Ira Sachs: “what I like most in the film is the intimacy and a good story” – Diário de Notícias – Lisbon

“little men”, american Ira Sachs, premiered this Thursday in the halls of national and the director talked with the DN

New York is your test tube. Within it, the human relationships chemically react, and can lead to the beauty or the decay. Ira Sachs signs a little men, a melodrama that tells a charming friendship between two teenagers, from different social strata, exposed to conflict between the parent and the other parent. At the heart of the disagreement is an increase in income. Who is right? It does not matter. The feelings the most beautiful are above everything.

Ira Sachs

| Jeong Park

This little men, as in his previous films, including Love Is A Strange Thing (2014), there is a look based on intimacy. Is your way of conceiving the experience of the cinema?

what I like most in the film is the intimacy and a good story, so I try to tell this story by creating a link between the viewer and the actors/characters/people in the film. And there are many ways of telling a story. In general, I trust the instinct, which is more perceptible in literature than in film, that patient revelation that we find in the best books. The same applies to the actors: do not test anything with them before you start shooting. I think that is the key to your interpretations, because there are certain times that you can not repeat, and the viewer is invited to commune of these unique moments.

Theo Taplitz and Michael Barbieri, the actors starring in the film, have a friendship that we could say romantic, inside of a portrait of adolescence. There are memories of when I was a teenager?

Theo and Michael have a great emotional intelligence, are actors of instinct and a tremendous ability to read the expression of each other. And this is only his first movie! I wanted to shoot them from a point of view not sexual, because the memories that I have of that age are not sexual, they are just that: romantic, joyful, and easy.

There is a complicated situation between the parents of Jake (Taplitz) and the mother of Tony (Barbieri), because of an increase in income. But it is not in black and white that someone has the reason above the others. For you, it is important not to take advantage of?

part of the depth of the issues that the film raises, and which gives no response. For me, it is very interesting to try to understand the behavior of people without the judge. This provides us with learning. I give an example: the other day I was in a restaurant, and the daughter of Donald Trump sat down on the side table. At the time I felt, simultaneously, anger, and empathy, because she is a human being. As a storyteller, and leaving aside my political activism, I must try and understand his behavior.

New York city is the setting of social and economic, and the characters are always dependent on your dynamic. But the camera is particularly fond of picking up the characters themselves…

New York is the city where I live and, by this, that I know better. But I am convinced that what happens in one corner of New York city is likely to happen in a corner of Lisbon, in the sense that everything reveals itself in small spaces. All the complexity of a culture can be witnessed in an individual life. After, I put always the characters in three types of situations: group, couple, and alone. Each one of them opens a window for us to realize who this person is. In part, what we learn has a lot to do with this tension between the public and private sectors.

in Addition to this the idea going to the gathering of the phrase of Jean Renoir’s “everyone has their reasons”, I have come to believe that Ozu is also one of their influences.

Absolutely. When I started working with the coargumentista Mauricio Zacharias, we were lucky to catch a festival dedicated to Ozu, which took place in New York city. There I saw maybe ten or 12 of his films, and I think that I am still in an intimate conversation with what the film gave me. Moreover, little men even be inspired by two films of Ozu: I was Born, but… [1932] and Good Day [1959]. Both speak of children who are on strike against their parents, such as Jake and Tony make a vow of silence against the anger of the parents.

he Works mostly in independent productions. But if you grab a project from the industry, able to hold the line on staff?

No one exists as an artist outside the commercial circuit. It is a constant struggle. I’m currently working on a television series, and what I try to understand is that the voice I am able to use in each environment. It is natural that each type of production, that is, the level of capitalism affects the work… we Have the example of John Cassavettes, who tried twice to make movies within the system, and realized that it was not for him.