Cinema for me is…
Adam in 11 frames
1. What film made you fall in love with cinema?
It may have started with Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies. I love how you can see Raimi’s crazy personality and camera work being applied to such a mainstream story.
2. What are the 3 best European films you have seen in the last year?
–Murinaby Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović (HR, 2021). I love the atmosphere of the movie and the beautiful Croatian environment, which gives the film a feeling of a modern fairy tale.
–The Worst Person in the Worldby Joachim Trier (NO, 2021). I think a lot of people are afraid of making a movie that feels current because it’s easy to burn yourself when you try to chase a zeitgeist, especially now, when everything changes so quickly. Trier, however, managed to make a movie that speaks to a modern audience perfectly.
–Night Riders by Martin Hollý. This Czechoslovak movie from 1981 has a surprising amount of similarities with Michael Mann’s Heat, one of my favorite movies, which is also about a standoff between a policeman and a big time robber.
3. What does Europe mean to you?
It’s truly amazing how many different cultures and languages are placed so close to each other and how easy it is to find a common ground between us.
4. In 2024, I think it is important to vote in the European elections because:
A lot of politicians nowadays throw around unnecessary issues for political gain. The only way to stop it is to vote those politicians out and show them what the real issues of the ordinary people are.
5. What do you like the most about your country that makes it unique?
I love the beautiful nature and the feeling that the most ordinary looking people could be very interesting. There are many towns in Slovakia that can make you feel like you are walking around David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.
6. Your favorite film theatre? What do you like about it?
I am fortunate enough to study in Barcelona, where I often visit a film theatre called Phenomena. They have a very colorful selection. You can see both fantastic movies with great artistic value and obscure but incredibly entertaining B movies, often screened on 35mm.
7. What is your dream job in the film industry?
It’s not an original answer but I am obsessed with the idea of being a Writer/Director.
8. Which film director would you like to be?
I find myself to be endlessly fascinated by Werner Herzog (Aguirre, Wrath of god, Fitzcarraldo, …) He is a very literal man (he’s German, after all) and yet he allows himself to be very poetic, especially when it comes to his documentaries. When you watch interviews with him, he comes off as a bizarre fictional character – the time he talks about how long it took him to realize that John Waters is gay or when he got shot by an airsoft gun in the middle of an interview. On the other hand, he is also in The Mandalorian, one of the most mainstream shows of our time. It just seems like the wind carries him into obscure adventures.
9. Which film character do you most identify with?
There’s something both beautiful and painful about the character of Rick Daltonin Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, US, 2019). I love how you see him at his absolute lowest, trashing his room and hating himself but then you also see him cry tears of joy when he’s fantastic on set. I think that these are the two extremes a lot of artists go through when working on something, the sense that you are making something great one day and something horrible the day after. The fact that the movie only shows maybe three days of his life makes his insane mood swings even funnier.
10. Your favorite soundtrack or song?
I love the music of Philip Glass, which I was introduced to as a child when watching The Truman Show (Peter Weir, US, 1998) but recently I got to admire his beautiful score for Paul Schrader’s Mishima (US, 1985).
11. If you had to live in a movie, which one would you like it to be?
It’s a strange choice, because it’s not set in a fantasy world, but I love the feeling of watching Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, US, 1993). The sense of freedom that comes with the beginning of summer and the end of school can be experienced in every frame of this movie.
Adam Pavlovic is the Ambassador of Cinema Lumière. Find out more about the cinema here.
