Constantin Costa-Gravas

Z by Constantin Costa-Gavras

Z by Constantin Costa-Gavras

Constantin Costa-Gavras was interviewed at the National Film Theatre on 17 November 2003 by Ian Christie.

Inspired by real events, Costa-Gavras' Oscar-winning 1968 thriller Z is regarded by a generation of Greeks as a landmark account of the democratic struggle of the liberal and left elements in their country during the 1960s. On the 40th anniversary of Lambrakis' murder, and on the 30th anniversary of an Athenian students' uprising against the Colonels, the bfi was pleased to welcome the director to discuss the film and his career.

Interview © BFI 2003

Introduction

On behalf of the NFT, the Hellenic Foundation for Culture, and the Hellenic Observatory at the London School of Economics I'd like to warmly welcome you here this evening for this very special event. Today represents a very important anniversary. Thirty years ago today, the army and police entered the grounds of Athens Polytechnic to put down a pro-democracy revolt supported by students and their sympathisers. On that particular day some 24,000 rounds of ammunition were fired into the grounds of the polytechnic. Many were killed, many more were arrested. It was an event that represented - indeed, epitomised - the brutality of the Colonels' dictatorship that had come to power on 21 April, 1967, and around the world we saw images of that brutality, of the tank crashing through the gate of the Polytechnic. What could be a more graphic representation of the clash of values, between civilised humanitarian values and those who feared freedom? Those images were sent around the world. Many of us on that day, thirty years ago this Monday, looked on in horror from our relatively cosy western campuses, whilst we were concerned with relatively trivial issues.

When we ask the question - How could this happen? How could Greek society lead to a dictatorship of this kind? How could that brutality occur? - we're faced with a complex answer. As an academic, I'm the last person to suggest that the answer is simple. But perhaps part of the answer - at least a good start to answer that question - comes from remembering another anniversary this evening. Forty years ago this year saw the political assassination of Grigoris Lambrakis, a left-wing member of the Greek parliament, murdered in May 1963 in Thessaloniki, murdered at the behest of the authorities, with the complicity of the local police. Suspicions about the assassination went up the political ladder, to government and the royal palace. It suggested, in that single event, the anti-democratic forces at work in the Greek state at that time. So the film we're going to see this evening, Z, is a very good introduction to answer the question 'how could it happen?'. Z helps to explain the kind of society that Greece was. Though the film never mentions Greece by name, it's clear what the reference is. The uniforms that we see in the film are Greek, the names are Greek, some of the photographs of the Royal Family, the reference is obvious. Z the film is based on the novel of the same name by Vassili Vassilikos. It is a powerful, angry critique of the kind of Greek society that existed at that time. We are very honoured this evening that, later, the director of the film, Costa-Gavras, will join us with his wife Michelle, and after the interval there will be an opportunity for discussion and a question and answer session.

Costa-Gavras, of course, is no stranger to controversy. His many films have addressed the issue of the abuse of state authority, and of the denial of freedom. We think of a number of films produced by Costa-Gavras. The Confession dealt with the Stalinist purges in Czechoslovakia; State of Siege addressed the role of the CIA in Uruguay; Missing, with Jack Lemmon, concerned the fall of Allende and the rise of another junta, this one in Chile. More recently, Amen addressed the question of why the Vatican remained silent during the Holocaust. Costa-Gavras has made many wonderful and controversial films and after the interval this evening he will be interviewed by Ian Christie. Costa-Gavras rejects the idea that films can change society; instead, he invites us to think and to reflect. I suggest this evening, as we reflect on Z, as we reflect on the film, it helps us to understand the path taken by Greece from the political assassination of Lambrakis to the murder of students in Athens 1973, 30 years ago to this day. It is, I think, a fitting memorial. Thank you and enjoy the film.

[Screening of Z, followed by extract from Missing, and arrival to stage of Costa-Gavras and interviewer Ian Christie]

Making Z and shooting in Algeria

Ian Christie: Welcome to the NFT.

Costa-Gavras: Good evening.

IC: I think the enthusiasm of your welcome speaks for itself. Although we've just seen an extract from Missing, I think what's probably in everyone's mind is Z. For some, this might be the first time they have seen it since '69 or '70. For others it may be the third, fourth, fifth - who knows - time, but still there's a kind of shock about the film. Obviously, when you made the film you had no sense that you were making a film that would last and become something of a legend?

CG: No, absolutely not. And nobody knew. It's enough to say that, after finishing the script, very quickly we tried to find the money. All the actors had agreed to participate in this story because they liked it, and the Colonels had been there a few months so the actors thought they would like to do something. We went around for more than one year to find the money. Everybody used to say, why do you think the audience will be interested in a Greek parliamentarian who was assassinated? There's no love story, no women, there's nothing. The character is there for ten minutes and then he disappears. Z's success is the miracle of the cinema that sometimes happens.

IC: Did you point to Pontecorvo's example a few years earlier with The Battle of Algiers and say, well look, that was a success?

CG: Not really because, you know, by that time we hadn't seen The Battle of Algiers in France. It was prohibited.

IC: Of course, it was banned [because of its controversial portrayal of the French treatment of Algerian nationalists].

CG: We only saw it ten years later, and even then in a very small cinema. I knew about it but I hadn't seen the movie.

IC: Most of Z was shot in Algeria. That must have had a big impact on the way you made the film. I was thinking of that watching it.

CG: The movie was made in Algeria because we tried it in Italy, we tried it in Spain, in the Mediterranean, and there was no way. One day I called Jacques Perrin, who plays the reporter. I started from him because we were very friendly. I said, look, I don't believe we can make the movie because we don't have the money. And he said, I have good relations with the Algerians. They would like to attract some productions. Would you mind going there to see if we can shoot it in Algeria since Thessaloniki looks a little bit similar. I went there and looked around and I said, yes we can! It was amazing because they had an extraordinary minister at that time in Algeria, who was later killed in a bizarre plane crash. The good guys, you know... He read the script and said, we can't give you money but we can give you the people and the town. When I asked him for the square, everybody was afraid because it's the centre of the city and would block all the circulation. But he said okay, give it to him. And, of course, most of the actors and myself, we had very little money to make the movie so we did it with a big enthusiasm!

IC: Of course, the great thing about shooting in Algeria is that it gives it this hot Mediterranean feeling. It's a film where you can feel the heat and the sense that everything is potentially corrupt, somehow it's there in the texture of the film. [Audience member disagrees] No? Well, hold on...

CG: No, the good thing is that it doesn't really look like Thessaloniki but the idea wasn't to make a movie about Greece only. The idea was to make a movie about that system where the country's democracy stops or is completely controlled by... lets start from the palace, and then the army, and then even some parts of the justice is part of that system. And then everything is possible. And what's also extraordinary in that story, because everything is true, there's no fiction in there, except very little things here and there. The judge who is not a left-wing judge, he's a right-wing judge, he can not accept that so he goes and creates a huge scandal because he can not be controlled. Because, if you remember, the person who comes from Athens to tell him what to do, a few years later he becomes the Prime Minister of the Colonels. So it shows how this judge was really an extraordinary person. It's enough to have sometimes just one person to break the machine for a while.

Feeling Greek

IC: Ironically, of course, although Z is a great film about the situation in Greece [in 1963] and explains so much about what would happen to Greece immediately after, it's a film you had to make outside of Greece, and in fact you've never worked as a film-maker in Greece.

CG: No, because I left Greece when I was very, very young. But it is for symbolic reasons essentially.

IC: Do you feel that you are a Greek film-maker who lives in France and makes films around the world? Do you feel 'Greek' as a film-maker?

CG: You know, I 'become' Greek, because although I was born in Greece, I left after high school and then basically my tutelage was French. I came from a poor family and, at that time, after the war and after the civil war at the beginning of the '50s in Greece it was very difficult, a lot of censorship, very conservative - not to say worse - government, and so forth. In France, I was accepted completely. I used to say that if I was in Greece and suppose I was a Greek director, I would not be able to do those movies. And if I had been in the United States, it would be the same. So the only place to make those movies was in France.

IC: Yes, I think we would all agree the only place to be was in France. But obviously Z had a huge impact internationally.

CG: Huge. In the US, for example - because it's the market everybody dreams of - it's still the movie with the biggest score takings for a non-English-speaking movie, for an audience commercially, and the same all over the world. Except that the communist countries didn't accept it, and the extreme right-wing people, the countries with dictatorship, didn't show the movie. But we knew when the system changed, the people were buying Z to show it.

IC: Yes, I think it had a very educational effect. But also, the path that you followed after Z showed that you were not going to be put into a box, you were not simply going to be a film-maker who made politically correct films. And, in fact, a lot of your subsequent films were politically quite controversial, on the left as well as on the right.

CG: You know, I never thought or started saying I'm going to do a 'correct' movie. I did all those movies because they were stories I would like to tell, that touched me deeply, personally and philosophically. You were speaking of after Z when I did The Confession?

IC: I was thinking of that, which got you into a lot of trouble.

CG: When I did Z a lot of people said he's a communist so it's normal. And then I did The Confession, the communists said he's a right-wing person, or he tries to have a balance between both. No, no, for a director a movie is a passion, at least it is for me. And I was able, up until now, to do the movies I would like to make. This is helped a lot thanks to my wife, because she organised my life. I didn't have to make movies just to make money, just to live, which happens to a lot of my colleagues.

Saltzman's approach

IC: Did you feel you had discovered a kind of vocation after Z? Did you feel you had to make films that would speak to people about important matters? Because before that you had made more conventional films, narratives that didn't have the same implications, whereas after Z you seemed to have a kind of vocation.

CG: No, no, it's before Z. My first movie was just a thriller. I didn't like to start in this way but sometimes you have to make a thriller, but even then I tried to say some things in which I believed. I wanted to make another movie of Malraux's La Condition humaine [Man's Fate]. Harry Saltzman, who was a famous producer, came to me after my first movie and said I'd like to make a movie with you. I said let's make Man's Fate. He said, what's it about? I don't know if you are familiar with that story. It's by André Malraux and it takes place in the beginning of the last century, during the Chinese revolution. I told him the story, and he said after a while, no, there are too many Chinese, we can't do that one. So then he proposed another story which I liked also, because it was about the French Resistance, One Man Too Many [Un homme de trop/Shock Troops], during the German occupation of France. I think the movie's mistaken, there's too much action, not enough depth in the characters and so forth. Harry Saltzman produced that movie, and then came Z, which Harry Saltzman refused.

IC: That's interesting. We owe Harry Saltzman a great deal in this country because he did many important things.

CG: For those who don't know, he's the person who created 007, James Bond.

IC: Also Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. He went in many directions.

Hollywood and Missing

IC: Did there come a moment when you - I think I know the answer to this question but I'm going to ask it anyway - when you decided you wanted to tackle Hollywood, to make a film on Hollywood terms?

CG: No, no, never. After Z I received a lot of scripts, a lot of propositions, and actors were writing to me, and producers. I always refused because I didn't speak English at that time, first, and then I didn't know American society. One day I decided to make Missing because it was a movie that doesn't take place in the United States, it's a foreigner trying to find his son in Latin America. Latin America I knew about, so I was familiar with that situation, being a father and also knowing Latin America. Afterwards I became much more familiar with the US, so I went there and lived there and made other movies. But before Z, no, I always refused.

IC: Can you say something about the terms on which you made Missing? Did you have the same amount of control over the film that you'd had on your previous films or did you find that working with stars, having American finance, gave you less control?

CG: No, you know, from the moment I decided to make Missing I decided I won't make the movie without having control of the script, control of casting and control of the editing - the main three important things. It was okay for the script, they accepted it with no problem. And then we had a major problem with the actor, they didn't like Jack Lemmon. They said, Jack Lemmon, is there something funny in that movie?, he's a comedian. I said, he's a tragedian. They said how is that? They hadn't seen Save the Tiger, so they proposed some other names, some famous names, and I said I insisted. Finally Ed [Lewis] the producer was a nice person, he said okay, give him Jack Lemmon, and then all of them were very happy with him. All the Hollywood movies I made - there were four - I made them with my French crew and I did the post-production in Paris. Always.

IC: Very wise, I suspect. And yet that gave you an even larger audience. When you look at the impact of Missing, that's a film which many Americans took to their heart, and they felt it was a film addressed to them, telling them something which no one had told them before, certainly not in Hollywood cinema.

CG: Oh, we stayed in the apartment the last day of the first screening in Washington. The State Department made a huge statement saying we made the same investigations as Mr Gavras but we didn't get the same results. And then three years ago in The New York Times, in the editorial they said Missing was exactly what Costa Gavras says. It's amazing to have to wait so many years but, of course, one side of Americans didn't like the movie, they said we were communists, all of us. But the movie was produced by a very traditional American company, Universal. Then they brought a trial against the movie, a huge trial which we won, because the ambassador and the consulate said, no this is a sueable thing for us. That extraordinary trial, as you see on television, very tough, very aggressive. And then the judge made an extraordinary statement after the trial, when he made his decision ,three or four pages of explanation about how the movie was right.

IC: I read on the internet recently a rumour that there is a version of Missing which has on the signs the names of American companies removed from the image. Have you ever heard of that? I'm not sure I believe it but...

CG: You never know. You know the internet, huh?

Story actors and movie-making women

IC: Well, I told you earlier that I'd looked on the comments section of imdb [Internet Movie Database] on Missing which is very instructive, because it goes on for many, many pages. The total content of the comments of Missing is, I think, very interesting and very moving, because it continues to obviously have a resonance, particularly for American viewers, to this day. I want to ask you about actors, because it seems to me, thinking about the extraordinary consistency of your films, that you must need very committed actors. Many of the actors who have appeared in your films had to do something quite brave, they had to step out of line and play a part that was perhaps different from the parts they'd played before. I'm thinking of, for instance, Jill Clayburgh in Hanna K, or Jessica Lange's very difficult part in Music Box. Do you depend very much on finding actors who share your commitment to the story that you are telling?

CG: Yes, I wouldn't propose to Mr Schwarzenegger a role or to other actors to play in Missing. No, I think it's important for the actors to be with the story completely. I believe you have two kinds of actors: the actors who want the story to be there for their character, and the actors who are there to serve the story. So I prefer to take those actors who serve the story, and they are known, you know. You chat a little bit with an actor, you know exactly what he thinks.

IC: Do you find you have to sit down and discuss the politics of the film with your actors sometimes?

CG: Of course, of course. You have to explain exactly what you want to do when you go because, if not, you start having mistakes, and then the movie ends and they make statements against the movie. It can be a mess. No, no, it's important for the actors to know exactly what you want to do and what you want to say with the movie.

IC: Yves Montand was clearly very important to you near the beginning of your career because he was very solid and presumably committed to what you were trying to do. Did you learn something from him through that process?

CG: Yes, I have that kind of extraordinary chance to be a young Greek, coming from Greece and meeting the family of Yves Montand. I was an assistant in a movie and Simone Signoret was playing in the movie. I had to take care of her wardrobe so I met them. They liked to have friendships with young people and she was very interested in the Greek civil war so she was asking me questions. Of course, what they called the group of Montand was, to my feeling, one of the most important groups in France at that period. Because they were very left for a moment, and then started understanding what was happening, and they had a perfect analysis of the situation. And among them were a lot of other people like Chris Marker, like Michel Foucault, a lot of very interesting people. So I was very lucky to be part of it for a while.

IC: In some of your more recent films, you seem to have quite deliberately wanted to put women at the centre of the film. If your films started off with men as heroes - as you've said yourself, Z is a film all about men - later you've really tried to put women at the centre of your films.

CG: It's not really programmed. It's something that has become necessary little by little. Because my first movies like Z, The Confession and State of Siege were stories where men had the most important roles, not always the best roles but anyway. Then we started to discover in the last 25 or 30 years that women are getting more and more in the society. All of them are not perfect, when they become politicians especially - you have some examples. But I think it's important for politics and for the cinema. For example, in France you have a lot of women making movies. You don't have so many in England.

IC: We don't.

IC: And I think the cinema has changed in a way. It's a different point of view on the world. So sometimes it happens with the women who get into politics. Probably it's also an homage, as I was saying before, to my wife.

The Cinémathèque Française

IC: Good. I just want to ask you something slightly at a tangent, before we move on to questions. I think many people here may not realise that you've actually spent a lot of time not making films but that you've devoted a lot of your energies to, for instance, trying to save the Cinémathèque Française as its president. It seems appropriate to ask you that here in the NFT, because here we are, after all, in part of the BFI.

CG: Yes, I know the BFI very well.

IC: And the Cinémathèque Française has a somewhat romantic image in the eyes of many people in Britain, who think it's a kind of perfection across the channel. But I think when you came to it, it was very far from perfect and you tried to get it on to a better...

CG: No, in a few words the problem was like this. The Cinémathèque survives thanks to money from the French state and '68 was a big clash between the Cinémathèque and the state. After '68 the state started completely to not take care of the Cinémathèque. When Mitterand and Jacques Lang, the Minister of Culture, came to the house in Paris I had a chat with him [Mitterand] about the cinema. I wasn't thinking. I said, one thing you have to do is to save the Cinémathèque because it's falling apart completely and it's very important. So he said to me, you take it, you tell me what you need to do and we'll do everything you want. I said no, because it's a big job. And then a couple of months later my wife was on a plane with him [Mitterand] and Mrs Mitterand, and both of them jumped on him saying, you should tell Costa to accept. And then I accepted. No, it was a great period. I didn't do so many movies in that period of five years.

IC: No, that's why I mentioned it.

CG: But this Cinémathèque. Of course, the government gave us lots of money so we could start from scratch and now the Cinémathèque is in a very good position, I believe. But I learnt a lot about cinema, about how to preserve movies. And I discovered... I knew a little bit of the silent period of the cinema - it never was silent but, anyway, what we call the 'silent' - and I believe in that period, those 35 years, everything has been done. If somewhere you hear they are playing a silent movie, go and see it, it's really extraordinary. They weren't silent because there was always music with them, there was a pianist or an orchestra.

IC: Do you feel that an organisation like the Cinémathèque has an important role to play today? Is it just to be an specialist, elite organisation or is it a larger public role?

CG: It's a larger role. First, it's to preserve the movies, to save the movies because if it's the memory of your life, it's extraordinary. Secondly, it's to push people, to teach people to see movies as you did tonight, in the theatre. Because it's a major danger today, I believe, for the movies to be seen on the small screen or dvd or whatever. The relationship with the movie is here. You are alone with the movie. You make the choice to come here to see the movie. All these elements make you have a special relationship - if you don't like it that's another problem but it's the fact that you make a choice. You don't make a choice with television, you just push the button and then you jump from one channel to the other, or buy a cassette from the supermarket or whatever. The Cinémathèque and BFI do a great job. Also, I think a lot of young people who would like to be film-makers can see a lot of films that aren't shown otherwise.

Amen

IC: In much of your work as a film-maker you've had to stay very much involved with your film after making it, because many of your films have been controversial. And in fact you've been very devoted to your films, even to the point of designing the posters for some of them.

CG: Controlling the posters completely. That's right, yes.

IC: And that got you into a lot of trouble with your most recent film, Amen. The poster, in fact, has been more controversial almost than the film.

CG: As always we tried several people in France and they gave us proposals for the posters and they were all the same. And then by chance, Toscani, I don't know if you are familiar with Toscani. He's an Italian, he did all the posters for Benetton, some of them very aggressive. He was there and we had dinner. He understood that we had problems with the poster and he said he'd try to do one. I said go ahead. He tried one but it wasn't very good. In the morning he said, how about this poster. I said, this is the poster we need.

IC: People may not be familiar with it. Can you describe it?

CG: The poster is the swastika. One of the branches of the swastika is open and it becomes a cross, because the movie is a story set during the Occupation about a Catholic priest and a Protestant German Nazi officer who learned about the camps and tried to inform everybody. The priest is able to go to see the Pope and appeals for help with what's going on. The Pope says, for the Jews and everybody in the camps, pray for them. And we know today that the Pope never said a word against the Germans, never pronounced the words "Jew" or "concentration camp" during those years. And so the movie is, in a way, about that, about the silence on one hand and about people resisting on the other, because I strongly believe in resistance.

IC: The film reawakened all of those conflicts, those passions. And so there were demonstrations against it?

CG: No, no. What happened was there were extreme right-wing people in Paris. They brought a case against us, which we won, they started again and we won again. And that's it. But it was a big scandal because you know television and radio started...

IC: Which is really what the film sets out to do...

CG: Yes, but you know, it's positive on one hand and on the other hand it can also be very negative, because some people say okay I don't want that, it's too much scandal. I believe for the movies the best way is, you go out, you say I like it or I don't like it, so other people go or they don't go. I think that's the best way. I believe the critics can help but the biggest help for a movie or a play or book or whatever is the people who talk about it - positively is better.

IC: Well, let's see what people here have to say, positively or otherwise. We've got a little bit of time for questions or comments.

CG: Just to say one word first. I was hoping tonight, because we're here in London, to show a short I did. The very last movie I did -

IC: I was hoping we could show that too but, you have it with you?

CG: No, I don't have it. I didn't finish it yet. It's about the Parthenon.

IC: Or, as we say here, The Elgin Marbles... [laughter and cheers from audience]

CG: It's the most human realisation in the world because in its history of 2500 years, three human interventions have been made in this way. The first one, what you call the first Christians, they break the marble because they are naked. The second ones were the Venetians, they bomb the Turks and they blow it up. And the third came, Mr Elgin...

IC: But they were just 'protecting' it, weren't they...

CG: He not only stole the marbles, the statues, but to aim to break. You know, the Parthenon was built not with cement but it was built like this [CG gestures] in an extraordinary way. They had to break all the things around to take the ones he [Elgin] would like. So I did a movie about that, with a virtual image, of course, because there's no other way to do it. And I was really hoping to be finished to show it but it's not. Another time...

IC: Well, we can invite Neil MacGregor [director of the British Museum] along for a special screening. I'm sure he'd be delighted to see it. You've made a number of short films as contributions to larger films. You made a film for Amnesty International, you made a Centenary of Cinema short film as well, a Lumière film so I was hoping we might have been able to show one of your shorts, but unfortunately not. But I think we should give the audience their say.

Modern European cinema and today's Greece

Q1: What is your opinion of today's European cinema?

CG: One thing we can say is that it's the most free cinema in the world at the moment. The other thing we can say, it's important to know that the cinema cannot exist - except for the American cinema and probably the Indian cinema - without state help. We know very well that in France it's like this so that you can have important productions and every country can have such a production if it goes through that help. You know it also with some major British movies. There's not so many, unfortunately. I believe in England there is not enough help, not enough participation. We don't ask only the government to give us money. We've achieved in France the next best thing: it's very collectivist. On Saturday evenings the major television channels don't show movies. We asked the government and the television people and all together we decided in France to accept this thing, and then the people can go out to the cinema. That kind of thing to help cinema. Because I believe that every country has to have its own cinema. Because it's the memory and the images. So the European cinema, to answer your question, there is a system of co-productions with Brussels, the European Union, but it's not enough yet.

IC: It would be nice if Britain rejoined Eurimages, for instance, but we mustn't editorialise here.

Q2: Are you still interested in Greece as you were at the time you made Z and do you think things have changed in Greece?

CG: Yes, they have changed absolutely. The major change was the Colonels went away. But since Greece is in Europe, a lot of important things have happened because of the economic health and also because the mentality of the Greeks is getting closer to Europe more and more. Yes, I believe the country has changed completely. And especially from the country I knew as a young man in the '40s, '50s and early '60s.

IC: Do you go back to Greece much?

CG: Yes, of course. I have a big family like every Greek, a lot of cousins and brothers...

Q3: Has European cinema become complacent about the current political situation within Europe?

CG: I don't know. The important thing is for the directors, we can't tell them what to do. We cannot just criticise. We should do movies about the past or future or today. Yes, probably some of the movies today are too much about too personal things, but I don't see who could be the committee or the state or the ministry of culture to say to the directors you do this. It happened, you know, in some countries and we know very well about that, and the results weren't always very good. It's a problem, but there's also another problem, to tell you the truth. Because of the difficulties when you have to find the money, we have created in Europe a kind of self-censorship. So it's easier to make a small personal movie with a few actors, taking place in few places, than to try to make a bigger movie with much more expense and so forth. And little by little, because you don't have the money, that creates a censorship. But the small-scale approach also creates, sometimes, very extraordinary films.

Diplomats and Colonels

Q4: Why did you only show what happened to one of the diplomats in State of Siege?

CG: In State of Siege there is just one diplomat. It was a police advisor, it was the American advisor. We show from the very beginning of the movie he was executed by the two Tupamaros and. We don't show what happened to them, to the movement of the Tupamaros but I think a movie can't say everything. I will tell you what an Italian historian says about the movie - the movie can bring the viewer to the cabinet of the historian. Then the viewer can learn more by himself or not. So the Tupamaro movement, of course, because of that execution, disappeared little by little. They are coming back today in a different way but at that time they disappeared.

Q5: In Z, were you trying to draw any parallels between the Greece of the Colonels and the France of De Gaulle? You have an actor who looks a lot like De Gaulle, for example...

CG: No, absolutely not. The actor looks a little bit like him but no, I have a certain admiration for De Gaulle. I think he was an important political man in France. We haven't had so many in the last century. We can say we've had three, probably - Mendes-France, De Gaulle, Mitterand. Of course, there is no perfect politician, okay? But compared to the others...

IC: One of the interesting things about the film [Z] is that it is shot like a documentary, and just how kinetic it is, how the film is constantly in movement, with vigorous camera movements and jump cutting. What was your model when you spoke to [Director of Photography Raoul] Coutard? Did you say, I want the film to be like this...?

CG: I know in the Anglo-Saxon countries they think the camera operator plays an important part in the movie. No, I think the movie is...

IC: No, no, I think you played the important part. What did you say to him?

CG: No, no, I didn't say anything. I believe that system is in the script. It's not in the editing, it's not in the filming, it's in the script - and then it comes to the shooting. We had a real story with real elements which, of course, we fictionalised. But the reality takes place in months - more than months, years - and then you have to bring it down to two hours. It's not a documentary, that's very clear because you have actors and everybody knows the actors. I didn't like to play with documentary. But it was important to give the impression that people had in that period in Greece, saying what's going to happen, will the judge be strong enough to stay or to continue or what. So I tried to give that feeling. And also, the other thing that moved me and moved all of us was that we used to hate the Colonels completely, you know. That's a good motor to go on, hate is good. Love also but hate sometimes is stronger, if it is right. And I was convinced it was right.

Politicised film-making

Q6: What do you feel about the modern mass media?

CG: The media is a huge problem now in societies. They have to play probably the most important role because every day people try to see what is happening. So they have both an educational and informational role to play. Of course they depend on money and also too much on success and sometimes on politics and politicians and all this, and it's a big problem. I think the worst thing to happen in this world would be that with regard to television, the state starts to say this is like the army. This is like education, it has to belong to the state, to elected people. They let it to private people and this is a tragedy I believe, because all the garbage you can see on television. And, of course, that also influences the other media because everybody runs after the audiences, it's the worst thing. Fortunately there are some good ones here and there, not so many but there are some good ones. It's important to look around and try to find them.

Q7: I'd just like to say that I first watched your films at 15 years of age and they politicised me. Now I'm a film studies teacher. You can still feel the impact of Z tonight, but do you still think that, making films in 2003, you can politicise 15 or 16 year olds in Europe?

CG: You can make them. The problems are here. The difficult thing is to find the right story and then when you find the right story, it's to find the money. The producer, the money, a major company and the distribution. These are some of the things. But I think there's a lot of directors, writers and actors ready to do that kind of movie.

IC: So you're optimistic...

CG: I'm moderately optimistic.

Q8: Around the '70s the American government supported a lot of military governments in South America and so on. Now they seem to support democracy in countries like Iraq. Do you think that will stop you making more films about them?

CG: No, as I've just said, the problem is a good story. What's the story for the movie? To have a few characters - not so many because it's difficult - then you can deal with them and then you have a beginning, middle and end, a strong story. Then you can make a movie. Now Iraq is a huge story by itself. Let's wait to see the end of it.

A backward step?

IC: We're going to have to draw to an end there as we still have a piece of film to show you. I just want to ask a question by way of introducing it. We're going to look at a short section from Amen, your most recent film. In some ways making a film about the Second World War could seem like a backward step today. People might say, why make a film based on a very old play by [Rolf] Hochhuth, a play I remember from my youth. Why did that seem like an important film to make at this time?

CG: Essentially for two reasons. Firstly, that period of our European history, it's the most frightening and the most extraordinary history. So I think there is a lot of human themes there in which literature, the cinema, the television will always go. All these generations of film-makers go and try to see why that happened, how that was possible. Because we speak about Germany but it's not only German Nazis alone. They had people all over many countries. The Jews, the Communists, the Gypsies who were killed - they came from different countries, even from Greece, and they had auxillaries in every country that helped them to do that awful job. So how was that possible on the continent considered the most intellectual, the most philosophical, the most everything you want? That's one thing. The other thing is that the story of Amen speaks essentially about the silence of the most important people like the Pope - who, at the time, was the spiritual leader of millions and millions of people and didn't say a word - and how two small people resisted against that. That was essentially the main theme. And I think the silence today is all over the world about a lot of problems. Some people resist and let's hope they will be the winners.

Extract from Amen.

Last Updated: Wednesday, 10-Oct-2007 13:57:18 BST