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Cisma On Cinema: A Q&A With Denis Kamioka

By boldly modifying cinematic structures, Denis Kamioka builds his own language and narrative.

Still from Handmade

Brazilian filmmaker Denis Kamioka (a.k.a. Cisma) took a very unconventional path to his craft. Cisma originally studied Mechanical Engineering at USP (University of São Paulo), but quit in his last year after starting work at Lobo animation studio, where he was mostly self-taught. From that moment on, he was entirely focused on cinema.

Having taken a very different path from most filmmakers, Cisma had the freedom to work with the cinematic language as he pleased. He practiced mixing footage with animation, and digital tools with analog ones, letting contemporary cinematic theory inform his practice. British filmmaker Peter Greenaway, for example, is one of the most enthusiastic artists working within this new era of contemporary cinema, enlightened by new technological and narrative possibilities. He believes that in the future, films’ sequences and soundtracks will be live edited by the director (Francis Ford Coppola might be the first director to actualize this concept.)

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Leaving all assumptions aside, we spoke with Cisma about his major works, his creative process, advertising and the authorial role, as well as his views on the current state of the seventh art.

The Creators Project: Handmade is a very personal work, which has defined in some way, the way you’ve made movies and animations since. What was the creation process like?
Denis Cisma: Handmade was a milestone in my life, as it was the first short film I made. Unlike commercial work, in an authorial short film you have absolute freedom—there are no restrictions from the client or agency. So I [wrote] something very sad and painful, which is opposite of the happy and cheerful mood of advertising in general. I experimented freely in [writing] the script, language, and its editing, and I found a style of my own, which ended up revealing itself in my commercial work.

The entire film was produced by friends. The only person who charged any fee was the main actor, but only symbolically. We shot in 16mm, with a few cans left over from another production company, the equipment was sponsored by the rental companies, the crocheted costume was made by an aunt of a friend, and so on…

Handmade

(2006)

Going off that train of thought, you create a lot of advertising works, yet you manage to always let your style shine through. How does that work? Is it possible to do authorial work already scripted and designed by the person who hires you?
I think that comes from the maturity of your work because everyone after a while develops a style. It's a set of solutions or procedures that you know work. Sometimes you discover these solutions in authorial works, which then are used in commercial work.

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In my career, I’ve always given importance to the so-called “portfolio works,” which are the most interesting ones because you have creative freedom. They are usually the lowest paid as well, but I see them as if they were client-sponsored shorts, and I try to make them the way I would make for myself.

In almost all your interviews you jokingly talk about how close you were to getting your degree in Mechanical Engineering at USP. Even though it has nothing to do with what you do today, hasn’t your creative subconscious absorbed at least some information from this area of study? Which period of your life is most meaningful to your art?
I went to college at 17. Few people at that age know what they want to do with their lives. I think the brain is like a muscle and my time with engineering was a gym for [its] synapses. Some classes were absurdly useless, such as Calculus 5 and Integrals and Derivatives of Imaginary Numbers. It's so academic that I don't know what [purpose] it serves. It's used to exercise your brain, like Sudoku or Brain Age for the Nintendo DS. The funny thing is that now, after winding down this path, I have [acquired the] hobby of renovating old cars. I even have a small workshop and a diploma from Senai. Still, I don't use any knowledge from my engineering period, but I wasn't so wrong after all.

For me, however, the most artistically intense time was when I started [doing] graffiti, provoked a little by my frustration with choosing a degree. Graffiti was the outlet of a lost teenager and thanks to it (my only portfolio at the time) I managed to get my first job as a web designer.

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The Fly and the Eye is a short film you made for a brand of silk. Although it’s advertising, your creative identity within the narrative is noticeable, and thus we can see some of your possible references, such as David Lynch, Luis Buñuel and Spike Jonze. What other filmmakers do you find inspirational?
The references are always changing, but Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Jean-Luc Godard and Akira Kurosawa are eternal references. Lately I have been enjoying work by Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson and a Danish director named Martin de Thurah. Both directors work a lot with the visual aspects of their films. Being very nordic, the cold and the cloudy weather are always present in their works.

The Fly and the Eye

(2008)

Despite working extensively with imagery, you also highlight sounds, relying on them to make sense of your work, since you rarely use dialogue. What do you think about sound in cinema and in your work?
Sound is a fundamental part of film, not just in mine. But speaking of my work, I have my soundtracker, or sound designer Paulo Beto da anvil FX who always works with me and always exceeds my expectations.

Currently there is a trend within cinema that says people have exhausted the creative possibilities of the language and cinema needs to reinvent itself from here on out. Do you share that view? Do you contribute to this possible reinvention?
I believe in that, too. There are millions of remakes, stories taken from books, comics and now fashion is the modern fairy tale. Film is so expensive to produce that it's ruled by market laws. It's difficult to spend so much money and think about art, because film is first and foremost entertainment. In fact, I even think that's the case of studio art, too. You go into a gallery or a museum to be entertained by the works, and in some cases, it's even marketed more than it should be.

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I think that in order to reinvent cinema we need to break the rules, to entertain without being obvious and dated, which is damn hard to do. A way to do this is to use the latest technology to tell the story in a different way, so the possibilities of doing something new are so much greater. Always keeping in mind that novelty is short-lived, even more so today.

3D resources have gained visibility throughout cinema today. Do you use these tools? Do you prefer them to the traditional way of “cold editing,” i.e. without the use of digital programs?
The 3D feature is an immersion in history, as well as high-resolution, producing an environment free of exterior sound within the darkness of the theater room. I haven't produced anything in stereoscopy yet, but I would like to test it one day if have the opportunity. I’m not against technology—I am always in favor of learning something new in the process. Even if the technique is old, it's valid as long as it's something new for me.

The Black Thin King

(2008)

To view other works by Cisma, visit the filmmaker's Vimeo page.