#3 * Neda speaks of Miss Stone as Miss Rock. That metonymical replacement of the sign-significators is very often in oral folklore tradition, used by the futurists also, and it recalls the children’s game of ‘broken telephone’. Did you really encounter that name in your research for this film?
MM: No, I didn’t. The name of Miss Rock is used as for the associations as you did mention, because I didn’t want to mention real people and events, although I had to do that here and there. But generally speaking, I avoid speaking of the things I haven’t actually seen. I don’t think I have a moral right to do that.
* We already mentioned the term ‘audacious’ – in the positive sense of the word. Especially interesting impression gives the narrator’s position in the film. Mikhail Bahtin would say that you do dethrone the narrator’s position. In the oral transfer of certain story, in the old times, its position is the position of the non-mistakable authority. The distance among the recipient and the narrator isn’t that large, but the limit is clear. Exactly in that segment in your film – the scene of the negotiation about the number of the Turkish soldiers is the perfect example of the audacious and impudent listener, who, although he listens the story for the first time, he intervenes in it. It speaks of one other thing: the relativity of every data we get from the past through some medium. Can that intervention, not by the real witness, but by the author, which transfers the information, can become hat big that what we get today as an absolute fact of truth, actually can be a pure fiction? Isn’t that a reason to question the view on the history study-books as a fiction, as novels and such? Are such forgeries real in this global village of ours?
#4 MM: It’s more than obvious and probably it was always like that. Today it’s more a question of an intentional manipulation from the political, psychological or of plain and simple selfish reasons. I want to introduce you in to the reality and history as I see it myself. Fake informations are made independently of that how reachable are they, anyway. The accessibility to the facts only does the lie more obvious – but only for those who really search for the truth. The next question is how much one truth can be objective, because we can approach very objectively to the history material, but we can see it and comprehend it differently, and so we can transfer it differently. And if we still stand on the belief that the objective truth exists, the fact is that it’s, most often, manipulated by the narrator and his intentions… So, the main goal, the main intention of this film is to say exactly this, but in an euphoric, pleasant, impudent way. Don’t trust me, and by inertia, don’t believe the films and the film narrators in general. Enjoy them freely, but with the safe distance. So, don’t trust to the “Assassins From Salonika”, or the films with John Wayne, nor CNN. Look for your own truth. Whenever you can, you go at the sight to be sure of the information, or consult whatever more information sources that you can. And if I go back to the previous question, the third reason they “hate” “Dust” is maybe exactly that: “Dust” breaks the very structure by which they work for the last 30 or 50 years.
* Once you mentioned that “Dust” is a cubist film. In some parts you can sense he influence from the so-called Russian Formalism, who itself is an air of the cube-futurism. Eisenstain is under great influence of that formalism. For “Dust” is the word that is over-blooded film. Viktor Shklovski, one of the most significant theoreticians of the formalism, said: “in the at, the blood isn’t bloody… It’s a material of the artistic construction”.
MM: I agree. Absolutely. Hitchkok said that more plainly when Ingrid Bergman cried during filming some scary scene. He approached to her and said: “Hey, this is only a film!” (he laughs).
* About the two scenes with the hero from the comics – Corto Maltese. I’ll mention the formalists again, Danil Harms this time, and his famous story of the redhead man. As an author, he first introduces a character and he quite openly says that is redheaded: “a redheaded man”. Right after that, he denies all of those attributes and simply chases his main character out of the narration, placing himself in the situation to find himself without a hero. This, certainly, is an auto-referent procedure in art. Did Maltese have this reason to show up, in order to build a play upon the function and position of the film characters in the narrative film structure?
MM: You know, that aren’t some rational decisions of mine, but more like intuitive ones. I first make a structure with completely fictional. Afterwards, I do my research and I see what can be done based on the similarities with the optionally real/historic personalities. Even then, I anecdotally imprint the real characters. They have the role as J.F.K. in some of the Robert Rauschenberg’s paintings does. He’s there, but the painting isn’t there because of him. That’s he case with Freud in “Dust”. Next step was: if in that time & space, a fictional character, like my Luke, walked around, as well as those real characters at that same time & space – Freud or Picasso, why shouldn’t be there another, also fictional character as Corto, although he’s made up by another author. I only don’t mention his name. He’s recognized only by those who know Corto. In that period, Maltese travels at the places were the “heat is on”, so it’s most probable that, although fictional, at that time he went to Macedonia (he laughs).