adaptation of the latest boxing day is the head of the british film festival held in moscow these days the director's name is very relaxed and he's my guest on the show. bernard rose won his first serious film contest at the age of fifty while in college he was already directing music videos for m.t.v. his debut picture paper house led the prodigy from london strayed to hollywood there he made the successful horrifically can demand and began his fascination with the be told when biopic rose is the kind of director who always puts quality of story first even without huge budgets he can make a masterpiece as he did filming the tragedy of a hollywood agent on an amateur camcorder recently he made his fifth movie based on a classic story by the russian writer. welcome to the show thank you thank you very much for being with us well first of

all i wanted to ask you. when i was getting ready for that interview i was getting ready to put that english accent and and talk to you as if there's a british filmmaker but you just told me that you're actually not a british folk and he was so are you british you're not what is it you're relevant today well i mean i'm british but i've actually lived in los angeles for twenty years or so and actually. the the majority of the tough out of haitians i've done have been set. in los angeles and one of the things that was interesting to me was actually transfer transplanting the stories into modern day america. which was surprisingly easy actually voyeur eighteenth century nineteenth century russia into twenty first century america there's really no difference between one thousand nine hundred three russian and twenty first century california in the profound sense i mean i think that that's part of what's really special about toll free for me is

that. he was you know as an artist he was he was really only interested in what was in his own heart. and i think his genius was his ability to record whatever he felt with a kind of really kind of. extreme honesty and a lack of filter. in that he never said what he thought made him a good he said what was going on in himself listen how do you use the film you brought to moscow today boxing day here so it's almost that what makes you so fun and so fun of toast i mean the fact that he's. talking about yapping and i think it's to do with that it's to do with the complete no the honesty and his interest in in the big themes you know told to his interested in you know is there a god you know what is this. is man

a spiritual creature or just a kind of base animal tells me he wants to know the answers and he doesn't want to know the answers because somebody tells him because a priest tells him or somebody he reads in a book he wants to he's like a kind of investigator he wants to know but he really isn't given a science is i mean i mean it was after reading tolstoy you get even more questions like where when you started to read this book to do you get well at least that's what i am as a russian that's an impression i get i think that that's of course the point is that because he really wants an answer he doesn't want to here's i want to give you you know here's one to say this is it and this is the right way. the the books throw out more questions and they answer but then those are the eternal questions that people fascinate people i think you know you can be fascinated by political and social issues and obviously tolstoy was especially in the latter part of his life. but in terms of his work his it was much more of

a spiritual quest and much more of a kind of psychological investigation into human beings and i think what's relevant about tolstoy today is that aspect of it and that's why for me doing these are taken where i've taken to tolstoy short stories and put them in contemporary los angeles when you remove the cultural trappings of czarist russia. in a sense the spiritual quest and the psychological issues become much more clearly the subject yet you say that the nineteenth century russian more than one in california very much alike is that people visited the problems or maybe it looks so for you as a as an englishman i mean for him english but i mean i mean that california in russia is the same maybe it's you. that in so much different from from other parts of the world why i think it's because the cultural trappings are not what's

powerful about the stories i mean obviously. talked i in one piece he wrote what became a kind of national russian myth kind of in a sense and it was a fantasy when he wrote it he wasn't alive in the party on the cure but you know people people are starting what wonderful think people are starting to learn history to learn about the water here probably by tolstoy his book which of course actually i was wondering is it a yes because they're doing that today one of these is incredibly inaccurate isn't oratory in many many ways but incredibly accurate emotionally looks so when you read it. you're so involved in the people that you believe everything he says about the war of eight hundred twelve but actually historically the book is not particularly accurate and certainly not a historical document but i think that my point is a kind of in that sense what brilliant and accurate about tolstoy is his examination of the human condition and you have to have or he was writing before

you know and now we've pathologist everything you know after freud and after your own and after psychoanalysis and after the whole psychiatric business and especially when it became a drug business which is now of psychiatry is basically pharmaceuticals. toast i was writing before any of that had happened and he was trying to understand the things that drove famine and the depressions encountered and and and the kind of crises that he had and i think that's why. that's the stuff that's interesting and that's the stuff that when you put it in a modern context becomes very powerful for you you scream down the careening you know the great old tolstoy's novel it was in ninety seven and it was a big success but then but then you write your british comedy he made a remake of year three and well did you did you see this film and can you compare the two and as a matter of fact can we call them remakes what they just what they are just. being

screened once again will be more accurate or i think that you know with with a book this is a text that the big winners well known and it's like different versions of hamlet or you know there will always be somebody reinterpreting. i mean it's not like mission impossible we don't call the remakes we now i think it's like yeah there are of and i patients have had a very you know new adaptation to new versions but for me. the version i made of in one thousand and seven which was a straightforward shot in st petersburg and moscow in one thousand nine hundred ninety seven. for me as a film that really completely failed and he said failed in terms of. by the standards of the book you me you you i think i think it failed and it failed for actually very interesting reasons and that's partly what set me off on this path of

doing it doing the annotations it off in a very different way it felt for me for two reasons first one being that. the book is too long to make into a movie. and there's nothing unnecessary in tolstoy and if you know you might think some long passage about. you know local politics you know your all russia or if you are going out you're not worth screening but in fact it's all part of the grand design of the book the book is very intricate so that's why subsequently i took my short attacks and make so the as it were the page of book for screen time was much more one to one well then will i think they remember maybe the other thing is that when you take a short story and make it into you know it's more you it's more interesting and you could do it he was there you can add to it rather than take away which is one of the problem with trying to film in the qur'an or within like the normal movie is

the book is too long and therefore the i because it's long the second half of the book you know all there are patients in my mind not just mine but in every every screen version of the book fails because the second half of it feels truncated because the happens over here is she doesn't leave her husband and kill us and it happens years later and it's the passage of time and and all the stuff that happens in between ends up getting telescoped in an outstation and so there was that reason and i think the other reason that my version failed. because it's always challenging because it got caught up in the trappings of nineteenth century russia and all the beautiful dresses and palaces but you didn't entirely in russia i did some pittsburg yeah even the studios here shut everything everything learned from studio people. as a matter of fact was it easy to work in russia because because there's lots of talk today that is very uncomfortable for western the filmmakers that the rules the

laws the new sort of a small producer things that. you are not used to it wasn't ok with you well this was a very different here and i made the ninety six i think we were here and you know i think the whole situation in russia was very different and it was kind of a crazy time. it was exciting and it was pretty was definitely crazy. and we had actually a very good producer russian couple who said he was in the case of a calcutta and i think he dealt with the bureaucracy russian bureaucracy. because he is here good he is he had all the contacts he had all right you know either i. probably are exactly so firm and people should i work for peanuts these days i mean in the early ninety's i mean what i mean the firm was quite a large movie and we came in and we would have a long time i would simply go for about six months and it was quite an experience

says bernard rose i remember the english film director working in the us a spotlight will be back shortly after a break so stay with us we'll continue in the middle. on the solo flight for. my chute despite. the. rain. snow. on the fadia all for team. the one who cleans the trigger on the most reliable gun of the twentieth century. legend mum.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear sees some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

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come back to spotlight i'm older now and just a reminder that my guest on the show today is bernard rose a renowned english film director. of you are described in lots of interviews as one of the most challenging directors at work today can you explain that do you agree with that why i can think but suddenly like it or is it the

people who turn down and sees her. you know i think these details that patients they came out of a desire to do something that was that was very honest and very pure so when the technology for making films changed in kind of the beginning of the century to be in the twenty first century and digital cameras became small and you could you could make things with a very lightweight unit and to think through the for a run through one of the daughters to shoot a movie with a small digital camera my annotation of the death of a nearly sixty three was actually the first feature film to be shot you know h.d. and what is now an incredibly crude camera back then it was very state of the r. and it was for me it opened up a kind of new way of making films especially with these kind of little mental films like this because it kind of meant you could use a lot of lighting in

a much more free kind of improvised style you could be. you could be more personal because the amount of cash you're having to spend shoot it wasn't so great and i thought you know i wanted to try and kind of do those films in a way that was very different and kind of got at the heart of the matter in i suppose a tolstoy in manner and in trying to be very honest. about how the piece would be what they would do is not try gloss things over and. people. when we talk about british cinema specially people in russia they tend to say that british british cinema is like not for the mainstream audience that it's like it's special do you agree is that true what i mean i think it depends on the films because there are some very mainstream british films well they're very hard on the harry potter as exist as mainstream as yeah it's you know so i think it depends you know i think

like like there for me there is within the u.k. there are people who are interested as well in making films that are just strictly entertainment but the challenging as well people like mike lee and you know in sort of slightly earlier heroes nicholas row and ken russell people like that who had a very individualistic style and could do things that were more you know rather popular appeal but also challenging but when you when you come to work in hollywood doesn't it kill you does not kill the british side of the director because it's such a it's such a machine such your factory i mean i mean it should have it should be like pushing everything into the hollywood standard you know you know i live in a scientist but in many ways i don't feel like really integrated into the hollywood system i mean i work within it sometimes but you know it is a very abrasive system that is the rivalry do you try to remain pretty i mean is

this sort of a rivalry english english and american and i mean americans it's the americans don't talk about american cinema they talk about cinema. well for them football is what they call that right and that they don't have somebody doesn't matter the americans have their own yeah agone and everything that's right there they think they have done everything that they think that whatever they say is a success this is what they want and you know. obviously american distribution because in the end of course you can make any from you want america it's about whether or not you will obtain host box office here obtain access to the pipeline and that's very difficult because it's very expensive for and i was it's controlled by the studios in a very. very tight way and to gain access to that is difficult and you and you have to go through all the various levels of. hollywood how do you get access to the point it's interesting you calling it a point when it's very russian it's very difficult i think for the internet is

going to change things in that way and things will become available in online platforms and it will interview people you know i mean you know probably even to return the money he's never actually there have to be a way of happening and i think that will happen very soon i think i think with a firm. it's going to become it will be easier than it will it was with music i mean the problem with music is people want it and they want to listen to it repeatedly people rarely watch a film more than once or twice well this british film festival that's going on in moscow and that we've already discussed that show that russians really love british cinema here's what spotlights even the demeanor found out after attending the opening of the new british film festival in moscow. film critics assured british cinema his feeling true and i read and they said this summer always forest over there at all the age russians now have an opportunity to see if it's true at the

end your new british film festival which is touring some of the countries but say this is the starting point is the capital which means the films are first seen by the hypercritical moscow public the crowd at the opening was promised to see the inside and the cooler of modern british cinema talwar from the view was anticipated the extraordinary. unlike the british cinema because it's so unusual the guy ritchie pictures are just one example but it doesn't use the british are good at finding those funny little details others would see they have a very interesting approach with a british sense of humor is very keen a matter of teaching children well but those who have self irony will appreciate. but it does keep. my favorites of the classical british cinema criminal dramas like michael hodges get carter all rolled in heart is called horror of the week a man i also like postmodernist which is by ken russell in nicholas road in the

living with what they say this time the friends of the british cinema can have it all the festival boasts the most diverse selection of pictures from costume dramas to crime stories to serial comedies the highlight of the twenty first century film versions of the classical novels dickens is great expectations and tall stories on the qur'an and. ever appeared to film directors the very special part of the brit fast is called the english now a tribute to no tolstoy from his most faithful fan among british film directors bernard bros the weight of his numerous adaptations as roxanne day. well miss rose what about what about war and peace here ever thought of doing it actually yes an adaptation i doubt if i would like to take an about a war and peace pact put it into the today's american i would not be guys coming

back from afghanistan and actually now i have an idea to put in not in the poetic period correct. which which period vietnam i would do in the one nine hundred forty nine hundred forty second world war in russia yeah in russia yeah you want to make a rush of the ninety four days but i think it could be actually make them i mean. i'm going to shoot it in russia where i mean it's what i did the problem with doing one piece is you know i think i like i was saying earlier that the problem is that in the qur'an there is a are there lots of pieces in one piece that you can. you should i think it would take thirty five hours to actually cover the whole book and even even upon a trip from which is wonderful here it is for a film for fifteen hours you know so i still about half the book i've got no idea for you when we were kids yeah the board is really the war and the girls read the piece so you can do two movies or

a movie for the girls in the movie for the boys i mean what tolstoy tolstoy's piece like another movie but i think. it to really do the book would be thirty five to forty hours of footage but if they do it is a television series. i think for that length why not two thirty five parts an hour each you get access to the point line with thirty five hours of tell stage going to be expensive and like i said. i would. yeah. one day maybe that i would like you like to do that it's after all it's the big one . like a couple of years of your life and when it's always there i don't know i'm not done and here i mean five years maybe yeah funny thirty five hours at least you know for years i would think i reach a certain first. that i was doing that it would be worth it is there any other person who has any other author a person in the world i mean russia that is equally interesting equaling spines years tolstoy well yes i mean there are other i think one of the things that i got

really involved in especially in the late tolstoy novellas you know death of an energy crisis an art of boxing doing one thing i did because of their very kind of . that they're very beautifully constructed stories and and they have a kind of really kind of powerful underpinning and a very powerful message. and and a very cinematic dragon so i kind of got involved in them in now way to thin terms of how they were they would be as films but i mean there are a lot of rather russian also so i really like i'm a big fan of for example and god of you know you know the same the same problem of most readers here as with i'm a korean you know new law nobody can shoot in you nobody can actually film because it's it's it's so so different i mean i think you could family but it was it would be long yeah and and also it has to be done on

a big project because one of the special effects and then here you have to be really good. to be tough and he's easy to be very important because the music because of the personality why i trained as a classical pianist for account directors very explicitly and i'm. and i was being very interested in music and the way music relates to film and i was in a crisis and i was for me was a kind of combination of my own thoughts and the beethoven and tolstoy. but for me beethoven was always the you know as real primacy among musicians he just is the best musician that ever lived he wrote the best music and it was something really it's time and all and again like tolstoy there's something very profound about what he does and as it contains some information that you can't get somewhere else somehow and it's hard to describe what it is exactly but it seems to have that information thank you thank you very much for being with us thank you for was

talking to you and just to remind you that my guest today was a bird was actually tall starts in the middle of ninety three now and it was food that i took. that said but now i'm part of the story if you're going to have your sales talk like guests it's wildlife will be back with more for comment on what's going on and. so they stay on our team to take care thank you thank you very much thanks so much. i mean so the only city in europe i'm the host of the twenty fourteen winter the picket. signs. thank you.

saatchi. thank you some way a. dog days of. the pride days a. week so common in the. sun it's so true.