"Making of Räuberinnen" - video interviews (part1)

Räuberinnen / Robber Girls / Filles Brigandes
"Making of" - 8 little video interviews!

From the last swiss shooting days, 2008-05-07 in Zürich, Villa Pathumba:
www.makingofeuropa.net - Räuberinnen Interviews

Pity, not a word about Mathis/Frida in all those interviews, he's only seen some seconds in the background :-( ("Backstage"+"Nils") But the good news is, it sounds like the film will come out on DVD! :-) The videos are german, but there are "translations" on the site. Alas, some parts of it are freely invented, I'm afraid the (native italien?) translator had some problems to fully understand what is said... So I say Thanx for the interesting interviews, but as for the translation decided to give it a shot myself, starting from scratch without comparing with the site again, so here's now the maybe bumpy but much more literal Sanna-translation (native german, and hoping they wont kill me for putting so much here) ;-)

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--- PART-1 --- (all english translated by Sanna)

Samir (producer DschointVentschr):
"....the television, as one of the most important partners, then the Ministry of Culture, plus the city of Zürich here, with its Film Foundation. The Film Foundation said from the beginning: NYET. "Such un obscene, perverse project we do not want to subsidize." But then, due to our successes in the last years, with "Fräulein" and "Snow White", we had a lot of "reference money", and that money has now flown into that movie. So, indirectly, the Zürich Film Foundation has also funded the movie..."

Tunje Berns (producer):
"Last year I took part in the EAVE Producers Training Program. There, just in the first week, I first met the Luxembourgers, und by chance also this producer, who's taking part now. He got the book from me, and meant right away: "I want to join this!" (....)"

Samir (producer):
"The important thing was to see, that actually the DVD-Distribution were the first to join. It was quite obvious that they realized the potential in this theme. And I must say, it's right that way, since by now with several movies that we released, we actually made disproportionately high distribution numbers on the DVD-market, with our niche-programs, compared to the cinema. We really have a good position there. "

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FRANCAIS: (mini-résumé seulement, dsl)
Dommage, pas un mot de Mathis/Frida dans tous ces interviews, on le voit seulement quelques secondes en arriere-plan :-( ("Backstage"+"Nils")
Mais la bonne nouvelle c'est: Ca sonne comme on aura le film aussi sur DVD!
Samir dit qu'une compagnie de DVDs etait la premiere à joindre le projet. Que c'est evident qu'ils ont vu le potential dans ce theme, et il trouve ca correcte, car quelques autres de ses projets ont déjà eu bien plus de succes sur DVD que dans les cinemas.
Il dit aussi que la television est aussi parmi les financiers, ainsi que, involontairement, la Fondation de Film à Zurich, qui depuis le debut ont refusé de soutenir "un film si obscene et pervers", mais par quelques "fonds de reference" qui restaient encore de son succes passé, et qui sont dans ce film maintenant, alors la fondation l'a "indirectement" financié aussi.

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DEUTSCH:
Schade, kein einziges Wort über Mathis/Frida in den ganzen Interviews, man sieht ihn nur mal ganz kurz im Hintergrund :-( ("Backstage"+"Nils")
Aber die gute Nachricht ist: Es scheint, der Film kommt auch auf DVD raus!
Samir: "Also wichtig war zu sehen, dass eigentlich die DVD-Vertrieb als erste eingestiegen sind. Das war ganz offensichtlich, dass sie das Potential bei diesem Thema gesehen haben. Und ich muss sagen, das ist auch korrekt so, weil wir haben jetzt mit mehreren Filmen, die wir herausgebracht haben, eigentlich unverhältnismäßig hohe Distributionszahlen gemacht auf dem DVD-Markt, mit unseren Nischen-Programmen, im Verhältnis zum Kino."
Das Fernsehen ist auch mit im Boot, sowie -unfreiwillig- die Zürcher Filmstiftung: "Die Filmstiftung hat von Anfang an gesagt: NYET. "So ein obszönes, perverses Projekt wollen wir nicht unterstützen." Dann hatten wir aber durch unsere Erfolge in den letzten Jahren sehr viele Referenzgelder, und die sind jetzt in diesen Film hineingeflossen. Also hat die Filmstiftung Zürich indirekt auch den Film finanziert..."

--> Falls es wem hilft, hab meine Mitschrift vom gesamten deutschen Originaltext der Interviews zwecks Platzersparnis einfach als Kommentar bei Teil-2 angehängt, zum Lesen hier clicken und runterscrollen:

--- PART-2 --- (+original german text)

"Making of Räuberinnen" - video interviews (part2)

Räuberinnen / Robber Girls / Filles Brigandes

"Making of" - 8 little video interviews!

From the last swiss shooting days, 2008-05-07 in Zürich, Villa Pathumba:

www.makingofeuropa.net - Räuberinnen Interviews

--- PART-2 ---
(partly shortened, all english translated by Sanna, german original here)

(DEUTSCH: Mitschrift vom gesamten deutschen Originaltext der Interviews ist als Kommentar angehängt, HIER clicken dann runterscrollen)

Carla Lia Monti (director and writer):
I come from the fine arts, have always had the same topics, since 10-20 years, and it's a continuing development. There's not one idea that occured just so (snap!). Well, from the first idea, in my mind, up to this shooting day, there have passed about 5½-6 years now. It's got nothing at all to do with history or such, I don't pretend any historical claims here. The costumes are about 300-400 years now, altogether, but they don't fit together in the least. The point is just that I'm creating an own cosmos, an own world, where the characters inside fonction with a naturalness.
Well, what it's about, I'm making some sort of fable, where you gain some distance. That one doesn't just recognize himself one-to-one, just like in a fable where there are animals, the sly fox, the dumb donkey, in which you recognize the neighbor or other people, and that's why I've created an own cosmos, to gain a certain distance.
And I have a wonderful crew, I've wonderful actors, we have a great mood on the set, which can't be taken for granted normally, and so we've been able to create pictures where there's a jewel in every picture, where you notice there's a love there, for this design, and in the movie you can feel it.

Enzo Brandner (camera):
The basic idea is that it's just a rather high gloss concept, optically, and regarding content complete trash. From these contrasts the movie shall also live. From balancing the thin line between esthetics, bloodiness, and also comic elements. That's also how the actors were selected, e.g. two cabaret artists, who in a way, even when playing a raping scene, it's all simply drawn into a comic direction again. (..tech talk..) The movie is shot very lively, and has huge dynamics, there are wide total shots, und there are many close-ups. So those TV-medium-shots, we actually omit those almost completely.

Nils Althaus (leading actor, "Josef", Emily's lover):
I've made a lot with the music, I also wrote the lyrics, that is my lyrics, which I'm singing. Just quite simplistic pop-lyrics, coming right from the heart, that's what he shall sing. The robber girls, that's some kind of pot, of all the yearnings that a woman can have, but which she never fulfills. All those women come into this pot, and together do all the things they've always wanted to do, well, shoot around, rape men, rob out, cut genitals...
Some other robber girls from her gang find me, and take me into their cave, and then I'm actually abused, as a living inflatable doll, get infused vi@gra, and then... every robber girl wants her turn as well...
And then Emily arrives, and then is... So, we're finding each other again, but of course then she's disappointed, that I 'supposedly' had betrayed her, with other women. Without that being my own fault there, but that of the robber girls.
This complete craziness that's simply something that I loved, that someone simply takes the freedom to say, the bard I make the bard now, and the evil robber I make ONLY the evil robber, just really taking this freedom, that's something I admire! That's why I've accepted. All the staging is so over the top, that I've really.. I've never seen anything like this on the big screen.

Nina Bühlmann (leading actress, "Emily", poor daughter turned robber)
(....) Carla had again a detailed idea of how she wanted Emily to be, but as said before, there's also a lot of myself in her. On one hand I'm the rather fine girl, who sometimes is afraid, and doesn't always quite know where to go and what to do, but who on the other hand also has that boyish side, or the powerful, to just smash into, or to take a pumpgun and shoot around. It's just those two sides that were most important to her. On one hand the natural girl, and on the other the strong woman, the same with Emily.
I don't even know if she does this really consciously, but she has that way of giving to women those roles that in everyday life usually get assigned to men. Like my character, Emily, who suddenly becomes a heroine and rescues people, goes searching for my lover, what usually is done the classic way by the guy. And the other women roles as well often are actually men roles, and also, that you suddenly mutate into a robber, that's not necessarily exactly how you know women. And that's great, it makes... That's really the fun in it, to just show the strong woman for a change. That's great.

Alexandra Prusa (actress, "evil mother")

(....) I really had problems to develop that character. In fact that was rather difficult for me. It was first planned to start in autumn, and at the time I was still working with the musiciens, since no one knew yet if the "evil ones" would also be allowed to sing. So I created some lyrics myself, which then... have me accompanied in a sense, well I've (written)... "I had emotions and have it unlearned, I could see and have it unlearned, I could feel, I have it unlearned, I don't know anymore, where's it gone?" Well, if you read Uehlebeck (?), or so the quite modern urban person, well he's sometimes not far off from this character study that I'm now *trying* here!
Especially the scene that I shot today, that's... There I thought, this is perhaps the only really emotional... the only time when she's showing an emotion for a moment. Just herself alone of course. But what's beautiful, what I find enchanting, and that you really have to see in this movie: Carla is a great paintress! I think. And her picture language is gorgeous, and I think that will contribute just as much as the story. There we can really look forward to something very colorful, very rich.

Hans-Peter Ulli (actor, "evil bishop")
(...) In his greed, wanting more and more, he knows no limits. (...) It's actually the permanent search for happiness and satisfaction, mentally, but that doesn't work and so he takes it through all those physical things. And this makes this character exciting to me, to have a look what's that about, being a hedonist? The opportunity to tell this through a fairy tale puts that thing into some meta-level, which allows us, as actors, and also the director, to do things that you otherwise couldn't do. But I think otherwise this would just be half a p*rn, or a brutalo-movie, being so endlessly awfully boring that I'd say forget it. But through that fairy-tale design you have of course every chance to exaggerate without limit, over the top, distort things, and we hope the viewer will make in his mind the connection to today's reality. And if we reach this, then we've got exactly what we want.

back to --- PART-1 ---