Daniel Dercksen shares a few thoughts with director Steve Jacobs, whose latest film Disgrace follows in the footsteps of his award-winning La Spagnola.

Disgrace is a poignantly poetic interpretation of Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee's Booker Prize winning novel, bringing the arid landscape of post-Apartheid South Africa vividly to live. It is understandable why award-winning Jacobs, an extraordinary visionary, connected with Coetzee's writing and was inspired to turn a great novel into an art film; Jacobs allows his characters to live within the frame of the film, with little interference from himself as a director, allowing his audience to see and experience what the characters are going through.

What attracted you to Disgrace?
It was Anna-Maria Monticelli's idea (Monticelli is the producer on the film and Jacobs' wife). She read the novel and suggested I do so. I did and we both agreed that it could be a very interesting film. That was the initial step on the journey.

What was it about the novel that excited you?
I thought the novel was very cinematic. It examined individuals in a very surgical and I think, honest and realistic way. It didn't give easy answers and its complexity was enthralling and I thought, like many readers around the world, it was a wonderful work.

This is the second time that you are working with Anna-Maria Monticelli; you've been friends for 17 years, met when you were both actors, formed the production company Wild Strawberries in the 90s, and worked as director and writer on La Spagnola, which was completed in 2000 and was nominated for 11 AFI Awards, winning the award for Best Film at three international film festivals and was Australia's official entry for Foreign Language Film in the 2002 Academy Awards.
We are married so I suppose we should be friends (laughs). We have a good working relationship that has lasted all these years.

Is it helpful in the filmmaking process for a writer and director to have an acting background?
It depends. I think that the director needs to … he doesn't need to be an actor, nor does the writer need to be …but I think there must be from a directing point of view, obviously, it's one of the departments in the filmmaking process, that one must understand. It's not just about where to put the camera, so I think any good director has a fairly good idea what works on screen, and they must try and coax that out of the performers.

Your acting background must have been quite helpful in working with first time actors?
People are right for the role and I think casting is 90%, and if you've people who try to do their best, so you try and facilitate that their potential can be realised in the performance that you thought they could give from the screen test. I think that once you've cast correctly, then there shouldn't be a problem.

Was it your aim to make a controversial film?
No, the aim was to do a faithful adaptation of the novel.

Were you familiar with South Africa before shooting the film here?
I only knew about South Africa from what I saw on the news.

Were you quite surprised at what you found once you were in South Africa?
I suppose Cape Town is not representative of the entire country and that's where we were based and therefore we first went, because it's quite a built up and Western city. You don't really see a lot of blacks living there. I was surprised at that. I mean, outside Cape Town, and then you see the townships, which were surprising to me in the massiveness of them. Once doesn't get that impression of scale on television, but one certainly got it, and I could appreciate some of the enormous issues that are within the South Africa community, and issues that has to be solved.

What were the television images you were mostly aware?
I suppose what got on the daily news was the violence and the rioting for apartheid, civil unrest. That's the visuals that came to the West, and one had an impression of that. Then off course when I went to Cape Town, it was a very sophisticated city. I didn't have the chance to actually experience Johannesburg. I imagine that it's a contemporary city with a vibrant, intellectual and economic life. So, I was surprised at how diverse South Africa was from the city to the camps outside.

Mr. Coetzee approved of Anna-Maria Monticelli's adaptation of his novel. Did he see the film?
He has seen the film and has made a comment.. "Steve Jacobs has succeeded beautifully in integrating the story into the grand landscape of South Africa. The lead actors give strong and thoughtful performances." His quote is an endorsement of all our efforts and that is pleasing.

What do you think audiences in South Africa will get from watching Disgrace?
This is very difficult for me to answer because I am not South African, and I wouldn't presume to comments on behalf of South Africans. I tried to make a powerful film that dealt with I thought were universal issues but the locations were particular to South Africa, so I am hoping that they see it as an adaptation of a novel and that it is not representing the entire country, but it represents what was in a novel about a particular incident and particular characters that were involved with that incident. I want them to see it as a work of art.

What excites you about filmmaking?
It's the storytelling art and some people can tell that art through the medium of prose and some people could do it through, if you like, painting, some people have different skills. I think the cinematic art form is the art form that suits my peculiar abilities, if they are abilities, and I think that's what excites me, so I suppose it is the art form of the century we live in and it is going to morph into many strange, and I hope it's going to morph into other things that it is at the moment. It stayed at a very conventional narrative level for a long time.

Where did it all start for you that very first moment that you knew that you were going to be a filmmaker?
I think if you have a very strong visual instinct, it starts quite young. It starts with looking at images and photographs and then you realise that the way of telling that is through the correction of those images moving rapidly through a lantern, and that's exciting because you manipulate a view of the world to ours. So you are basically asking people to dream with you, and that's quite a privilege. It's also a very manipulative art form, well, as all art is, but it's particularly … you have a very sophisticated audience that's usually ahead of you, so you have to know what you are doing.

Did this all start for you as a child?
I think what happened was that the elements that make up the cinema form, the visuals, music and sound, was something I was interested in as a child. When I went to University  (Charles Sturt University where he wrote and directed experimental films and theatre productions) I was then given the apparatus  to actually put them into short films. That's was when I was very excited about how editing could change people's response to an image and for circumstances, and I suppose I had all those differing interests, and then they all came together when I went to University and I was making short films and that's when I realised that you can collect all those stills into one art form.

Was there one specific film that inspired you?
I always loved Luis Bunel films from the 60s. I thought they were incredible. They were wonderful films because they actually were not just about people but about society; they were about the craziness of thought. I think he was a great master.

You were fortunate to get the rights to make Disgrace?
I don't know if people from South Africa wanted to make the film, I don't know the history of that. I don't know if people wanted to make this film from the South African point of view. I know that when we tried to finance the film, no one in South Africa was actually going to invest in the picture, so I don't know why the South Africans didn't do it, but these are the circumstances and the coincidences of life.

Do you think it is sometimes important to view the history of a country from an outside point of view?
I think the thing is I, as I said earlier; I don't have a great knowledge of South Africa. I only viewed it as an artist from the novel's point of view, so what Mr. Coetzee was saying, I was trying to interpret. If I saw that in a different historical context, I may have interpreted it differently.

Disgrace is a film that offers hope?
I'm hoping there's hope (laughs) It really is up to the audience; they have to interpret what the film is about. I just did the magic tricks. I hope the South African audiences embraces it as a work of art and see it as an adaptation of a novel and that it is not representative or indicative of society, but of an aspect of that society.

Copyright © 2009 Daniel E. Dercksen

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