Camera Lucida: Is Hollywood or any other massive film industry unbeatable forever?

Jean-Marc Barr: Hollywood is very powerful, but it’s a bit like The Wizzard of Oz, a man behind it, making illusions with light and shadows and unfortunately it’s working, because we have treated people in America with so much disrespect and treated them like children, so it’s going to work for them. If people would wake up from the illusion, maybe cinema would help… It’s been a great propaganda tool since its beginning, so whenever I see a poster of a gun pointed at me, I see Stalin, I don’t even look at it. Same thing when I look at Chloé or Givenchy add, I am deprogramming myself to at least keep my head clear.

Camera Lucida: That’s’ what I am trying to do too.

Jean-Marc Barr: There are certain people who are not as privileged as us, because, you know, they haven’t had a chance…

It’s going to be a tough period, because fear has been stocked up all around the world, and the media use that fear as something to sell, as long as people are scared they’ll watch that image to satisfy themselves  We are going to go through a terrible period, of auto-flagellation, we are going to be destroying ourselves. It’s the end of nations, beginning of corporate fiefdoms, people who will be for and against it and who has a bigger gun.

Camera Lucida: Yes, only the powerful and the rich will survive… then, there is populism

Jean-Marc Barr: They are pissed off, ignored and angry. Fed on Ironman, Superman… the only way for them to deal with a problem is violence. They are armed and … wars will be very bloody. They are going to have to control the internet probably, that’s where the internet is maybe going to diffuse their power, people are blocking the highways, but it’s not going to last much longer.

Camera Lucida: On a potentially brighter side, what is the place/role of film festivals? Are they the most significant place for the screening & promotion of independent/art films?

Jean-Marc Barr: They are the only place. For us they are vital, it’s the only time we see an audience looking at our stuff, so… the problem is when everyone was watching the same things in 60’s and 70’s and maybe in 80’s, there were three or four channels, now everybody is at their homes and there are no longer only four…So for people who love cinema, they’ll be able to catch films at festivals… Also the internet provides a way of finding films and actually watching them. For me, festivals are the only times I get to see my films.

The renaissance was created because some Irish monks in Ireland were the only people to have copied the classics over the whole period of the Middle Ages, when all the classics were destroyed by the church, so sometimes you have to see your role as an artist as someone who preserves at least an idea of that. In any case, what’s been happening in my career has been a desire for that.

Camera Lucida: And the awards? How important are they for filmmakers, actors…?

Jean-Marc Barr: No. I think that actors (maybe directors are something else) a 150 years ago were the same social circle or level as whores and that’s what made them interesting (laughs).

When I see all these awards, I get scared. Nurses and doctors should maybe get awards, they sacrifice themselves, but the ego factor or problem is terrible… To go to this shit (awards) is humiliating. I can’t go to awards, because I don’t think what we do is that serious.

In the context of festivals, yes, they mean something, because there is a democratic process going on. I am always for that, it’s on a human level. Actors are treated as presidents of countries; it’s not good for people’s heads… When you go to the Oscars and the Golden Globes and all that crap, I find it embarrassing.

Camera Lucida: The last ceremony was embarrassing in many ways…

Jean-Marc Barr: The work is not that great and it’s so kind a lobbied and it’s just a show and it’s a show that’s not that popular anymore.

Camera Lucida: I know you get this question too often, but it may be worth repeating - how was it to work with Lars von Trier?

Jean-Marc Barr: I’ve been really lucky, because I got the taste of a bit of humanity that was still possible in the 90’s when you were making movies. When I met Lars, it was very pleasant and crazy, we had complete trust in each other when we did Europa. When he asked me to do Breaking the waves, he was changing his life, he didn’t have many friends I guess, because he asked me to be the godfather to his boys who’d just been born.

And I was working for nothing, there was some psychological game that we played sometime with each other, as friends do.

It’s partly to continue some kind of film resistance, to continue making films, in a way what he got form Godard, or from Fassbinder, Dryer, put it together and make something even more innovative – this makes him the genius of our times.

Also, I don’t spend much time with him, but when we are together, it’s a very human time. I mean, during Nymphomaniac, I had to do a scene where I was tied to a chair, had my trousers down and I was supposed to get an erection, you know… right close up… I just couldn’t do it, he’d come up and play with my penis and nothing would happen for 2 hours and I was like “Lars, sorry, I just can’t do it with my arms tied up like this”. So we had lovely moments together, people were not at all disturbed by what was going on. I did another film with him, he called me up and said “I want you to play in my next film, it’s in Danish, but you don’t understand Danish, so when you speak it you don’t really know what you are saying”. I said “OK, then don’t send me the script”. So the day we were having a shoot, I would learn phonetically what I had to say. And it was the first film I didn’t know what it was about, what was going on in the scene, what people were saying to me, and when I was talking to them I didn’t know  what I was saying myself.

Subversive attitude especially in this capitalist authoritarian world we live in is what I look for.

Camera Lucida: I also read  (in your Camera Lucida interview) that your first great film influence as a teenager, was, similarly to me, Jean-Luc Godard. Do you remember that teenage feeling - the exaltation, the excitement…?

Jean-Marc Barr: It was UCLA, 1978, my father was in US military, very catholic upbringing, the movies I’d been watching were important, but… I mistakenly went to the wrong building, I went to the cinema building and opened the door and Alphaville was starting. And I was intrigued because I understand French a little bit so I went in and sat down – there was such a subversive quality that I had not seen in anything in my life before. And that caught me. I’d just seen Star wars, I couldn’t understand the excitement around it, but Alphaville excited me. That’s when I decided to come to France, I was studying philosophy, but mostly cinema and then I realised I wouldn’t be able to get into the French system, cause my level was quite low and that’s when I decided to become an actor.

Camera Lucida: So, it was indirectly thanks to Godard that you came to France?

Jean-Marc Barr: Yes. And to escape Reagan.

Camera Lucida: You are also known as a director and producer. Dogma style influenced you greatly and you incorporated it in your directing, especially in first films. Do you feel at ease both in front and behind the camera, or is there something you prefer?

Jean-Marc Barr: I haven’t had much experience – 6 films that I co-directed and coproduced

It’s the responsibility you don’t wish on your worst enemy. It’s tough. When you are an actor, all you gotta do is say your lines in front of the camera, the time is becoming a real pleasure, because I can stir a little magic now after 75 films.  So I have a real pleasure as an actor because I don’t have responsibility. Being behind the camera and holding the camera is a real joy, but as a director and producer at the same time, it’s sometimes hard not to make it shake.