One of the greatest directors of the 20th century, Bernardo Bertolucci, has given a Masterclass to NFTS students followed by a Masterclass from acclaimed British Director Peter Strickland.
The Oscar and Bafta-winning Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci whose work includes The Last Emperor, which won nine Academy Awards, Stealing Beauty and Last Tango in Paris, credited with bringing eroticism to mainstream cinema, gave students entertaining and poignant insights into the film-making process and working with renowned actors.
In conversation with NFTS Director Nik Powell, he called the process of film-making “sometimes easy and fast – but other times I prepare for the agony,” and berated long-films saying “every movie is to long. Directors’ cuts are just indulgent!”
Explaining his approach to working with actors saying, “improvisation is another form of freedom” and revealed how the great method-actor Marlon Brando, who preferred to improvise rather than learn scripts, found skillful ways to remember long monologues. “We would paste the lines on the forehead of another actor so he could read them, or sometimes in a prop like a shoe!”
Explaining his approach to casting he said: “The casting choice happens when I see somebody with a rich inside where I feel I can dig the personality out and find personal things that will become part of the screen character.”
In his latest film Me & You he cast two young non-professional actors. “In the book the female character, Olivia, is not a photographer but in the film I added this because the actress is a photographer in real life and the photos you seen in the album in the film are her actual photographs. In this way you can take a literary character and make them flesh and blood.”
Bertolucci also explained his preference for fresh young actors in his film Me & You: “I like to shoot a film with young actors now; with the boy you have the feeling of watching him grow up in front of the camera – his face literally changes. It is as Cocteau said, every time you show someone’s face, time is passing.”
Me & You was screened out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival last year (2012) and can be seen at selected cinemas now.
Award-winning young British Director Peter Strickland whose remarkable first film Katalin Varga won him the European Film Award for Discovery of the Year& his equally acclaimed follow up Berberian Sound Studio won him the British Independent Film Award (BIFA) for Best Director inspired NFTS students when he spoke in conversation with writer-director Corin Hardy.
Talking about his first film Katalin Varga - an eerie revenge drama unfolding in the central European countryside – he explained that he was only able to afford to make the film due to money from an inheritance that he decided to invest in the movie rather than buying a flat as other people advised.
"Almost everyone said I was insane, suicidal, deluded and that it's impossible to make a film for less than £200,000 even in Romania. I had barely a third of that. There were many times when I seriously doubted what I was doing. I often thought of just buying a flat, as almost everyone advised. But I asked myself, 'Should I buy myself a one-bedroom flat in Bracknell or should I make a revenge film in Transylvania?'
It was a risk he has not regretted – the film gained rave reviews – and he advised others who were serious about film-making: “The question is - can you afford to lose £25,000. If you can, do it!"
Discussing Katalin Varga he talked about how he wanted to show a different aspect of the characters by showing them out of context from an act they’d committed rather than showing the act itself. Explaining how he’d experienced this first hand when he once spent the night in jail “These people in jail were just great fun, though I was terrified at first. But you see them out of context of the act they've done and they're charming.”
Peter’s Berberian Sound Studio released last year (2012), is a psychological thriller starring actor Toby Jones set in a 1970s Italian horror film studio. The Guardian hailed the film as: “Utterly distinctive and all but unclassifiable, a psycho-metaphysical implosion of anxiety, with strange-tasting traces of black comedy and movie-buff riffs. It is seriously weird and seriously good. Berberian Sound Studio has something of early Lynch and Polanski, but that gives no real idea of how boldly individual this film is. Peter Strickland has emerged as a key British film-maker of his generation.”
