That surprises me a bit, I don’t think I’ve talked using these terms. On the contrary, I pointed out that punk movement was forty years old this year! I usually get irritated by the way in which some films or theatre plays are described as punk on the pretext that they’re rude, filthy, or rough. The problem: punk is a vague concept. By the way, it is possible to integrate under this term groups as different as The Ramones, or Throbbing Gristle – not to mention punk sixties like the fabulous The Seeds or The 13th Floor Elevators.
On my side, I remember explaining the film project Docteur Chance to Joe Strummer as a “punk film from the Classical Age”! We must take into account that the 20th century is ‘the’ century of punk – and that its first inventors are Arthur Caravan and Jacques Vaché, who disappeared in 1919. From a certain point of view, it can also be argued that the 20th century began in 1905 with the First Italian Futurist Manifesto and the first Russian Revolution, and ended in 1972 with Metallic KO (live album by Iggy & The Stooges).

In cinema, just as elsewhere, I’ve advanced in hostile zone. Each of my films since L’Affaire des Divisions Morturi (1984) has earned me a desert crossing. However, I’ve often written a new script just after the release of a film. Le Tresor des Iles Chiennes was written at the end of 1986, but wasn’t totally produced until 1990, and went out in 1991. After the release of Docteur Chance in 1998, all the doors in France were closed – I only resurfaced with a silent short film shot in 16mm in 2006 made with ten thousand euros, on the initiative of Festival Temps d’Images Portugal, which was awarded with Jean Vigo Award before going to Cannes’ La Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in 2007. Suddenly, I obtained a waiver to re-apply to CNC with Dharma Guns, which I shot in 2009 – but was released in 2011!
Then it went relatively fast, I wrote the book Mercure Insolent in 2012, and the script of 9 Doigts in 2013, but it’s taken me more than three years to find minimum funds, always without the support of any French TV. 9 Doigts was shot in 2016 and selected in Locarno in 2017. And voilà: 1982-2017, five feature films, five short films; the time of a lifetime.

I’ve spent half of my life trying to make films. Moreover, these are modest budgets, unlike other filmmakers who have been stopped by huge financing. Basically, the budget of my last three feature films has been the same from 1997 to 2017: one million euros. I made them despite seeming impossible. Let’s make a dream: may my next film find fewer obstacles?

Exactly. On Terrorism and the State (1979) by Gianfranco Sanguinetti is a great book!

It’s like writing poems or writing a novel. Both can be passionate. Short films can anticipate new forms in total freedom. It’s experimental, in every sense of the word.

Arletty said: “Je suis comme je suis” (‘I am how I am”, in English). I do my best.

The period of silent movies is of an extreme richness – in twenty years, cinema invented almost all its possibilities. Dr. Mabuse der Spieler by Fritz Lang is from 1922. Then, everything is said by Gloria Swanson in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard: “Ah, those horrible dialogues, there’s no more art!” But in the ‘70s, sound technology allowed us to create silent, noisy, musical and talked movies, all at once. When the idea of doing films struck me, the ‘third age of cinema’ started: it was in 1978 with David Lynch’s Eraserhead or Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola. But on the other hand, I also love La Maman et la Putain (1973) by Jean Eustache.

Either they don’t understand anything about my films, or the freedom that I try to exercise – which is high-priced –; it irritates them to the highest degree. Napoleon said regarding ‘Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité’, that everyone wanted fraternity and especially equality, but that nobody was interested in liberty (laughs).

I started by writing, then music – and after that, cinema. And the three remained indissolubly linked: not being able to enter by the door, I entered by the window.

That’s for you to say…

My project: live! And after that, die.