Filmmaker Thomas Koolhaas made a film about his father Rem Koolhaas: the documentary premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2016. At the Strelka Institute in Moscow, Rem is shown twice: on May 21, with the participation of the author, the Russian premiere took place, and on May 31, a re-screening is planned with a preliminary lecture by Anna Bronovitskaya (event page).
What goal did you set for yourself when you started filming the film? Has it remained unchanged, or has it been transformed in the course of work?
- I had no goal to achieve anything specific. I just wanted to explore certain subjects that I had not yet had time to consider before. I also wanted to make the film more semantically interesting and expressive than the average documentary about architecture. At first I thought that I knew how to achieve this - what stories and impressions to do in order to come to this. And I was lucky: what I was striving for when I started working on my film, I was able to do. Everything remains the same as at the beginning: if you read the synopsis that I composed then, it almost exactly repeats the tape I ended up with. This rarely happens with documentaries, usually you start filming them with some intention, but none of this works, so you have to change the subject itself, and the editing, and the plot.
Did you write a script beforehand or did you just follow Rem Koolhaas everywhere?
- Both, because you can never make a real script with a documentary tape: when you come to the shooting site, you have to shoot, you cannot direct everything. And that was new to me, because most of the projects I worked on before were narrative feature films where you set everything up and control. What is interesting in documentaries is the mixture of power and lack of control, going with the flow. I decided which subjects I wanted to include in the film, which topics to discuss with Rem, which philosophical ideas to explore. But at the same time, sometimes I just followed him and was open to everything that was happening around.
For example, did you choose the buildings that are shown in the film before filming?
- It was also a combination of both. I knew which buildings would work best for the approach I chose, that is, I was aware of which ones were related to the most interesting human stories, but I also shot almost all the buildings I could - after all, as I said, in documentary films do not know anything in advance.
And the interviews with the “users” of buildings, people associated with them: did you decide to include them in the film from the very beginning?
- I knew what questions to ask, because I understood what topics were important to me, but again, when you meet with someone, you never know what he will say - perhaps this will raise additional questions, and so on … For example, in Seattle, I knew I wanted to speak to one of the homeless people who use the OMA library, as this is one of the most interesting features of this building. I understood, of course, that the needs of a homeless person are very different from the needs of an ordinary citizen, but I was still struck by the story of my interlocutor, because you and I simply do not think about many things, we take them for granted, for example, a telephone, internet and stuff. And that is why this building is so important for the homeless: only there they can communicate with other people or find the information they need.
It turns out that the film shows different points of view. What about your own point of view, your method of filming architecture?
- My point of view, of course, is also in the film, because I shot almost all the material myself. Nevertheless, I wanted my gaze to influence the viewer subconsciously, and not explicitly, because one of the components of documentary cinema that annoy me is the storyteller - in this case I should have been - who conveys various information and in some way sense tells you what to think. And I wanted my point of view to be expressed only with the help of the camera lens and editing, I wanted to show, not tell. If you do not know that the film was made by Rem's son, you might not guess about it, but if you are aware of this, you will see that this is definitely my opinion, which no one else could have. If someone else had been filming Remus, they would not have been able to be where I was, because Remus would not have been as comfortable filming with someone else compared to my filming. And another author would not know what questions to ask him to show the other side of Rem Koolhaas - questions that I know.
Rem Koolhaas's buildings are like a “city performance”, they are very cinematic in themselves. How did you shoot them?
- Each in its own way. I didn't have a special approach like "I'll shoot them all from this angle" or "at this time of day." I just filmed them and what was happening there; I let the building dictate how it should be portrayed. For example, in Seattle, where so many interesting human stories are literally right in front of you, you can simply find the right storytellers. And at the House of Music in Porto, I asked the parkourist to run and jump around this building, to interact with its materials, because otherwise the viewer would not be able to understand this space so well.
Your film shows people who use the buildings of Rem Koolhaas every day, shows these buildings themselves, and of course, the main character. You made a film about Rem Koolhaas, but also, I believe, about the life of architecture in society. How important is this social aspect of architecture?
- He is really important, and I find it strange that they don't talk about him so often. It is clearly understudied, while I was always fascinated by this very aspect when I got into the building, and I was in many buildings from early childhood: as far as I can remember, this has always been a part of my life. I will not say that this is a more important aspect than others, but I am still always surprised when architectural films and even lectures focus on the intellectual, technical and ideological aspects of architecture, rather than the simplest and social functions, as well as human stories. Not that I specifically made a film to demonstrate this, to express my opinion, or to correct a mistake in architectural practice. It's just that I myself am very interested: I am drawn to shooting and discussing these subjects. Besides, this has never really been done before. If you watch documentaries about architecture, they almost never focus on its social aspect, and I'm not a supporter of repetitions, so I wanted to make a film that was different from others and showed something new - so it made sense to focus on that.
Did you find in the process of working on the film a “recipe” - how to make a good “social” architecture?
- I will not say that I have found any recipe. I think this is the opposite of a recipe, because with a recipe you make everything revolve around your ideology, while the most interesting thing about Rem's method of work - which is very clear from the film, since he himself talks about it - is specific context. culture, city, place, function form a building, the way it is built. Therefore, a good "social" architecture is made by the ability to listen and be open, and not a pre-formed idea of how such an architecture should be created.
Should every building be "social"?
“I don’t think anything should be anything at all. I don't think a building should be one or the other without fail. In my film, what is especially interesting to me myself and equally to the audience is that Rem's buildings are so different from each other that there is no red line in the tape showing that there is good architecture or what buildings should be. The opposite is shown: there is no "correct" way to design a building, everything depends on the function, place, context.
What place does architecture take in your life? Has it changed over time?
- I have always had a close relationship with Rem's buildings, since I have been around for as long as I can remember. Of course, this changed over time: I grew up and understood different aspects of architecture. Working on the film also changed my vision of architecture. Of course, they constantly talk about Rem, his ideas are expressed in his work, and I constantly visited his buildings, but if you spend time with him and with his buildings the way I spent him during the filming, you will understand very deeply how everyone It's connected. Not only specific decisions in the project: I began to understand that his philosophy, the way of thinking, the way he looks at the world, really determine everything: research projects, completed buildings …
What are your plans? Are you thinking of making another film about architecture?
- My next project, which I am already working on, is about Los Angeles, where I live, and this is not a film about architecture. I'm not going to become an "architectural" filmmaker. "Rem" was just a good opportunity to do something unusual, interesting, which people have not yet seen: that is why I took up this tape, and not because I gravitate towards architectural themes.
