Cinema for me is…
Germany – Niklas Pollmann from Europa Cinemas on Vimeo.
Niklas in 23 Frames
1. Describe yourself in ten words.
Cinephile, screenwriter, director, lyricist, alternative HipHop artist, contradictory ginger guy
2. Your best quality? Your worst habit?
Best quality: I have good ideas
Worst habit: I almost never finish them.
3. Your dream job?
I would like to be an auteur who writes at the same time theoretical and critical texts about cinema.
4. What do you like most about your country?
I love the language. I think the language is beautifully precise. Perfect for philosophy for instance.
5. Your favorite dish in your country?
Currywurst.
6. Which word or phrase in your native language do you like the most and what does it mean?
“Bruchlinienkrieg” means a war that spreads like fire originated from a conflict of two different parties which motivates other parties to participate because they share the same culture/values/political beliefs etc. as the conflicting parties do.
7. What European capital have you visited lately?
Vienna. I live there.
8. Other than your own, which European country would you love to live in?
I already do live in another country even if Austria is not that different from Germany. I love some aspects of other countries to live there. I love the British mentality and humour, Italian football, French cinephily etc. but I never visited any of these countries long enough to can honestly say to plan to live there for a longer period of time.
9. What does Europe mean to you? 3 values.
Modernity, diversity, unity
10. What film made you fall in love with cinema?
“Clockwork Orange” (Stanley Kubrick, 1971, GB) and “Head-On” (Fatih Akin, 2004, DE)
11. Your favorite film theatre? What do you like about it?
Lichthaus in Weimar, very sweet “Programmkino”, amazing special events and regularly silent movies with live music (!).
12. Who is your movie hero?
The both main characters Philipp and Erik of “Reprise” (Joachim Trier, 2006, NO)
13. Which movie director would you like to be?
Harmony Korine. He has this super nice mixture of being an auteur and being a cool post-pubescent dude.
14. Briefly describe your favorite scene.
Maybe it is the saluting scene from Oslo, August 31st (Joachim Trier, 2011, NO): The protagonist Anders is going to kill himself and in his last evening in a bar he encounters a guy who slept with the girl he loves and instead of arguing with him he wants to forgive him but the guy on the contrary insults and reproaches him. Whereas Anders does nothing else but making an ambiguous saluting gesture and leaves the bar. I suppose it’s the moment in the movie when the protagonist definitely decides to commit suicide but everything we can see is just this gesture. This is film history.
15. What are the 3 best European films you have seen in the last year?
Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu, 2016, RO)
Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016, DE)
Ilegitim (Adrian Sitaru, 2016, RO)
16. Which film character do you most identify with?
The protagonist of After The Storm (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2016, JP) makes me cry a lot because I really could identify with him.
17. Your favorite soundtrack or song?
From a movie: The Animals – House Of The Rising Sun (“Casino” among others)
Not from a movie: Duman – Sinana Sinana
18. If you had to live in a movie, which one would you like it to be?
Probably an early Godard movie. Cool hats, smart beautiful women and living Marxism.
19. Your life becomes a bio-pic. Who plays the role of you?
It’s more interesting to ask for the director: Joachim Trier
20. Which talent would you most like to have?
I would like to be more musically talented, singing and playing guitar for instance.
21. What is your most treasured possession?
Probably my huge digital movie collection but actually I don’t care that much about material property.
22. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Probably to enter a public filmschool because it is the only lifetime goal I already reached.
23. What is your motto?
Find what you love and make it pregnant.
