Just like Michael Almereyda's Another Girl, Another Planet, made with a Fisher Price camera, Harmony Korine's VHS-film Trash Humpers is also much too grainy for the big screen. Both directors, however, find the effect beautiful. 'It's another sort of refinement.'
Directors Harmony Korine (Trash Humpers) and Michael Almereyda (Paradise and Another Girl, Another Planet) greet each other enthusiastically as they've been friends for years. But they're surprised they're being interviewed together. Korine: 'I've never done a double interview before. Are we the token Americans?' I tell them that I want to talk to Almereyda more about the picture quality of Another Girl, Another Planet from 1992. His new film Paradise was shown in Rotterdam earlier in the week. 'They're showing two of my films', explains Almereyda to Korine. 'Damn!' he replies in admiration, 'you have like a mini retro!'.
Almereyda made Another Girl, Another Planet, a calm, flowing reverie from a man about his lost loves, with an extremely cheap Fisher Price camera from the 80's. It produced vague, block-like black and white images. The film played in the Back to the Future? programme as an example of how cheap and handy consumer electronics can influence cinema. Almereyda sees the link. 'Your film fits in there too', he says to Korine.
Harmony Korine also used VHS for his highly individual low budget film Trash Humpers. For a large part, the film is about what the title suggests: a pair of marginal figures that dry-hump bins. He did the editing with two video recorders and the result looks blotchy and vague. Korine: 'It had to look like an old VHS tape that someone had found by chance. My first camera was a VHS and I used the same tapes over and over again. And there's this slightly haunting quality to it. There's a fog in the analogue'.
Almereyda adds: 'You've done something really clever with the tracking.'. Korine: 'We were glitching it you know. We stuck pencils and stuff in so that it would mess with the tracks. You know what it is, people are so obsessed with pixels and this idea of perfect images and clarity and I think it's sometimes possible to be too real. It's nice to make them squint a little.'
Almereyda: 'Your film almost looks random; raw and authentic.' So authentic in fact that Korine, to his surprise, won the main prize in the documentary festival in Copenhagen. Korine: 'They said it was a new kind of documentary.' Almereyda: 'how did the statuette look?' Korine: 'Like money'. 'That's good. Congratulations!'
Almereyda's PixelVision technique looks quite different from Korine's damaged VHS, but also has a very grainy appearance. Almereyda: 'The rawness of video is more emotionally direct than the slickness of film. You can call it primitive, but it's another sort of refinement if you use it properly. PixelVision has a hypnotic effect, with its velvety black and white and shallow depth of field. Emotionally it was right for this film. I'm not offended by grain. I don't know why everyone gets so nervous about grain. A lot of earlier movies have grain in them.' Korine: 'People don't like that. It's the kiss of death. Grain is the arch-enemy.' (KD)
Trash Humpers - Harmony Korine
Tues 2nd 20.15 C14
Another Girl, Another Planet - Michael Almereyda
Tues 2nd 10.45 PA2