In today's world, mankind is in great spiritual dilusion. Therefore, I think that art today needs to remind people even more about these values that we forget. Unfortunately, in today's world, both art and philosophy are not highly ranked in people's current life.

The interview was made during Cinedays Festival in Skopje, where Semih Kaplanoglu was the jury president

Camera Lucida:Most of the questions for this interview are a modification of the review I published in 2010 for your trilogy consisting of the films “Egg”, “Milk” and “Honey”. In the trilogy, not many words are used. After the premiere in Berlin, a friend said that it’s like in the film "Honey" nothing happens, and in fact, each frame is more than complete. Why such wonderful minimalism?

Semih Kaplanoglu: This could be explained in the following way: when I prepare a script, or when I write, or whatever I do, I always keep an eye on cutting things down, eliminating them. For me, it is most important to capture the essence, so I try to eliminate all other elements that cover it in some way, whether it's words, music or visual elements. At the same time, before I even started filming, I was dedicated to poetry, and it is poetry that trained me. As you know, in poetry with a few words, many things are expressed, it is such a discipline, and therefore I think that it has its influenced my manner of perception, how I act. Also, our architecture can be taken as an example, where with few elements a great visual effect is reached. And those things also have their influence.

 Camera Lucida:In the movies you do not use music, so we can hear the sounds of the nature or the city, whereby in an intelligent and highly effective way the rurality or urbanity of the things you want to show is emphasized. Again, why such minimalism, i.e. in this case the absence of music?

Semih Kaplanoglu: It is a fact that nowadays music is inevitable part of cinema. In my opinion, music in films is used to complement the void. For example, if the actor can not play the role appropriately, or if the dramaticity of the story can not be fully transmitted, or the feelings can not be exprressed, then it is supplemented with the music.

But I think that music is not an inevitable part of the film. We have music offered to us by the nature and the universe, there is a beautiful and greatly combined music in our daily life, which is a blessing for us people, and for me that music is more important, and that is what I want to show people and it is my opinion that it should be the real music in the movies.

Camera Lucida: In the last scene in "Milk" for a few minutes you only show the main character smoking a cigarette, and then magnificently end up with only displaying the blinding light from the miners’battery lamp that we see for an incredible seventy-two seconds, which functions as an extraordinarily original and effective metaphorical end of a masterpiece. Many authors (just to mention one, Jim Jarmusch, in "Broken flowers") use scenes in which "nothing happens" to show strong action and emotion. Comment on the artistic position of the last scene in "Milk"?

Semih Kaplanoglu: Another end was planed, another scene in the film, however, when we went to the mine, I noticed that the light from the miners’battery lamp in the dark has a very powerful influence, and in a very powerful way conveys emotion. When that light turned to us, at that moment I thought that the light would give us the sense of darkness, the cold in the underworld, of how it feels to be underground. And this white light, in fact, in one way, turned the screen into a milk screen, which corresponds to the title of the film. And, as you know, at the beginning of the film there is a snake that comes out of the mouth, so, in my opinion, there is also a connection between these two scenes, that is, between light and the snake. It is the same as the light emanating from a young poet. This is how I can answer to your questions, however of course, these scenes are open for commenting.

Camera Lucida: You often use a static camera. For example, in "Egg", in the last scene, the camera is static for more than three minutes. Why?

Semih Kaplanoglu:This is because, in my opinion, the real time should be adjusted with the cinematographic time. I want the feeling of real time to be transmitted in the film, because in our everyday life we feel very little real time. 

In that scene, for the poet Yusuf life begins again. A new life, with a new meaning begins. I wanted the viewers to feel that life that follows. And with the sound of the radio, the sound of the rain and the sound of the boiling water in the teapot, life returned back to its normal course. Because the house, the common memory of all humanity, represents certain values, as is the moment of boiling water in the kettle, the moment in which we feel life, also the character, at that moment when he is at home and hears those sounds, he again returns, restores his normal life. As a director I pay attention to remembrance, reminders and human memory. And it is precisely the reason why certain moments or frames are very long.

Camera Lucida: In "Egg", when the main actors return from visiting the old women in the mountain, the weather is cloudy, misty, while during the visit it is sunny. More about using weather to complete the emotion in the movies?

Semih Kaplanoglu: None of the scenes I record are recorded according to the current conditions on the day we shoot. In my scenarios, I predict whether the weather will be cloudy or rainy or sunny. And that must be the moment for those scenes to be recorded. For example, we shot the first scene of the film "Egg" seven or eight times, in various weather conditions, because the weather was supposed to be both foggy and a little sunny. Because everything we see in a film, even the leaf on a tree, transfers some feeling. And, if this feeling touches us, then the film begins to function. Every glimpse, everything we see, does not have to be in a film, but in our daily life, it actually causes us feelings. I am trying to combine the feelings of the story I'm writing with the nature, the weather conditions when shooting these scenes. And, in this regard, Allah also helps me. For example, there is one scene in the movie "Egg", which was scheduled to be shot in snow conditions. However, it was October when we recorded it. We climbed to the mountain in the evening, and we waited to shot that scene the next day, when the snow began to fall in the morning. We all couldn't beleive this, but sometimes this happens.

In my first film, we also had a very interesting experience that I would like to share with you. When I was planning, that one scene when the main character returnes to his house after 50 years comes, it's night, raining, and there is white dog from the street, who will meet him as if he knows him, and together they go to the house. Our team tried to find  a white dog, but without any success. We found a black dog, on that same place, but it also run away, and we thought we will shoot that scene without a dog.  But at the moment when the main character was heading home, suddenly a white dog came out who literally seemed to recognize the actor and they started walking towards the house together. We shot the scene and immediately the dog was gone. We searched for it, but we could not find it. And now the dog is in the film. These are actions that happen without our intervention.

Camera Lucida: It is amazing how much in detail you capture the life of the common man in Turkey. You even care about displaying small details, such as the bread that is stored in many families in a nylon bag hanging on the towel hanger. Such small, undistinguishedmoments mark the multi-layeredness of your works. Comment on the multi-layerednes of your films, the moments when many other things, besides the actors, have meaning.

Semih Kaplanoglu: I have long visits to the places where I plan to film. I visit the houses where we plan to shoot, meet the people, take photos, and try to understand their stories. I observe all those locations and then try to convert the entire accumulation of information and emotions into a story, or a work with objects that will convey the essence of all those places and all those stories.

Then I transfer all these thoughts, share them with our artistic director, and together again we visit the same places. All the houses where scenes were shot in all these three films were empty houses. We created all of them from scratch, we brought them to that position as you see them in the film. And we perceive them as a whole, we value all items, accessories, costumes, in all three films.The careful eye can notice that the same objects are in a different way placed in the houses in the three films. Since we first write the scripts and then film the movies, that world we have compiled has been greatly analyzed before. On this occasion, I would like to thank the art director Naz Erayda, who has a huge share in the creation of this world that you see. And, starting from the colors in the film, designing, modeling the costumes in the film, we worked together the whole time.