OCCURRENCES OF QUESTIONABLE SIGNIFICANCE won Best Experimental award in our LCF’s First Edition.
Interview with director Dave Lojek.
How did you come to write and make this film? (by the way, the title is great; was it there from the beginning?)
As a “kinoïte” I attend international filmmaking workshops on a regular basis. They are called KinoKabarets and assemble cast and crews with simple premises: Making films together without competition, time, preparation, ego, or money, but with collaboration, artistic freedom, immediacy, and available equipment, spaces, props, costumes. Several film crews form on the spot, scurry away to their haphazard film sets, produce in a frenzy, skip sleep, and celebrate their world premieres 3 days later in sold out cinemas. Then they do it again with new ideas and crews.
As I have explained in the making of video for OCCURRENCES, I wrote some ideas into a notebook while traveling in a slow train to Lublin in 2019. I had ingested too many meaningless and confusing but well-produced experimental student animation films at unreachable prestige festivals. So, I needed to get my frustration out of my system by sublimating those codes into a parody, that pretends to be art. Somehow the banana, a cheap prop, seeped into this idea. Maybe there are so many fruits and vegetables in my film, because I had just seen GAME CHANGERS and become a vegetarian.
Originally, I planned 9 scenes. We had to drop the scary one in the shadowy basement, as time ran out. But my composer Mirko created the music for that scene, so you hear it in the credit roll. I waste nothing. The working title was ABSURD BANANAS. But I preferred the pretentious air of the current title, after I had edited it. Stick it to the man. (The man being the aloof art film bubble.)
Coincidence had it, that there are now eight scenes, an octagon. All locations begin with the letter B in German (Büro, Bibliothek, Bank, Bistro, Bad, Bananengeschäft, Bett, Bühne). If you put 2 Bs back to back, you get a crossed 8. Now turn it 90° and see the symbol for infinity ∞ with a strikethrough. Layers of meaning reveal themselves here.
The very nice film festival in that Polish town Lublin also hosted KinoKabarets called Kino Jady (Kino Eaters) from 2015 - 2019, all of which I visited to create and watch movies. After being called “Golden Anteaters Film Festival” for many years, the managers renamed it to “Lublin Film Festival” in 2017. That’s why you see their new logo in the film. Fond memories and quite a few very popular short films that I made in Lublin come to mind.
About your crew: Had you already worked with some of these people? And how did you meet the new recruits?
Returning to Lublin, I was fortunate to convince my local production manager Karolina and my Italian cinematographer Marco to attempt this experiment with me. We had previously worked on some projects and found an efficient vibe and telepathy for communication. The prior films toured many dozen festivals and won a lot of awards, proving my ability to get the movies seen abroad in cinemas. All this clout means almost nothing to my crews. They pick their projects by whim or loyalty, not by fame of the director.
One day before traveling to Lublin, I documented a panel event in Berlin for a friend and had a great assistant on that shoot. In the rush of the moment I invited Lukas to join me in Poland and he came along.
Talents from the festival team joined me as well, so I had the chance to get the process documented by Olivia and cast an actor for the stag character Nestor (Andrzej Mamiński). I dropped a call for cast in some Facebook groups for Lublin, and Magda Małek appeared as the bunny Barbara. For the smearing scene we agreed that both characters would be allowed to retain their underwear. So, the “nudity” of European arthouse cinema is nicely pretended but unreal. Bartłomiej Lis came on as production assistant, set designer and the Waiter-Horse-Fly cameo for the bistro sequence, who also smells the horses in the final scene.
How were the masks and the characters created?
The masks had several origins. The elaborate ones (fox, bunny, stag) came from the Opera House – Spotkania Kultury, where they had been used in the children’s theater “Hans Christian Anderson”. A worker in the Opera house was a contact we got through the actress Gabriela, who starred in my film PURE SWEETNESS from 2015. The Little Croco Festival also picked that one. Anyway, the man in the opera cut down the masks from their exhibition wires and we returned them after the production. Barbara reminded me of the horror-bunny in DONNIE DARKO.
The fly-waiter mask came from the house we worked in but I lost it after the premiere. Somebody borrowed and forgot to return it. The rubber horses’ heads appeared somehow as well. In my screenplay, I had only planned those horses, as they are easy to come by. All the others masks were lucky finds. The horses refer to the Austrian filmmaker Alexander Peskador (a veritable high-roller) who used to wear a horse mask when presenting his films in festivals, like Carnival of the Waiters.
Forming the behavior of the characters I opted for contrast. Chattering Fiona suffers from a smartphone addiction not unlike the youth of today, Barbara loves books, Nestor mumbles as inane sugar daddy.
When & where was OCCURRENCES OF QUESTIONABLE SIGNIFICANCE shot, and how much time in total did you have to shoot?
This film was made at the KinoKabaret “Lublin Media” (formerly known as KinoEaters) in November and December 2019. I believe I had 6 days from pitch to premiere. A real luxury. Two days for preparation, two for filming, two for editing and sound effect mix. Maybe I misremember. The past blurs a bit.
This film workshop was encased in the Lublin Film Festival and we had free hostel rooms in the building. Once I pitched my ideas with the working title ABSURD BANANAS to the talents in the room, I received the suggestion to teleport the scenes from real locations to a rehearsal stage. This baffled me but simplified logistics massively for my production manager.
We were so lucky to find a stage available in this building (Centrum Kultury w Lublinie, a former cloister remodeled into a modern culture house with European funding) for 2 days.
So, I grabbed cast and crew and we began to seek the masks, props, furniture. I typed, printed and translated the script. Then we filmed it and improvised the sets.
At the Little Croco Festival, we’re fond of anecdotes. What was the shoot’s most difficult scene? And on the contrary, was there a magical moment, a sequence or a shot that everyone loved to do?
You might not have guessed, but the park bench was really heavy. Several strong men had to lift it from the park in front of the house, haul it up to the stage and later return it intact. We “borrowed” it, in the typical micro-cinema and guerilla film manner. Too quick to be noticed.
Center stage as Fiona the office vixen we positioned Mascha Kirillova, who at the time called herself “Masha Mister Cat” for some reason. She also came from Berlin but was born in Moscow. She makes many experimental art films of a different caliber and fell asleep in-between scenes, as she had waited for her cues in another film all night. Since all actors wore masks, that made no difference.
The fun episode is documented in the making-of-video: We improvised a bathtub with a turned over table and hid Fiona behind it. She uses shaving foam as soap to pretend to be in water, which I added as sound effect. The other anecdote would be that we ate many of the fruit and vegetable props as catering. Waste nothing, if you can avoid it.
Since almost everyone sits in the last scene, this might have been fun. We were so tired, that I forgot which scene was loved by the crew.
Do talk about this film’s postproduction!
In the usual manner, I asked the cinematographer to record a format that I can edit and grade on my heavy Windows laptop with my old software. Marco recorded ProRes on his little Black Magic Toaster camera. I quickly assembled the shots. We did not film anything superfluous and often only one or two takes. I prefer more angles as editor, so Marco and Lukas lit these angle shots with the available theater lights for me.
While I formed the scenes of the edit, Karolina skimmed through my vast sound effect collection under my headphones and found nice noises for me. Meanwhile, composer Mirko in Berlin looked at the script and pre-composed music cues as he saw fit. I might have then adjusted the scenes to fit the music, which less experienced filmmakers might frown upon. Mirko sent me the music via file transfer.
In the cinema we presented a rough version, which I polished that winter at home. Mateusz Powszedniak even simulated an “animated” version for me, that took a few weeks to imitate the style of A SCANNER DARKLY. It looks less convincing to animation film festival programmers, so that one was not seen often.
I released OCCURRENCES into the festival circuit in two versions (live action and pseudo-animation) in 2020 right into the swelling pandemic, which forced everyone to wear masks and festivalists to either migrate their events online or postpone them. Just my luck!
Where can we watch it? (And if it’s not available yet: do you know how it might be soon?)
OCCURRENCES is available in several places: https://vimeo.com/449687644
https://sofy.tv/viewer/film/occurrences-of-questionable-significance (for many other devices)
About yourself: What got you into filmmaking? Your studies...?
My concise biography tells you some facts about my artistic evolution. You can read it here: https://apeiron-films.de/SHORT-Biography_DAVE_LOJEK.pdf
We know you’ve made lots of films (a few of them were included in our Edition 1). Is there one you particularly want to share here?
Reading your reviews and learning which of my films you preferred, or rejected, I begin to imagine your taste. Would your target audience have similar preferences?
All my new releases are still protected, should any festival want them hidden from public views.
I think this purgatory from Lublin almost made it into your program, so I pick I CAME FROM THE FUTURE
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