Master class Sergei Loznitsa makes one long for even more knowledge about how film works

How do you make a documentary about Holocaust tourism? About the hordes of bored-looking day-trippers who flood the former German concentration camps, now set up as memorials? Ukraine-raised filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa has done it. Austerlitz is the name of the film released on IDFA had its Dutch premiere and which is as contrary as it is perplexing.

Masterclass

Loznitsa, one of the former Eastern Bloc's leading documentary filmmakers, was allowed to present his top ten compile. That too resulted in an intriguing list including a number of rare titles from the Soviet era. Yesterday afternoon, he was allowed to talk about these - and his own work - in a masterclass in the sold-out main hall of the Pathé-Tuschinski Theatre. Where it soon became clear that he can come off as unexpected and quirky live as he does in his film work.

Japanese

Before deciding to become a filmmaker, he studied mathematics and Japanese. An intriguing career start, and about the choice of Japanese, moderator and questioner Hans Maarten van den Brink wanted to know a bit more. The answer was soberingly pragmatic. No deep philosophy, but simply the fact that to be independent Loznitsa was thinking of a job as a translator, and so he had understood, translator Japanese earned the most.

Deceptive documentary

On the other hand, asked about possible relationship between his mathematics background and his film work, Loznitsa did not hesitate to embark on an elaborate art-theoretical argument in good humour. The ancient Greeks, Plato and the way the human brain works form the basis for the view that it all has to do with the abstract models we use to think about reality. Art, including film, is such a model, but it is not the same as reality. Film is always a metaphor, its subject is an excuse to think about a broader theme. In this respect, Loznitsa also saw no principled difference between fiction and documentary, even if the documentary filmmaker does find the raw material in that reality. It makes documentary a deceptive genre, according to the mathematician turned filmmaker.

Mathematics

Indeed, the effortless way he manages to abstract things will undoubtedly have to do with his mathematical background. At one point, he even surprised the audience with the picture of a bar graph depicting the distribution of shot lengths in one of his films. The editing rhythm visualised, and suddenly I got the desire to see that of many more films.

Propaganda

But none of this explains why Loznitsa's work is so special. He employs some rather rigorous form principles, with long, static settings and no interviews or voice-over with explanations or commentary.

Now anyway, then teacher Loznitsa comes up with an example. Suppose you are filming a man working with a hammer. When you edit short shots quickly, it evokes an energetic and enthusiastic feeling. Loznitsa calls that propaganda, and we suspect that, given his origins, he is sick of that. But frame those continuous hammer blows with a very long static shot and you understand how exhausting that hard work can be.

Austerlitz

Is it all as rational as Loznitsa portrays it? In retrospect, perhaps, but that's not how it starts, he suggests anyway. Illustrative is his answer to the question of why he Austerlitz in black and white. After first giving a film-historical treatise, he nevertheless simply concluded that in his imagination from the beginning, he simply saw it in black and white. And he also didn't feel like battling with all those screaming colours of the T-shirts worn by tourists.

Thinking for yourself

No matter how strictly Loznitsa applies his principles of form, something else, a first impression, an experience, lies at the basis. When he first visited the former concentration camps Sachsenhausen and Dachau and saw all those tourists there, a grim, alienating feeling came over him. With repeated returns, those feelings and questions grew stronger and stronger, until he was ready to make the film.

Austerlitz is looking and looking and looking at all those somewhat bored people wandering around peering into the barracks or shuffling past the execution sites. The infamous text 'Arbeit macht frei' above the gate is a photo opportunity. There are no main characters, and only snatches of voices and the guides' routine texts. It is bizarre, unreal, but also revealing and soberingly dead-on. We look at ourselves. We see how history, horrific as it was, is doomed to slip through our fingers like sand. Loznitsa edits very little, seems to eliminate himself as a filmmaker. He doesn't tell us what to think. We have to do that ourselves.