Podcasts

A Conversation with Gérard Rudolf: Episode 1

Welcome to Talking Movies, I’m Spling…

We begin a conversation with actor, writer, director, photographer and poet, Gérard Rudolf, who has been working and creating for three decades now…

Lovely to see you again.

As always, thank you.

So, you know, we’ve obviously been friends for a while now and you so graciously gave me a photo for the cover of ‘The Essence of Dreams’. I actually wanted to find out from you, is that the Huguenot Tunnel? And is there a bit more of a story to that image?

Yeah, that is the Huguenot Tunnel. I am a prolific photographer because I always have a cell phone with me. So I am constantly taking photographs.

I think I’ve got currently over 10,000 shots on my phone of varying degrees of quality. But that shot particularly was a road trip that I took with my partner a few years ago. And I’m always looking out for the cinematic in my photography.

I’ve taken various photographs of the tunnel, but that one just seemed to work with the lines and everything. And that’s why I proposed that you actually use it because it’s such a cinematic reference and it echoes through cinema, that kind of shot.

It actually reminds me so much of Lost Highway and David Lynch. There’s a shot that he uses in that film that has got such a similar feel to it. And I thought that’s why it made such a great marriage to the book because David Lynch’s films are all about dreams and the essence of dreams and all that sort of thing.

I think the symbolism of a shot like that is a portal actually.

It’s got such a surreal feel. It’s otherworldly. It sort of bends those lines with the light that it kind of makes you look at it again differently. And I think that’s what Lynch does with his films as well. He takes the ordinary and exploits it to the point of alienating it and making you kind of see this thing in such a new, different light.

But you’re a man of many talents. I already mentioned quite a few of those things you do poetry, photography, you’re an actor, a director, a writer. You kind of seems to me as though you’re trying to live the artist’s life in many ways, which I really admire and respect. I try to sort of reach for as well in my life. In all of those pursuits, is there a favourite?

Photography and poetry. If I can do those two things, I can’t separate photography from poetry. I think I take photographs so I don’t have to write poetry because writing poetry is a lot of hard work.

So my photographs, I try to make as poetic as possible. So they’re short poems, they’re visual poems. I always refer to them as poems that I haven’t written yet, that I do on the hop, that I just record poems all around me. I’m in love with the world, you see. I’m in love with the beauty of the world. Always have been.

I’m a dreamer. So it’s very hard… even in hardcore images, because I take some hardcore images of street people and so on from time to time. I frame it in such a way that I don’t actually impinge on their privacy as beings who are sharing this dream with us, you know, because I truly believe that life is a dream. And my photography and also my poetry. My poetry is cinematic and my photography is poetic. So I can’t separate the two, but those are my two big passions, yes.

Actually, on the note of being respectful of people’s privacy and that idea of photos sort of stealing a bit of your soul, which is something that is almost globally accepted with some of the cultures that see this photographic thing come into their space and realise that there’s some kind of there’s some kind of value to having your photo taken.

…it’s a huge debate in street photography around the world and has been forever since the very first street photography. So where do you draw the line between privacy and public or the private part of existence and the public part of it? And it’s a fine line, but I’m gonna be a bit of a cowboy. I don’t really care about those lines. What I do care about is the composition, the story that I get in that square frame.

Because I try to photograph my stuff in squares, harking back to like 16mmm film and all that kind of stuff, anyway. So I try to just tell stories and I let people make up their own stories. I think the most incredible invention in humankind’s history is the camera. It’s a time machine. You can see what the world looked like 150 years ago. And I think that is exceptionally powerful and moving. And it’s the same with old films as well. Charlie Chaplin going back to the very first moving images.

It’s a time capsule.

It is a time capsule. You can actually see what the world looked like at a particular time. And what makes it exceptionally moving to me is when I see photographs that is more than a century old, I look at the people and especially the children. And I think that person, that little girl, boy, grew up, had a life and is no longer around. They’re gone. That frame is basically empty.

Those lives of all departed this world. But there they are, alive and full of life and living their lives and being happy or being sad or posing for the camera and being aware of what’s going on around them. And I find that incredibly moving always, especially in old photographs… are the people.

Thanks for listening. This interview is kindly brought to you courtesy of Brightburn Studios. For movie reviews, podcasts and interviews visit splingmovies.com and remember… Don’t wing it, SPL!NG it.