Laurence Lamers, translator, Rubens Ewald Filho and Julia Loktev
Directors Prefer Violence Without the Glamour
Julia Loktev, who narrates the story of a woman who carries a bomb at Times Square, in New York City, in Day Night Day Night, says that there is a clear difference between showing and illustrating violence on screen. It is possible to do it subtly, by insinuation, without having to resort to violent or bloody scenes. In her film, she reveals that the simple act of cutting one’s nails can portray more violence than organs being stripped. Laurence Lamers’ Paid, featuring Murilo Benício, revolves around a hitman and highlights that in his stories violence is not glamorized, it occurs as it is in real life.Loktev is extreme, there is no in-between: there is either considerable violence or only an insinuation of it. She doesn’t like the stylized violence used in American films, such as the Matrix, which she hates. The scenes are more choreographic than violent, like ballet. Loktev goes on to say that Hollywood films are not violent enough for not showing the implications caused by violence. Lamers agrees and mentions Gus van Sant’s Elephant. He says it is a violent film that really touched him since it shows how violence really occurs. The director and screenplay writer reveals that the idea for her film came from an article on the newspaper about a woman who wandered the streets of Moscow. When she was taken in, they saw that she had a bomb strapped to her body. This is the type of situation that makes Loktev think of violence. It is impossible to judge from people`s appearance if they are violent or not. Psychological violence is the most intriguing violence to her.
On the other hand, Lamers believes that it is emotions that lead to violence. For example: if a person controls their jealousy, he will also control his violent reactions.
Loktev lives in New York and remembers that during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, she was watching from her house window in Brooklyn, on the other side of the bridge. She got everything on tape, but has only watched it once. What really startled her was what she had shot between the fall of the first and the second towers. She shot images of the blue sky, the birds singing and the immobility of people in relation to what had just happened. This immobility was not shown by any news broadcast. She finds it quite difficult to talk about this and says that this was the first time she ever talked about this tape. Lamers argues that the terrorist attacks didn’t influence his work because he has always believed that human beings are cruel and violent, an animal who is capable of just about everything. He says never having experienced something similar to Loktev. But months after the attacks he was in Canoa Quebrada, in the Northeast of Brazil (his wife is Brazilian), where he talked to some of the locals about it. He noticed that for them what happened didn’t mean much. He believes it to be extremely difficult to share this feeling since violence impacts people differently.