On the occasion of the advanced release of "Cuban Network" on VOD, interview in confinement with the filmmaker Olivier Assayas, who also talks with us about his way of living this moment, by writing a series derived from his film "Irma Vep". Interview.
Memento Films Distribution After Doubles vies with Juliette Binoche and Guillaume Canet, released in early 2019, a new change of register for the prolific filmmaker Olivier Assayas. With Cuban Network, released in theaters last January, and already available on VOD, he signs a new film in the vein of Carlos, already with Edgar Ramirez, interested in a true story: Early 90, a group of Cubans installed in Miami sets up a spy network. Their mission: to infiltrate the anti-Castro groups responsible for attacks on the island.
AlloCiné: Cuban Network impresses with its ambition, the number of countries where you have toured, its numerous settings ... Would you say that this was your biggest challenge as a director?Olivier Assayas, director: Let's say I'll have a hard time doing worse or better than Carlos ( his series with Edgar Ramirez released in 2010, Editor's note.) from this point of view ! But it was in some ways harder than Carlos. We shot most of the film in Cuba, but in a very complicated political context: there were tensions around what was happening, for example, in Venezuela at the time when we were filming in Havana. The Cuban economy is extremely dependent on the Venezuelan economy, and when things go wrong in Venezuela, there is panic on board in Cuba.
I had a bit of a feeling of going to war every morning!
We were spied on, monitored, controlled ... Some days, we don't know why, there was no problem, everything was fine, we got what we wanted. There were other days, we don't know why, everything was prohibited, we found ourselves in galleys not possible to solve inane problems. I said it before, but it's true: I had a bit of a feeling of going to war every morning! I didn't know if I could get everything I needed to do what I was doing.
The preparation was also complex...In difficult films, it's often the worst! Preparation is economic uncertainty. First, we didn't know if we would be allowed to tour Cuba. We thought rather than not. I did scouting in many Latin American countries, where there was the hypothesis of reconstructing part of Cuba from the 90s. Without success, moreover, because we never really found a place that had to both the charm, the beauty - which also has to do with the decrepitude and the misery - of Havana.
And then, the film was still a bit crazy, because it was a Franco-Brazilian film shot in Cuba, spoken in Spanish, with actors who are both stars in their country, but not very outside. With the exception of Penelope Cruz who is internationally renowned, and to a lesser extent Gael Garcia Bernal. All telling a story that we knew would be controversial, problematic with the Cubans in Miami, etc.
It also means that there were pressures, political difficulties to make the film exist. I'm not telling you about the difficulties of doing basic things like sending money to be able to shoot in Cuba from France ... The embargo is still very strict, so that means that there is only some banks through which you have to go via Panama to be able to simply pay the Cubans who were preparing the film with us.
It's adventurous, exciting, fascinating, but day-to-day, tough enough.
Everything was extremely difficult because we were doing something that no one had ever really done. This means making a film of this difficulty, of this ambition in a country where there is no elementary logistics to do it. There was a need for boats, there were none. There was a need for private planes, there were none. We're shooting aerial scenes, there are no helicopters. When I arrived in Cuba, I hallucinated a little! I never imagined that there were no helicopters in Cuba! It does not exist ! We were forced to use helicopters, but army transport helicopters, which are the size of a semi-trailer! For boats, Cuba is not a country that encourages its people to buy boats, because with a boat you run away and you go to Miami. This is a country where there is no car, it costs $ 200,000, because they discourage its acquisition because there is no gas to put in it. It's adventurous, exciting, fascinating, but day-to-day, tough enough.
How was the film received in Cuba?First, we had to get permission. It took a very long time to be obtained, because it had to go all the hierarchical way, and I was told it several times so I believe it: it ended with Raoul Castro who read the screenplay and approved after an extremely long journey through the meanders of the Cuban bureaucracy.
For a very long time, it was no, no, no. And all of a sudden, when it becomes yes, all the doors open. We have the right to turn in the control tower of the Cuban Air Force, which is something totally preposterous. We have the right to go aboard the MIG. We take off and land MIGs ... stuff that we would never have had authorization in other countries! When it got tougher politically with Brazil, -changed government and therefore trade with Cuba ceased, or when there was the crisis in Venezuela which almost swept away the Maduro- government, it became very tense.
We felt the swirls of Cuban politics on our shoot
We felt on our shoot the turmoil of Cuban politics, that is to say that when it hardened, it was rather the hard guys of the regime who supported us, and when it softened, it was rather the moderates of the regime who supported us because they wanted to give the image that it was possible to shoot in Cuba, to give a good image of the country, and therefore it was they who were benevolent and authorized us.
But afterwards, I was very afraid that, as a result of the film, the Cubans, in general, would find that the story represents the regime as what it is, that is to say totalitarian and would not be very happy that we show that and so on ... But in fact, no! There was the same process: when the film was finished and shown at festivals, Cubans who were there had to report. After a while, we realized that there was no open hostility, no major problems. If there had been, we would have known. And then, gradually, they asked us if they could have a copy in order to organize a projection for the officials of the regime.
As a result, I think the whole Cuban state has seen the film and validated it
As a result, I think that the whole Cuban state saw the film and validated it, and authorized a presentation of the film within the framework of the Havana Festival where there were 3 screenings in front of 1500 people each, and it there were as many outside who could not enter. It has become a big thing in Cuba. At that time, I started receiving correspondence from René Gonzales, who is therefore the main character in the story, the one played by Edgar Ramirez. He was notoriously hostile to filming, notoriously put sticks on our wheels, and all of a sudden he sent me a message to thank me, to tell me that he had found truthful facts in the film and he thanked me to have been faithful to the truth, etc. It touched me and I found it pleasant on his part, but it is true that I would have preferred that he supported me when it was necessary to support us rather than to come to the rescue of victory!
In your previous feature film Doubles vies, you raised questions about culture and its dematerialization, digital technology, etc. Could you have imagined something like the situation we are currently experiencing, one day, while making this film? The situation has, so to speak, accelerated these questions about the evolution of our access to culture in particular ...What is happening today is so unprecedented, unforeseen and we measure it so little or badly or with difficulty the consequences that it is very difficult to be a prophet, or in any case to take these questions under control body. But you realize that the digital economy, digital logic, is what keeps the world together. In a certain way today, there is taking place a form of cataclysm from which we do not know very well in what state we are going to get out and if people will continue to go and buy newspapers, etc.
What is happening today is so unprecedented, unforeseen, and we measure its consequences so little or badly or with such difficulty that it is very difficult to be a prophet
It turns out that the place where I chose to confine myself is the family home where I grew up, in the Chevreuse valley near Paris. So I'm in the countryside in an environment that is very strange, because it's my father's house, it's not mine. My father died several decades ago, but the house has stayed about the way it was when it disappeared. I am surrounded by a library which is not mine, but hers. In a house decorated by him, etc., etc. This is the house where I grew up.
I have the impression of being rushed into the future by the use of delivery sites for example to restore the house, to operate things that no longer worked, and at the same time, I am trying to write a series based on Irma Vep which is sponsored by an American distributor which is A24. Those are the two extremes ... I find myself both in my teenage bedroom and at the same time I'm doing something that is purely 21st century.
I find myself both in my teenage bedroom and at the same time, I am doing something that is purely 21st century!
I am writing a series for people I barely know, whom I had to meet twice and with whom I exchange texts and emails, and with whom there is a relationship that can not be more dematerialized, so it's an indisputably very strange feeling! A24 works intelligently because it knows that platforms need everything, and allies for example with Claire Denis for her next film, and seeks "prestige" series or in any case that generate notoriety, including media, and has an easier dialogue with the authors.
And by writing, you don't know when and how you will be able to shoot!Today, I honestly have no idea in what condition and how we are going to be able to start making films again. I think that today we are not yet measuring the gravity, or at least the upheaval that is happening. When I read things like "we're going to quarantine movie crews", that "we're going to shoot the figuration sequences at the end of the shoot in case there is someone who dies of the Covid after the shoot so that insurance companies don't have too much problem "... Honestly, I'm a little bit hallucinated!
So that the safety conditions or the basic sanitary conditions are restored - from the point of view of the cinema in rooms, from the point of view of the theater in rooms, and from the point of view of the shooting of films -, I fear that a lot of water has flowed under a lot of bridges.
I don't envision anything like a shoot before summer 2021, at best
But as far as I'm concerned, it's a long-term writing job. At first, I was not at all sure that I wanted to write this whole series which would take as a starting point my film Irma Vep which I had made some time ago, and from which I will decline in the form of 8 films of an hour ... I thought that I was not going to write them all, not all of them, etc. And now I tell myself that I have before me the time that allows me perhaps to do something very ambitious. There's a lot of fun, you can try stuff ... But I don't envision anything like a shoot before, I don't know, summer 2021, at best.
It seems like you always have a plan ahead, that you are always about to shoot something, and it was the case precisely when we met for an interview on Doubles vies in December 2018, where you were about to shoot Cuban Network...Yes, I literally did both. It was a bit special.
Doubles vies: meeting with Olivier Assayas, Guillaume Canet, Nora Hamzawi and Vincent Macaigne Another word on this particular context in which we are talking today: what impact do you think it will have on spectators, their habits, especially in terms of VOD or SVOD...Today, people are getting into different habits, and eventually some of these habits will suit them. People who did not know how to operate VOD will operate it. People who didn't have Netflix or Amazon Prime will use it. All you can say is look at the trends and the numbers and see that Netflix has won 13.5 million subscribers. It's delusional. And we're not even talking about Disney +, AppleTV ... Yes, there are people who will get used to accessing the cinema in these ways, and who until then had remained loyal to the room. What will happen when we start to reopen the rooms? I am unable to say, but I will not be the guinea pig public!
Cuban Network, with Penelope Cruz, Edgar Ramirez, Gael Garcia, Wagner Moura, Ana de Armas is currently available for hire on VOD Words gathered on Thursday April 23, 2020
