Robert Kirchhoff: To Choose Your Genre
This is a clip from an interview with Slovak Robert Kirchhoff, whose ”A Hole in the Head” was reviewed on this site:
Cineuropa: In your previous documentary, Normalization, you investigated a sensitive issue, and you are now pursuing another difficult theme, the Roma Holocaust, in A Hole in the Head. Why do you choose such difficult subjects? Robert Kirchhoff: Every subject that I have chosen to make a film about or to think about is an opportunity to approach that topic differently. It’s a challenge. And this is the way I feel about it. Neither of those subjects came to me by chance; it was always some particular story that brought them to my attention. With Normalization, I attempted to shoot a genre film, an investigative crime film, but there is a difference between the two films. Normalization depends on facts, literally — you have to follow the continuity in terms of the story, the past and the present, and you are working with people you do not necessarily like. In the case of A Hole in the Head, I got to pick the characters myself and I came up with the form of the film. I was facing a dilemma in terms of genre between a classic historic documentary or a documentary essay; I picked the latter. I intentionally resisted pathos — that’s why you can encounter humour in a film revolving around the Holocaust and the Roma genocide — and I resisted any kind of pathos that might have resulted from tying different meanings to a particular character. Those characters lived with their memories and the holes in their heads and I approached them not through the past but the present. That may be one of the reasons why I did not use any of the archive footage, period photos or illustrations.
