‘Reversal of Fortune’ Helmer Barbet Schroeder Gets Surprise Award in Locarno, Talks ‘Barfly’ Controversy: ‘They Wanted Him to Go to AA at the End’
variety.comJohn Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Surprise! Legendary director Barbet Schroeder, in Locarno to introduce his latest doc “Ricardo and Painting,” was greeted with a Special Tribute Award before the screening. “Is this for the film?” Shroeder, a modest man, asked on stage. “No,” said Locarno festival director Giona Nazzaro. “It’s for being Barbet Schroeder.” Despite focusing on harsher subjects in his previous documentaries, “General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait,” “Terror’s Advocate” or “The Venerable W.,” this time Schroeder decided to follow painter Ricardo Cavallo. “I have already done my ‘Trilogy of Evil.’ I could continue: the world is full of bad people.
But then there was this friend of mine, who I thought was such a good person,” he tells Variety. Cavallo, convinced that “true life exists in creation,” could teach anyone how to change their way of seeing, claims Schroeder, sacrificing everything for his art. “I am always interested in my characters, not in myself.
To me, they are everything. That’s why they are always leading the movie! With Idi Amin Dada, I told him: ‘You tell me what to film.’ I learnt that from Éric Rohmer.” In 1962, Schroeder co-founded production company Les Films du Losange with Rohmer following an explosive coup d’état. “Éric used to be the editor of [film journal] Cahiers du Cinéma.
Jacques Rivette needed to pay a legal fee for firing him. The amount was miserable but nobody had a cent, so they found some critics to help pay for it,” he recalls. “The day it happened, we found ourselves on the street.
Read more on variety.com