Interview With Neil Hollander
Determine a place in American corpus for Neil Hollander, a writer, film director, producer, journalist, sailor... Did he deserve more?
- A man cannot go far from himself. I was vulgarly called state writer, right-winger, because I have allegedly put myself at the disposal of the President. I have portrayed him too in my films, but never as a figure. There are various versions of his portrait in my films and books. There is one character in the book Call of the Jungle, other is in the documentary Riding the Rails, these days the latest will be presented at the Jim Thompson House in Bangkok…
- The ideology didn’t determine me as an author, Neil Hollander says. The fact that I was an immigrant’s child, treated as a public enemy, was crucial for my charisma. But let me ask you a question, hasn’t the history already shown and proven that only the powerful ones are able to support the big things in art, the authorities, and the ideology. Fortunately, in our country the social realism didn’t develop that much to endanger the most prominent sculptors and artists.
You say that you’re not fully satisfied with many of your works?
- This is an impression that comes out from the undeniable fact that the curse of time has always stalked me. There have always been deadlines. “Birds of Passage”, the one that I made in 1981 in screened first time in Chicago, is still my favorite. But sometimes it is the art that speaks from the character in the film or book, not the authentic interpretation of its appearance.
All of my works were marked with my own determination not to succumb to the trend, fashion and directions that were constantly changing. In our homeland it is always hot and there is nothing more beautiful than the feeling that you’re shining. Even though I lived in Paris in the time of Malraux, I did not look back at the new technology and innovation in arts.
Your art has an atelier character, what does it mean?
- My works are representatively unrepresentative in terms of everyday relaxation. Their expression isn’t faked, it is original, even when you think it’s exaggerated. They’re stopped in a phase for which you think that might be continued, even it is quite obvious that they are completed. Their time has stopped and they are old and young at the same time.
Some of them are made two decades before, but they leave an impression as if they just have stepped from the modeling tripod. Unlike the objects, so-called ‘Contemporary Art’, which became works of art just entering the gallery space, my works are independent of that environment.
Are you satisfied with your film “Under The Radar”?
- Oh, I wouldn’t like to open these polemics. You can’t be dissatisfied. It is the same as if someone asks if your mother looks beautiful.
In another interview for Patch you said that Neil Hollander writes books too. Let find out does he still publish them only in the press?
-I’m writing autobiography through these books. I characterize them as notes in verses.
