Interview With CRYSTAL SWAN Director Darya Zhuk

I interviewed Darya Zhuk about her debute feature Crystal Swan during Minsk International Film Festival Listapad last year in November but the thing is that it was my very first interview and I didn’t have a single idea about how one should interview someone, and the other thing is that I found that I’m going to interview her three hours earlier than planned. But gladly Zhuk is a beautiful human being who understood that and helped as much as possible, and gave extended and informative answers to each of my questions.

Another thing that surprised me is that we casually met with a glass of red wine in some sort of bar where she had a dinner with the producer of Crystal Swan after the interview, so in my memory this encounter was more of a meeting with an old friend who you haven’t seen in a long time rather than a professional interview.

Dani Cooper for Film Inquiry: What got you interested in film in the first place?

Darya Zhuk: I try to understand the essence of humanity, this is the kind of movie [Crystal Swan] that is asking such a philosophical question that not one art form or even science can answer; why people behave in one way or another, and movies are more suitable for this, it states a fact. I have a better understanding of life, people; it makes me think about things I wouldn’t usually think about in everyday life thus in the process I become a better human being.

Is Velya your alter-ego in any way?

Darya Zhuk: Well, I was always asking myself “what if I was like that?”. I was a DJ when I was younger so all the musical component in the movie is very personal for me, just like her relationship with that DJ guy.

What were the main inspirations during the making of Crystal Swan?

Darya Zhuk: Jim Jarmusch, Pawel Pawlikowski, Susan Seidelman, Lacretia Martel. […] We watched a lot of photographers from different places, and obviously music; I mean, it’s just putting many scraps together [chuckling] because in reality you’re making up your own language not like “I like this scene, I wanna a scene like that in my movie”, this is not a way of a real artist. I mean, this is some ideas, they’re much deeper, for example the way some particular director uses handheld cameras, so you just set the parameters A=B, B=C and because of that you have your own language, the most important thing is to understand “how and why” people change their visual language, in which moments, I mean, you need to have a skeleton of it all. Yeah, Pawel Pawlikowski uses handheld in the last shot, it’s a little deliberate but we all understand what he was thinking at this moment, why he did this – liberation of the main character. We even watched The Cranes Are Flying, Kira Muratova’s Brief Encounters that were shot also in 4:3 and have a very interesting framing.

Carolina Costa [director of photography] always focuses a lot on faces, emotions of the characters, at least it was like that in Flower – in this case was it your decision or is it just her style?

Darya Zhuk: She’s just good at close-ups, I guess, and the editor then uses them. You know, when I saw a movie that she shot for the first her elegance just bribed me, I understood that she’s good at minimalism, I mean, you have 33 shots for a scene and she captures every important detail so I was struck by her elegant restraint. You can’t see that in Flower but The Chosen Ones has it, and she did such a wonderful job in this movie, I think a lot of cinematographers are good at shooting close-ups but she has some special talent.

What gags or some difficulties did you have on the set?

Darya Zhuk: It was pretty funny when we placed old ladies with seeds on a round square, and law-abiding belarussians called police despite the fact that it was obvious that we were shooting a movie and we had a permit to shoot there, but police came to us three times because it was unauthorized selling [laughs].

And this it says a lot of the film industry in Belarus, to be more precise how underdeveloped it is. In 19 years of living in this country Crystal Swan is the very first national movie that I liked, except for Come and See but it was only produced at Belarusfilm.

Darya Zhuk: There were a lot of cool coincidences. To get that beautiful scene with running, I mean to get those huge shadows from the trees on that street with the billboard when she [Velya] runs and hears her mother’s voice we needed to get there between 5:16 PM and 5:45 PM and have time to shoot a couple shots.

Velya says that nothing will change in Belarus. Do you think it’s good that almost nothing has changed after two decades?

Darya Zhuk: Listen, it’s her who believes that nothing will change but I think a lot has changed since then: we’ve got the internet, you can catch a train and go to Vilnius. As a matter of fact I see a lot of changes, I mean, we were much more reserved than you, the new generation, we couldn’t allow ourselves to sit on grass in a park, right now socialization is much different and I think that’s a good change. About some things we should remember why they’ve changed because this whole thing with the harassment in army and everyday life still relevant, I mean, rejection itself, our rejection of bright individuals, somehow we perceive it very sharply, on a personal account, everything is very uneven with us.

We had an interesting conversation with the Ukrainian audience the day before yesterday, when there was a premiere, someone commented that this is a film about the devaluation of human dignity, which we have more often than in Western countries, that is, how her [Velya] brightness is devalued when she falls into a small the city continues to depreciate her, or Stepan through rape.

Since you’ve started talking about harassment: what’s your opinion on feminism, #MeToo and Asia Argento? (note: the interview took place approximately a week after Asia was accused of sexual abuse)

Darya Zhuk: Oh, she’s crazy [Asia], we even know each other and I was a crazy fan of her. She’s a very ambiguous character, I think very negatively of harassment but I can believe that Asia could harass someone, and of course it’s unpleasant to acknowledge that #MeToo has its dark sides, but it’s always weird to hear something like “it’s impossible to rape a woman” or pity Harvey Weinstein. I just don’t want to talk to such people, roughly speaking, because I understand we would never find a common language. It’s a completely different mentality when you justifying the hangman and blaming the victim for encouraging them. Therefore, in America, during the screenings, they just read the gender message very clearly, this was probably the first thing they read, which, of course, is less confusing to Belarus, which will not change.

Most of all, I didn’t like the fact that after the accusations towards Asia, many began to say that #MeToo is canceled.

Darya Zhuk: Oh, it’s not canceled at all. First of all, a lot of women complained about it, and in Hollywood there, who is Asia Argento after all. This is a huge wave, there are so many people who have lost their deals, careers, I have a real feeling that such cleaning has occurred, so everything is in full swing, I mean, these are titanic changes in the industry that have occurred over the past year due to #MeToo. And now the women who drive there, who are engaged in development, who are completely new, interesting, people who can listen, hear, have the right values in their minds.