Sebastian Wiedemann
Argentine filmmaker
Interview: 10 questions
Interview:10 questions
1. Tell me something about your life and the educational background
Since I was a child visual arts have been always very present in my life. My parents were art lovers . As soon as I could, I began studing painting, and then I also study photography. But it is in the moving image where I could best express me. So I decided to continue my education studying film, especially documentary and experimental film.
2. When, how and why started you filming?
When I was 11 or 12 years old I had my first camera, that’s when I discovered my passion more clearly by the moving image.
3. What kind of subjects have your films?
I like to capture forces and experiment with them. Vital forces, biographic forces, rhythmic forces, natural forces, and so on.Treating them as colors or music notes to compose new spaces and times. Seeking to create atmospheres that compose sensory journeys
.
4. How do you develop your films, do you follow certain principles, styles etc?
The rhythm and intensity of the images are essential to know how to compose. I always I have an original idea, a sketch, but the end result is full of chance and improvisation.
5. Tell me something about the technical equipment you use.
I try to capture images in the best quality so I work in HD. But when I play with textures, I also include materials on film, S8mm or S16mm. As a rule I always manipulate sound and image as independent elements that at the end come together.
6. The field of “art and moving images†(one may call it videoart or also differently) is is manifesting itself as an important position in contemporary art. Tell me more about your personal position and how you see the future of this field ( your personal future and the future of “art and moving imagesâ€)
Today the frontiers are very fuzzy, so you can watch videos or films in galleries, exhibitions and museums rather than in the theater.I think that film and all its experimental forms, are going through what photography lived in the past: earning a place in art. The moving image is profoundly powerful and pregnant, his power of expression and especially the fact of including the duration in his nature, makes that it return to us a degree of reality, which today is impresindible to understand and feel a certain logic of our world. I certainly am in this art tradition.
7. How do you finance your films?
With personal funds, so as not to be limited in expressive possibilities.
8. Do you work individually as a video artist/film maker or do you work in a team?
It’s hard work alone, a film involves many variables. I usually work with a small group when the project demands it, no more than three or five people. Although I work mostly alone.
if you have experience in both, what is the difference, what do you prefer?
I have no preference on working with a group or alone. I just think it’s important to know if it is an art collective or if they are collaborators. Of course it is essential to have a good understanding between all people involved.
9. Who or what has a lasting influence on your film/video making?
The painter Francis Bacon is a very big influence. Also artist and filmmakers such as Bill Viola, Cao Guimaraes, Werner Herzog, Andrei Tarkovsky and Robert Bresson and others have influenced me. But now my biggest influence is music and mostly the feeling that the sound is and comes before the seeable image.
10. What are your plans or dreams as a film/video maker?
I just hope I can continue expressing freely and certainly as far as possible to live it.
Can works of yours viewed online besides on CologneOFF or VideoChannel? Where?
List some links & resources
www.vimeo.com/swiedemann