Position among the Stars

Director's Statement

THE SINGLE-SHOT CINEMA To get this close to the skin of the people, all the scenes of my documentaries were filmed according to the principle of the “single-shot cinema”. This principle is based on film theories of the French film critic from 1950s André Bazin, who said that the essence of film lies in the movement of the camera. By using the camera movement as basic narrative, instead of framing or light, the film you make becomes cinematographic and dynamic. I have been developing this method of filming by carefully comparing film history with the history of other forms of art, like painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry. The essence of “Single Shot Cinema” in documentary is not making use of re-enactment but to catch the moments of real life while they are happening in just one single shot with a camera that is organically moving around. It allows you to put your personal view about the subject you are filming into the movement of the camera. I shoot with flexible but controlled long camera movements using my intuition to guide me pure observational and being physically part of the moment that I’m filming. In order to move from one camera angle to another without stopping filming, the camera movements need to have a dramatical purpose. The scenes will be edited without losing the rhythm of the moment. While editing I don’t cut from a fixed fame to a fixed frame but from camera movement to camera movement. This makes that the editing follows a natural flow.