about human behavior processes. It is about change caused by trying (needless to say, the attempt to change has not been successful, but it still counts at least as an attempt). It is about a specific Czech interpretation of desperados as a popular topic of westerns. But mainly, it is an attempt to make a decent film that hopefully will confirm the uniqueness and viability of long-time-horizon documentaries.
