To be a director, it isn't enough to own a skills.
To be a director is to have sight.
The director is the one who sees.
The director sees images. He looks at «reality» with a special look. «Reality» for him is material,
the same as clay for a sculptor, as a word for a writer. The director must feel the «reality» of the pillows of his fingers. Then he can sculpt from this «reality» his movie. The school teaches this cinematic tactility. Teaches to distinguish between «living» reality and «inanimate». This is a special technique. You need to be able to recognize the «living» face. It is necessary to be able to differentiate «living» places (locations). If the action of the film takes place in an «inanimate» location, the fluid leaves the shot. It's true for light, color, sound, with all the components that are the material for the film too.
The film has one feature: it doesn't boil down to the idea, to the plot, to the image, to the heroes, or to special effects. Every «real» film is the creation or re-creation of «life». This «life» can't be pulled out of your head. This is the specificity of cinema. It must have a connection with reality. Cinema catches this very «life» in its immediacy. Therefore, the skill of the director is the skill to catch «life». It's not just about films that are called «realistic». It's not about realism, but in certainty. Even a fantastic image must be reliable. It is not created only by templates. We still need to catch his «being», and for this we need tools. Often images, with which the cinema deals (even when they are supposedly originally tailored) are false, because they aren't in contact with «reality».
The person who wants to make films today faces a special problem: between the images and figures that the cinema has accumulated over a hundred years of its existence, and the reality is a gap. On the one hand, there is an «artificial» language of cinema that follows classical laws and rules; on the other hand, there is «life», there is «live» speech (argo), there are «living» people. In order to make a film, you need to overcome this gap, you need to find ways by which «living» people will turn into images; you need to find that distance or the conventionality in which «live» speech can sound in the cinema, and on the one hand will not be artificial, on the other hand it will not simulate or imitating reality.
The school is exploring the techniques by which «reality» is caught. These techniques are more important than the «capital» skills. In fact, they are a trade, and there are no universal laws: where to put a camera, how to plant a mise-en-scene, how to play. The most important technique is the technique of fixing reality. And it is recorded with the help of the camera, mise-en-scene, with the help of acting.
Presented outside of contact with «reality» laws and rules create the illusion of mastering the profession and thereby throw us back. Because only technically skilled directors do not know the basic skill - the visual skill and, making movies only by the rules, make it «lifeless». Today we do not have tools that catch the radar «reality», because «reality» has changed, gone ahead and not caught by the old tools that created the classical school.
The School of the New Cinema explores reality, looks for «living» images in it, works with them, sharpens them. She doesn't copy existing classical images and figures, but having them in mind, subjecting them to analysis, create its own.
