Rocha: On this question of minority audiences, there’s one thing I’d like to say. There exists a very paternal attitude towards the public. You find for example leftist intellectuals who are writers, not filmmakers, claiming that we are making films which are difficult for the public. And that is a very paternal point of view. Because you can’t decide without research … What it amounts to, is that only the bourgeois are sensitive or intelligent enough to understand a film. There is a mechanism of distribution, imposing a certain type of film product on the public, which has completely corrupted the public. The worst thing I’ve found – I have to say it again because people seem to be blind – is that … The first is that films speak a very precise language. The public is colonised by a type of language imposed by Hollywood, which unfortunately is the same as that imposed by the Russian regime. The public isn’t given the chance to choose because the distribution structure today in capitalist and socialist countries imposes the same type of product. And the critics go along with this judgement when they say that films are incomprehensible.
Straub: The critics who stick to that sort of language are nothing but whores working in with pimps, that’s all …
Rocha: Yes, because at that point there is a collaboration between critics and leftist paternal intellectuals who claim they don’t understand: they outlaw these filmmakers. But basically, I feel that the filmmakers who work outside the industry are much more democratic, much more revolutionary, since they respect the public more. I myself try to make difficult films – I don’t think I’m being paternal towards the public. I think peasants, workers, students, even the nobility – anyone you can think of – can understand a film … Above all, because the ‘reading’ of a film is such a complex process. Certain films, such as those which have a dialectic or an open structure, have created a language in opposition to the language of colonisation. So on that level we certainly shouldn’t be paternal towards the public. For example the other day on TV I saw a discussion where intellectuals were saying that Pasolini makes films which are very difficult for the public. After that some Milan workers spoke, and their criticisms were much more perceptive than those of the official intellectuals. Even when they were saying things like: ‘I wasn’t too keen on Gerson’s performance, or Maria Callas’ voice, I liked the script’ … You see the people know how to speak. Take Jean-Marie’s films – The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1967) for example. This is a film which should have been shown in music colleges everywhere, on every possible TV programme. But it was blocked by this complex from the moment the critics saw it: ‘It’s difficult’. The distributors won’t touch the films which are most accessible to the public. You have to fight against this absolute dictatorship of the distributors …
Jancsó: It’s a dictatorship of petit cons, of the petit-bourgeoisie anywhere in the world. It’s a well-organised dictatorship … For fifty years now we should have been destroying, simply destroying … We’re never allowed to give the public something. Because it’s an individual, and at the same time an internal dictatorship. It’s not split up around the world.
Straub: There’s nothing more international than a pack of pimps. Yes, all it comes down to is that we’re asking for our films to have the same opportunities as the rest. Nothing more. If people were able to choose between a film by Rocha and one by somebody else, someone who came up through the industry, if they were really able to choose, so that Rocha’s film had the same publicity and was shown in accessible cinemas, who knows what would happen? We don’t know. Because it’s never been tried.
