Todd Haynes talks about Trump, as AIDS Crisis influenced activism, Berlin

This is halfway through the 75th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival and, so far, from 19 films in this year’s competition has not been a clear president.

The judgment of the potential winners of gold and silver bear is juring led by US director Todd Haynes, pioneer Queer cinema pioneer who made his game debut debut here in 1991 with Poisonwho took the Teddy Award for Best LGBTQ work.

Haynes appeared in the 1980s, closely aligned with activist and gay-legal movements that came from in response to the Reagan government and its inactivity in the AIDS crisis. It is a legacy that he says is now drawing, in weeks of Donald Trump’s inauguration.

“We are currently in a state of whip, we are just trying to make up for and think of the implications of what we are experiencing, which, even in authoritarian governments, rarely happens so quickly,” Haynes said, speaking with a conversation Hollywood reporter in Berlin. “But I think what we have historically learned that (we have to) should be very careful not to yield.”

He also discussed the challenges facing an independent cinema and how he approaches the duties of the Berlinale jury.

How is the experience of the festival for you and your colleagues as a jury instead of participants?

Thus, the brilliant rare privilege is forced to stop your work, the type of tunnel into which you enter your processes and browse what is happening in the world cinema, and do so with a group of international artists and filmmakers. That’s all you do: just concentrate on work. That’s just such a great thing because I never feel caught. No one can be. Critics must be to some extent, but still, it is irresistible. So it was a truly positive kind of injection, feeling a moment in which we are historical and culturally.

At your press conference, you talked about the Trump government. What impact do you expect Trump to have on a movie job, the ability to tell the types of stories you tell?

I don’t think none of us can say. I do not think that none of us can say that it affects the film industry or any other aspect of our lives, our social life, cultural life and political life. It was too fast and it was too aggressive. We are currently in a state of whips, we are just trying to make up for and understand the implications of what we are experiencing, which, even in authoritarian governments, rarely happens so fast.

Look, it’s deep and scary, no doubt. And what’s going on in the movie is in some ways the least of my concern. This is important; It’s huge. That’s what I do. And it was through this medium that we survived even worse historical crises in the past. But I have such worries about how our democratic system will survive.

This kind of almost advanced self -censorship or in advance that we see (from media companies), different dei programs that have just fallen like domina, corporations and companies and people who think: “I will start more passive and I will start more passive and hope to get my basis And start thinking about a long game. “But I think what we have historically learned that after you begin to loosen, they do not reward you to submit. These types of people are insatiable. We need to be very careful not to yield.

Do you see this appetite for resistance, especially compared to the first Trump administration?

I don’t think we have found our basis in the number and in the sense of organized resistance. But the numbers are there, the horror is there, and I think the determination is to fight. I have to believe he’s there. But I think we need the lead. They very obviously released this attack that made it very difficult to know where to turn and what to do first. And so I think that’s what happens and we try to figure it out.

I talked to your longtime producer Christine Vachon from the killer movie, and she compared that period to the 1980s and Era Reagan, trying to finally finish things, saying that sometimes like these when an independent film industry becomes even more important, as an alternative to the main course .

For Christine and my generation, in particular, the experience of passing through the AIDS -AI crisis epidemic was very formative. We have seen the range of success produced in the midst of a catastrophic health crisis that also came so quickly and that was so thoroughly neglected, especially by the president, where people, again, did not know how to answer and continued to find ways to mitigate or delay or in the worst case accusing people of their own trouble. It was up to us, so the activists took it into their own hands to become their own medical research experts and public opinion and conduct extremely focused, razors of sharp forms of public resistance and activism, which began to produce certain results, one after the next, and on the next The end is revealed by this disease and develop medicines that people could survive this disease.

I also think that activism has changed the way people look at gay people and people who are most famous of that crisis, and I think it contributed to the fact that public opinions were quickly changing around things like a gay marriage a decade later.

So, Christine and I had it in our DNA: these were the years we were old. In addition to the biggest and most important struggles that were fought, there was a creative and cultural reaction of artists, and what was so extraordinary in what was called the “new Queer cinema” was that it also strengthened and rejuvenated independent filmmaking, not Only in content, but in style and form.

We were also in a unique and specific time in the history of an independent film, and there was an audience for these films. Therefore, there was a market for these films, so these films made enough money to continue to create. There was a financial aspect that is self -sustaining. And that created the perfect atmosphere for the work that came out and that the public would really experience it.

Is there still such a self -sustaining ecosystem for independent films today?

You can’t really compare it to that time, but I think the fight for individual voices in the movie is to express themselves and finance the constant struggle in every decade, and every decade has realized that. The concrete situation we are in now is so violent and so extreme that it can only be hoped that she also welcomed some kind of necessity by the film. The need for filmmakers to speak are felt more in more than ever. What they have to say is important, and there are people who need to hear it, and the community can be reformed around what is now happening through the movie. It’s the best script. It will continue to be balanced, sometimes supported and sometimes forced to fight under Hollywood commercial forces.

What are you working on now? Is there a project that you have developed with Joaquin Phoenix before it has gone out in any form – do you continue with it?

I found myself, especially in the years that I am now, not only to write and develop all my own work, but receive projects, adapting movies, directing other scripts and so on, that there is always a little buildup of projects in different forms of progress. That was true before that last movie. And so let’s move on; We are very excitedly moving forward on this adaptation of Hernan Diaz Confidence.

This is what I am currently focusing on with Kate Winslet in HBO. It’s such an incredibly extraordinary work. I collaborate on the scenario with Jon Raymond, with whom I worked in the past; He and I have adapted Mildred Pierce together. Jon has also collaborated with Kelly Reichardt on almost all the features she has made in the last 20 years. Kelly came to visit me when I first settled in Portland in 2000 and met this new small group of my friends. Jon was among them. In Portland, in music and visual arts, there was a really individual and decisive creative community in writing and film creation. Both Kelly and John clicked. Since then, they have been working together, and many of her films have been made in Portland or are engaged in the culture of the Pacific northwest. This was exactly the other way. So Jon and I were together on that together, and he and I and Hernan did well and have a great time.

Is it harder these days to reach a wider audience with an independent cinema than it was in the 1990s?

Well, now we’re such a broken culture. Much of this is our media culture and our internet culture and the type of spreading audiences and materials. There are cases of missing three networks that dominate the TV set, where you felt like everyone became involved in the same thing at the same time, most of the time. There was a common discussion that could be conducted about what was done in popular culture, it is just the sea, this ocean, where we get lost.

Is that more harder these days, in this broken media landscape, to find an audience and a marker for alternatively cinema?

Absolutely. Where there was a defined type of dominant culture that the marginal culture could be pushed away, in some way, saying directly, sometimes indirectly, I think it helped organize and motivate the admission and circulation of film and art. But Christine and Pam (Koffler) in the killer films are just so indestructible in their insistence that there will be a way to understand it again. Because they have been doing it for a long time and they had to understand it over and over to so many different configurations. We have now collaborated with studies and streaming companies; We all worked with foreign money and investment in capital. We have built our films in every imaginable way, always over and over. And he always feels like a new game every time. In my work, I like to think that I don’t just repeat what I’ve done in the past. For me, this is always something unknown, so it is natural that the financial structure will reflect it as well.

Can I ask about your job here at the Festival Pulling? Do you have any concept of what you are looking for, what kind of stories or cinema would you like to celebrate with Berlinale awards?

It is really about leaving expectations, expectations, or even the desire to respect voices that are not heard so much. Of course, it will be a factor in what you see: where films come from and how they can or may not be involved in political content. But the best way to approach is not to read anything about movies. I can barely remember the name of the movie until I sit it to watch it. This is so unusual today because we are so bombarded in advance information and knowledge. That really cleanses your head. I see this among other jurors. There is that feeling like virgins every time, just allowing us to react to something in the moment. It’s exceptional, because when I make my own movies, I watch a lot of movies to work, but there is always a criterion, there is a language I try to discern, there is a set of rules that I try to create for what will be my movie. So I’m very determined about what I look at and not watch. This is the opposite. That’s really like opening. It’s such a healthy thing for a creative person.