Xenia Docio Altuna (XD): We’re with the director Song Il Gon. His first film was “Flower Island”, in 2001, that won the “Opera prima” prize at Venezia film festival. Now at the San Sebastian film festival you’re showing your film “Spider forest”. Can you tell us a little bit about your career in cinema? How did you start?
SongIl-gon (SI): I just started to study cinema, first. Then I went to Poland, to a Poland’s films great study. I made a lot of short films. Anyway I think it’s wrong that I got that award for the first film, it wasn’t a main prize. For doing “Flower island” I wrote a script for one year and then it took me a lot of time to finish the film, because it couldn’t be an independent film. It took me like 3 years to finish the film.
XD: What influences has your cinema got? To me it seemed a bit similar to David Linch, for example, or to Cronenberg .
SI: I think there aren’t many films about subconscious and reality and surrealism. David Linch and Cronenberg, they are the very specialised directors people can think about. People make a relation all the time about these directors because they are very good directors. But I feel more influenced by Kieslowski, I really respect him very much. It’s a question about the human condition and about our super human things, that is: who we are, where we are from. They are basic and very important questions that we’re doing through the film.
I got a lot of influences not just from films, but from everything: from people, from career, etc.
XD: In this film there are two scenes in which it appears an apple. Can you explain us what does this apple mean?
SI: Yes, apple is about original sin. In one scene, the wife is telling him “please don’t give up your life, please don’t give up your life”. She’s showing him guiltiness, and then she says “please don’t give up your life”. And the other scene is more like a bible’s kind of thing, a completely different apple, but it works in the same film, I want to show different things.
XD: Different meanings…
SI: Yes.
XD: At the end of the film, instead, the little boy who appears, who is he?
SI: This film is about one man’s subconscious, and this subconscious has been made by himself, by his desire. The old man for me was like his father, because he gives him some keys. The boy, he was there but his mind and his desire transferred from the boy to the old man.
XD: Are you working in a new project?
SI: Yes, I’ve just finished my last film, four days ago. I’ve just finished shooting. When I’m looking back to my career, I’ll have to add this film. It can be 70 minutes, I don’t know. It’s gonna be shown later, now I don’t know when.
XD: Ok, thank you very much, I wish you good luck for your next film.
