- Born
- Born in Berlin (West), Fred Kelemen studied painting, music, philosophy, science of religions and theatre sciences and worked in different theatres as a director's assistant before he began his studies at the German Film & TV Academy Berlin (dffb) in 1989. Since that time, he has made a number of films and videos as director and collaborated as Director of Photography and Cameraman with several film directors like Béla Tarr (Utazás az Alföldön (1995), The Man from London (2007), The Turin Horse (2011)), Gisa Schleelein (Tatau Samoa (2000)) and Gariné Torossian (Stone Time Touch (2007)). In 2000 and 2001 he directed several plays at different theaters in Germany. Since 1995 he is working as a guest lecturer at the Centre of Cinematographic Studies of Catalania (C.E.C.C.) in Barcelona/Spain, at the School of Visual Arts (ESBAG) in Geneva/Switzerland, at the Latvian Cultural Academy (LKA) in Riga, at the Tel Aviv University, at the Film and TV Academy Berlin (dffb), at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Lyon etc. Retrospectives of his work had been presented in Lisbon/Portugal, Belgrade/Yugoslavia, Cambride/U.S.A, Athens/Greece, Brussels/Belgium, Oslo/Norway, Hannover/Germany, New York City/U.S.A., Buenos Aires/Argentina, Berlin/Germany, Barcelona/Spain, Bern/Switzerland, Ankara/Turkey, London/England, Potsdam/Germany, Bankok/ThailandHamburg/Germany. Fred Kelemen is member of the European Film Academy, the German Film Academy and the European Culture Parliament.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Fred Kelemen
- Retrospective at the 5th Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema.
- Since 2013 Fred Kelemen is a member of the 'Cinematographers Branch' of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).
- His father is German-Russian and his mother Hungarian. He spent much of his childhood in Budapest, Hungary.
- Speaks German, Hungarian and English.
- For me the quality of Europe is the diversity of cultures - the different languages and peoples, the absence of homogeneity. Europe is a very heterogeneous place with different languages and backgrounds and climates, and all this diversity creates a richness which I believe is important. And then Europe has a strong background in wars. I think what unites different European cultures is the experience of pain. Which is different from, say, the United States, where a war never happened because of the invasion of a foreign force.
- I think as long as someone is doing something, and especially something as difficult as film-making, they cannot be a pessimist. It is a very optimistic thing to make a film, because when I make a film it means I believe that there will be people there to watch the film. If I were a pessimist, I wouldn't be making films. [1999]
- [on Abendland (1999)] Yes, there is a lot improvisation in the film. There's a script, but in the script I never write dialogues. But there are some parts where it is written what the characters talk about without saying how they have to talk about it. That's something I develop with the actors. The script was written before I knew all the actors, and after knowing who will be in the film I changed a lot of things because the people who are acting in the film are a big influence on it. We sit and talk with the actors about the whole thing before we shoot. But I never make rehearsals out of the shooting or after the shooting, just the shooting day, the day of creation. So, it's really work I do together with them. Being an actor in this film is very creative thing for them. Even in the shooting I change things - I take scenes away and make new scenes because maybe I have an idea in the morning which is much better than what I had written. It would be stupid to shoot just what is written and not to change it. [1999]
- For me there is a very strong difference between hope and vision, for example, hope is something you wait for. While you hope you are waiting - you are sure it will come, so you wait and wait and wait, but you don't do anything while you are waiting. I think in our society, when you look at culture, the arts or television or the theatre, music and so on, there is really an ideology of hope. People are forced to hope, to be happy and not to give up their belief that something really good, but it is a way of exploiting people, a way of making keeping people down and making them tolerate misery. But I think that exactly the opposite is what we need. Not to wait until something will happen, but to make it happen. And to me that's why the idea of having a vision is much more active. Hope is something very passive. So when you have a vision you fight for it and you are willing to do something for it. When somebody is really starting to do something, fight for what he wants to be real, then, maybe, hope is something that comes out of this, because then I can hope that really something can change. But hope just without this very active element of fighting for a vision or dream is nothing, completely empty. [1999]
- [on Abendland (1999)] Some of the long scenes were done in two or three days. The first day was only arranging the lighting and camera rehearsals, because there are many lamps in some scenes and because when you do a very long travelling shot, you see the whole room, you cannot just light a corner or a face and then cut, and then light another corner, the whole room is to be there, illuminated, completely ready and without any lamp in shot. The real place actually looked like it looked on the screen. It has to be done, because film is something very practical and everything you want to have on screen you have to realise before. The second day I worked with the actors, and maybe we shot it immediately if everybody was completely present or it was not too exhausting. If we had been working too long we came back the next day and shot the scene the next day. And maybe I change some little things after rehearsal, so it's really a process of creation during the shooting. It's never like here is something on the paper and then just doing it like it was written. [1999]
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