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DC in Ed Zwick's DEFIANCE
Moderator: Germangirl
Lithuania plays starring role in Nazi movie
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Bulgaria and Romania might get all the attention when it comes to filming in eastern Europe, but Lithuania is getting its moment in the sun thanks to "Defiance."
The Ed Zwick-directed World War II resistance movie revolves around three Jewish Belorussian brothers who fought the Nazis and built a community in the Naliboki Forest outside of Novgorodok.
For political reasons, Zwick and his crew did not go to Belarus. President Alexander Lukashenko is accused by the West of ruling the country with an iron grip, jailing opponents, shutting down independent media and rigging polls, including his own re-election to a third term in 2006.
But the filmmakers found the next best thing in neighboring Lithuania, where the entire movie was shot. Not only that, but the movie was filmed almost entirely in the forest, with hardly any stage work at all.
The production was based in Lithuania's capital, Vilnius, only 90-120 miles from where the actual story took place. The filmmakers found locations within an hour's drive from the city.
"The forests are the same, the swamps are the same, it's the same geography," Zwick says.
Vilnius had a Jewish quarter that was decimated during World War II and had mass graves in the forest that are now memorial sites.
"With Ed, what you strive for is an authenticity to (a production)" says producer Pieter Jan Brugge, who worked with Zwick on "Glory" and whose producing credits include "Heat" and "Miami Vice." "What can be more authentic than going to the heart of where the story took place?"
Shooting in and around Vilnius also allowed Slavic actors to be cast in smaller, Russian-speaking roles and made it possible to cast extras who were descendants from the families the brothers saved.
Of course, shooting in the forest was no walk in the park. The actors and crew drove to the outskirts of the woods but had to hike in to the actual set. Fall had settled in (the movie shot from August-December 2007), which meant cold, wet, gray weather and low light.
"Daniel (Craig) says I did that on purpose," Zwick says.
The director says he didn't but admits it helped. "Actors are always looking for verisimilitude, and they were able to hold on to the rain and the cold for their performance," he says. "It's ineffable but it was real, and it helped the performance. I really believe that."
Cold was a definite factor, and though there was fake snow (actually, it was a biodegradable paper product supplied by a company called Snow Business) real snow also was on the ground many days, forcing actors to huddle around fires and crew to seek solace in zemlyankas -- partially underground wooden bunkers the set designers built in the process of re-creating the forest village.
"When you are under these adverse circumstances, people tend to bond, and this is a movie that is about community," Zwick says. "We formed our own community."
The conditions also kept the actors and crew members humble. Jan Brugge says that they arrived at the base camp in the morning, "lived" in the forest for the day, then went back to the hotel. "But those who lived through this did not," he says. "We have on parkas and have a catering truck, and so you are always thinking of what it was for these people to survive for all those years under those circumstances."
Lithuania's film industry remains nascent compared with its bigger brothers Bulgaria and Romania; the infrastructure and limited soundstages are more geared toward television work and indie movies. "Elizabeth I," the HBO miniseries starring Helen Mirren, shot in Vilnius, and the recent indie thriller "Transsiberian" also found a home there.
"Defiance," budgeted at about $35 million, was the first big production for the country.
Although there were headaches involving bureaucracy and cultural differences, Jan Brugge thinks the film shoot helped Lithuania.
"I think any time that a (movie) company comes into a country where there is a deficiency, it adds tremendous experience to the growth of a film industry," he says.
http://www.reuters.com/article/filmNews ... 1620090108
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Bulgaria and Romania might get all the attention when it comes to filming in eastern Europe, but Lithuania is getting its moment in the sun thanks to "Defiance."
The Ed Zwick-directed World War II resistance movie revolves around three Jewish Belorussian brothers who fought the Nazis and built a community in the Naliboki Forest outside of Novgorodok.
For political reasons, Zwick and his crew did not go to Belarus. President Alexander Lukashenko is accused by the West of ruling the country with an iron grip, jailing opponents, shutting down independent media and rigging polls, including his own re-election to a third term in 2006.
But the filmmakers found the next best thing in neighboring Lithuania, where the entire movie was shot. Not only that, but the movie was filmed almost entirely in the forest, with hardly any stage work at all.
The production was based in Lithuania's capital, Vilnius, only 90-120 miles from where the actual story took place. The filmmakers found locations within an hour's drive from the city.
"The forests are the same, the swamps are the same, it's the same geography," Zwick says.
Vilnius had a Jewish quarter that was decimated during World War II and had mass graves in the forest that are now memorial sites.
"With Ed, what you strive for is an authenticity to (a production)" says producer Pieter Jan Brugge, who worked with Zwick on "Glory" and whose producing credits include "Heat" and "Miami Vice." "What can be more authentic than going to the heart of where the story took place?"
Shooting in and around Vilnius also allowed Slavic actors to be cast in smaller, Russian-speaking roles and made it possible to cast extras who were descendants from the families the brothers saved.
Of course, shooting in the forest was no walk in the park. The actors and crew drove to the outskirts of the woods but had to hike in to the actual set. Fall had settled in (the movie shot from August-December 2007), which meant cold, wet, gray weather and low light.
"Daniel (Craig) says I did that on purpose," Zwick says.
The director says he didn't but admits it helped. "Actors are always looking for verisimilitude, and they were able to hold on to the rain and the cold for their performance," he says. "It's ineffable but it was real, and it helped the performance. I really believe that."
Cold was a definite factor, and though there was fake snow (actually, it was a biodegradable paper product supplied by a company called Snow Business) real snow also was on the ground many days, forcing actors to huddle around fires and crew to seek solace in zemlyankas -- partially underground wooden bunkers the set designers built in the process of re-creating the forest village.
"When you are under these adverse circumstances, people tend to bond, and this is a movie that is about community," Zwick says. "We formed our own community."
The conditions also kept the actors and crew members humble. Jan Brugge says that they arrived at the base camp in the morning, "lived" in the forest for the day, then went back to the hotel. "But those who lived through this did not," he says. "We have on parkas and have a catering truck, and so you are always thinking of what it was for these people to survive for all those years under those circumstances."
Lithuania's film industry remains nascent compared with its bigger brothers Bulgaria and Romania; the infrastructure and limited soundstages are more geared toward television work and indie movies. "Elizabeth I," the HBO miniseries starring Helen Mirren, shot in Vilnius, and the recent indie thriller "Transsiberian" also found a home there.
"Defiance," budgeted at about $35 million, was the first big production for the country.
Although there were headaches involving bureaucracy and cultural differences, Jan Brugge thinks the film shoot helped Lithuania.
"I think any time that a (movie) company comes into a country where there is a deficiency, it adds tremendous experience to the growth of a film industry," he says.
http://www.reuters.com/article/filmNews ... 1620090108
Interview : Defiance Director
Ed Zwick takes us behind-the-scenes on Daniel Craig's latest pic "Defiance"
Among a whole host of Holocaust and Holocaust-related films opening in 2009 comes Ed Zwick's "Defiance". Based on Nechama Tec's book about the remarkable true story of the Bielski brothers, Jewish partisans who safeguarded the lives of some 1,200 Jews in the Naliboki forest in Belorussia (Belarus) for more than two years during the war. Movies.ie recently met up with Ed Zwick, director, producer and co-writer of the film, to talk about bringing this little known story to the big screen, working with some of Hollywood's biggest names (including Daniel Craig in the lead role) and why the Holocaust remains one of the most powerful subjects for contemporary cinema:
Q:How did you find out about the Bielskis Brothers?
A: It was around twelve years ago, I first heard the story. A friend of mine, Clay Frohman, read an obituary in the New York Times. It was Zus Bielskis, the last of the brothers to die. That led Clay and I to Nechama Tec's book, which we optioned and began to write. Eventually we were led to the Bielski family, many of whom were still in Brooklyn and they supplied us with a whole host of stories, photos and eventually even a videotape that they had made of Tuvia Bielski at the end of his life, talking about his experiences.
Q: Given the exceptional circumstances of the events - why do you think this is something that hasn't been explored before?
A: Yeah I've been asked that question a few times now and I have a few theories on why this isn't a story that is more generally known. I think that the Jewish culture has rightly devoted much of its energy to remembering the six million who died and as result this story has been somewhat overshadowed. There was also reluctance on the part of these survivors to come forward - an element of survivor's guilt perhaps. What's also interesting is that even today, the Jewish people of the time are so often viewed as passive. And initially, I had believed that Warsaw and Sobibor were the only instances in which Jews had fought back. But when I went research I found that there were countless cases, often futile, that was reported but nonetheless usually associated with the availability of the natural world, the forest particularly, in Bialystok, in the Ukraine, in Lithuania, in Poland, any number of places.
Q: Did you contact many of the survivors - how willing were they to get involved?
A: Yeah we managed to track down nearly 40 survivors and we had 19 at a previewing screening in New York - they all reacted very well to the material and representation of the people and time.
Q: Given that this is a powerful and unknown true story - did you ever consider making it into a documentary - a sort of quasi-historical document?
A: Well I'm a fan of documentary but I think it's important to recognise its powers and limitations; I am a feature filmmaker and that's what I set out to create. We tried to be as faithful as possible to the story and the lives of the people but given the limitations of running time, there is an inevitable element of reductionism to the film. So in that sense, documentary may have served us better. On the other hand, documentary is a genre that is usually reserved only for those who know some of the background of the time. A feature film, like Defiance, can offer the story to so many more people and allow them engage and vest in the story through the drama and the characters
Q: How difficult was it to cast your three main actors?
A: I'd always had Daniel Craig in mind when I was working on the script; long before he took on James Bond. When you see him in films like "The Mother" or "Layer Cake" you see that he is a very modest man, who can be physically imposing, who can be enormously powerful and yet soulful at the same time. These were qualities that he seemed to share with Tuvia Bielski. Then, I cast around him. So for example, for the story Liev Schreiber's character needed to be able to rival Daniel's presence on screen - even dominate it at times. Jamie Bell seemed like a natural choice because he parallels his character in many ways - the younger brother coming-of-age during the action.
Q: Late last year we had "The Boy in the Stripped Pjyamas", now we have "The Reader", "Defiance" and soon Tom Cruises' "Valkyrie" will hit screens - why do you think so many films.
In terms of the Holocaust, now seems to be the 11th hour for those who are still alive. There may be some sort of anxiety about that. In the next five or ten years there will be no more living memory of the time and there may be some urgency of telling these stories while those who can tell them are still alive.
Q: And what's next - you've tended to stick with socio-politically motivated films in the recent past (Blood Diamond, Glory, Defiance etc) Will you be sticking to this area or can we expect something lighter?
(Laughs) Well, I do find myself motivated socio-politically these days but we'll have to wait and see... I have a project in the works but I never like to speak about these things until they are concrete.
http://www.movies.ie/html/article.aspx?articleid=3816
Ed Zwick takes us behind-the-scenes on Daniel Craig's latest pic "Defiance"
Among a whole host of Holocaust and Holocaust-related films opening in 2009 comes Ed Zwick's "Defiance". Based on Nechama Tec's book about the remarkable true story of the Bielski brothers, Jewish partisans who safeguarded the lives of some 1,200 Jews in the Naliboki forest in Belorussia (Belarus) for more than two years during the war. Movies.ie recently met up with Ed Zwick, director, producer and co-writer of the film, to talk about bringing this little known story to the big screen, working with some of Hollywood's biggest names (including Daniel Craig in the lead role) and why the Holocaust remains one of the most powerful subjects for contemporary cinema:
Q:How did you find out about the Bielskis Brothers?
A: It was around twelve years ago, I first heard the story. A friend of mine, Clay Frohman, read an obituary in the New York Times. It was Zus Bielskis, the last of the brothers to die. That led Clay and I to Nechama Tec's book, which we optioned and began to write. Eventually we were led to the Bielski family, many of whom were still in Brooklyn and they supplied us with a whole host of stories, photos and eventually even a videotape that they had made of Tuvia Bielski at the end of his life, talking about his experiences.
Q: Given the exceptional circumstances of the events - why do you think this is something that hasn't been explored before?
A: Yeah I've been asked that question a few times now and I have a few theories on why this isn't a story that is more generally known. I think that the Jewish culture has rightly devoted much of its energy to remembering the six million who died and as result this story has been somewhat overshadowed. There was also reluctance on the part of these survivors to come forward - an element of survivor's guilt perhaps. What's also interesting is that even today, the Jewish people of the time are so often viewed as passive. And initially, I had believed that Warsaw and Sobibor were the only instances in which Jews had fought back. But when I went research I found that there were countless cases, often futile, that was reported but nonetheless usually associated with the availability of the natural world, the forest particularly, in Bialystok, in the Ukraine, in Lithuania, in Poland, any number of places.
Q: Did you contact many of the survivors - how willing were they to get involved?
A: Yeah we managed to track down nearly 40 survivors and we had 19 at a previewing screening in New York - they all reacted very well to the material and representation of the people and time.
Q: Given that this is a powerful and unknown true story - did you ever consider making it into a documentary - a sort of quasi-historical document?
A: Well I'm a fan of documentary but I think it's important to recognise its powers and limitations; I am a feature filmmaker and that's what I set out to create. We tried to be as faithful as possible to the story and the lives of the people but given the limitations of running time, there is an inevitable element of reductionism to the film. So in that sense, documentary may have served us better. On the other hand, documentary is a genre that is usually reserved only for those who know some of the background of the time. A feature film, like Defiance, can offer the story to so many more people and allow them engage and vest in the story through the drama and the characters
Q: How difficult was it to cast your three main actors?
A: I'd always had Daniel Craig in mind when I was working on the script; long before he took on James Bond. When you see him in films like "The Mother" or "Layer Cake" you see that he is a very modest man, who can be physically imposing, who can be enormously powerful and yet soulful at the same time. These were qualities that he seemed to share with Tuvia Bielski. Then, I cast around him. So for example, for the story Liev Schreiber's character needed to be able to rival Daniel's presence on screen - even dominate it at times. Jamie Bell seemed like a natural choice because he parallels his character in many ways - the younger brother coming-of-age during the action.
Q: Late last year we had "The Boy in the Stripped Pjyamas", now we have "The Reader", "Defiance" and soon Tom Cruises' "Valkyrie" will hit screens - why do you think so many films.
In terms of the Holocaust, now seems to be the 11th hour for those who are still alive. There may be some sort of anxiety about that. In the next five or ten years there will be no more living memory of the time and there may be some urgency of telling these stories while those who can tell them are still alive.
Q: And what's next - you've tended to stick with socio-politically motivated films in the recent past (Blood Diamond, Glory, Defiance etc) Will you be sticking to this area or can we expect something lighter?
(Laughs) Well, I do find myself motivated socio-politically these days but we'll have to wait and see... I have a project in the works but I never like to speak about these things until they are concrete.
http://www.movies.ie/html/article.aspx?articleid=3816
thank you, great article. i have had my question answered, very good. "why are there so many movies about the Holocaust coming out now..." i have been asking everyone that question. and now it makes perfect sense. the realness of the people are going to be lost. extinct. just like the generations who came to america-i couldnt understand my grandparents...my parents were bilingual-i only know English(i could take languages, but traditions, family ties, their toils of life cant be taught in language classes). i listened to stories from the "greatest generation" and it is now in books...i cant talk to live people who were there anymore...that is sadness, it is lost. its different actually talking to people than reading it. it makes it more personal. now its just in books. aahh too much caffiene. ~g, time to work
I didn't do 'Defiance' for money: Craig
London (IANS): Bond star Daniel Craig, who stars in the holocaust survivor movie "Defiance", says he didn't do the project for the money.
Dailymail.co.uk quoted him as saying: "We didn't do the movie for the money, we did it because we loved doing it. It was as soon as I read the script, I saw it was something I wanted to get involved in and expose to the world."
Directed by Edward Zwick, the film also stars Jamie Bell, Liev Schreiber and Alexa Davalos apart from Craig. Set in World War II Poland, "Defiance" tells the story of three Jewish brothers who escaped Nazi-occupied Poland and took refuge in the woods.
They start to fight back against the Nazis while in hiding and are joined in the battle by men and women of all ages. Craig also revealed that he drank more than his fair share of vodka during the filming.
"The vodka in the movie was real a lot of the time, I developed quite a taste for it and have been drinking it a lot over Christmas," he said.
We have recognized it dear Daniel, we really have!
source:http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/00 ... 081560.htm
London (IANS): Bond star Daniel Craig, who stars in the holocaust survivor movie "Defiance", says he didn't do the project for the money.
Dailymail.co.uk quoted him as saying: "We didn't do the movie for the money, we did it because we loved doing it. It was as soon as I read the script, I saw it was something I wanted to get involved in and expose to the world."
Directed by Edward Zwick, the film also stars Jamie Bell, Liev Schreiber and Alexa Davalos apart from Craig. Set in World War II Poland, "Defiance" tells the story of three Jewish brothers who escaped Nazi-occupied Poland and took refuge in the woods.
They start to fight back against the Nazis while in hiding and are joined in the battle by men and women of all ages. Craig also revealed that he drank more than his fair share of vodka during the filming.
"The vodka in the movie was real a lot of the time, I developed quite a taste for it and have been drinking it a lot over Christmas," he said.
We have recognized it dear Daniel, we really have!
source:http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/00 ... 081560.htm
-
Daskedusken
- Posts: 14137
- Joined: Thu May 31, 2007 8:14 pm
- Location: Always heading somewhere
Dunda wrote: "The vodka in the movie was real a lot of the time, I developed quite a taste for it and have been drinking it a lot over Christmas," he said.
We have recognized it dear Daniel, we really have!
source:http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/00 ... 081560.htm
"Love anyway. Live anyway. Choose to part of this anyway”
JAMES BOND - CRAIG STEPS IN TO SAVE BELL
JAMES BOND star DANIEL CRAIG proved himself a true hero when he used his clout to halt the filming of new movie DEFIANCE - after co-star JAMIE BELL fell ill onset.
The pair was shooting outdoor scenes for the war drama on location in Lithuania when the freezing conditions sent Billy Elliot actor Bell close to hypothermia.
And concerned Craig stepped in, ordering producers to stop filming so his 23-year-old co-star could head to his trailer to warm up.
Bell says, "The conditions were ripe for a bout of, 'I'm not f**king doing this!' but the closest we got was Daniel standing up for me one day in the rain at the end of October, it was absolutely freezing.
"My body started to lose control, going into hypothermic shock, I think. He said, 'We have to stop, he's starting to freak out and he's going to die'. He used his Hollywood power for good.
"It's daft, because you do have to be butch in the presence of Bond, but Daniel has a really good heart and said, 'You need to take a second and then come back'. He's very much the leader that he portrays in this film."
http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/ar ... ll_1091220
JAMES BOND star DANIEL CRAIG proved himself a true hero when he used his clout to halt the filming of new movie DEFIANCE - after co-star JAMIE BELL fell ill onset.
The pair was shooting outdoor scenes for the war drama on location in Lithuania when the freezing conditions sent Billy Elliot actor Bell close to hypothermia.
And concerned Craig stepped in, ordering producers to stop filming so his 23-year-old co-star could head to his trailer to warm up.
Bell says, "The conditions were ripe for a bout of, 'I'm not f**king doing this!' but the closest we got was Daniel standing up for me one day in the rain at the end of October, it was absolutely freezing.
"My body started to lose control, going into hypothermic shock, I think. He said, 'We have to stop, he's starting to freak out and he's going to die'. He used his Hollywood power for good.
"It's daft, because you do have to be butch in the presence of Bond, but Daniel has a really good heart and said, 'You need to take a second and then come back'. He's very much the leader that he portrays in this film."
http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/ar ... ll_1091220
-
Daskedusken
- Posts: 14137
- Joined: Thu May 31, 2007 8:14 pm
- Location: Always heading somewhere
Great read. Glad Dan was there to help his co-star. That's our Danieladvicky wrote:JAMES BOND - CRAIG STEPS IN TO SAVE BELL
JAMES BOND star DANIEL CRAIG proved himself a true hero when he used his clout to halt the filming of new movie DEFIANCE - after co-star JAMIE BELL fell ill onset.
The pair was shooting outdoor scenes for the war drama on location in Lithuania when the freezing conditions sent Billy Elliot actor Bell close to hypothermia.
And concerned Craig stepped in, ordering producers to stop filming so his 23-year-old co-star could head to his trailer to warm up.
Bell says, "The conditions were ripe for a bout of, 'I'm not f**king doing this!' but the closest we got was Daniel standing up for me one day in the rain at the end of October, it was absolutely freezing.
"My body started to lose control, going into hypothermic shock, I think. He said, 'We have to stop, he's starting to freak out and he's going to die'. He used his Hollywood power for good.
"It's daft, because you do have to be butch in the presence of Bond, but Daniel has a really good heart and said, 'You need to take a second and then come back'. He's very much the leader that he portrays in this film."
http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/ar ... ll_1091220
"Love anyway. Live anyway. Choose to part of this anyway”
Liev Schreiber's On-Set Rivalry
Liev Schreiber and Daniel Craig co-star in Defiance as Jewish brothers who take refuge in the forest to escape the Nazis during WWII. And Schreiber admits that he and Craig pushed each other's buttons during filming.
Schreiber also gets ready for a juicy role as the fearsome Sabretooth in the much anticipated X-Men Origins: Wolverine opposite Hugh Jackman. In addition to his busy career, the actor welcomed a second son, Samuel Kai, with actress Naomi Watts just days before Christmas.
Q: Were you aware of the real-life story of the WWII Jewish resistance in Defiance?
A: My grandfather was a tough guy, so I had an image that Jews were not passive or victims at all. Plus, I was a fan of Sandy Koufax, Mark Spitz and every Jewish boxer from the 1940s. The fact that they were champions was something that I was proud of. But it completely surprised me that I hadn't heard of this story before. Three brothers helping 1,200 Jews escape the Nazis in the woods of Belarus and building a fairly advanced community. They had a synagogue. They had weddings. They had life.
Q: What was it like to share the set with James Bond?
A: I was really impressed that Daniel Craig was this major motion picture star who didn't go to his trailer in between takes. I'm accustomed to that with A-list actors. They go to their trailer and then we all wait for them to come out. But Daniel didn't. He sat with us and told stories and we had snowball fights and we bonded. Actually we got really silly. We spent a lot of time being silly.
Q: You play a pair of brothers who are at odds with each other. Did that rivalry come out during filming?
A: I know there have been rumors that we took it literally. Let's be accurate. Daniel didn't get in my face but he got in my chest when we had our fight scenes. We may have pushed each other's buttons a little bit but basically we had a great sense of camaraderie.
Q: You were filming in winter under some tough conditions. Did it begin to seem real?
A: Our secret for staying warm was vodka. We had lots of good Lithuanian vodka. It was very good — so good that we drank a lot of it. I mean we were in the woods and it was freezing. You didn't have to pretend you were cold because we were all shivering.
Q: We'll soon see you in X-Men Origins. What's it like to play a comic book character?
A: I don't think it was different at all. Victor Creed/Sabretooth reminded me a lot of my character in Defiance, and, not to get too Shakespearean, but Iago in Othello. I didn't find anything really unfamiliar except the weightlifting regimen I had to go through to pump up for the role. I'm a big fan of the X-Men comic books, and we definitely got to explore the dark side in an R-rated movie.
Q: Has becoming a daddy changed your life?
A: I've had a compulsion about working, like I want to be acting all the time. But now I've had a child and I have an infant son, so that's changed things a little bit. I think what I need to do is to stop and get some sense of perspective. It's not good for me to work all the time.
Q: What do you do for fun with your toddler, Alexander?
A: The only thing he's interested in is this game we play where he hides behind the arm of the couch and I pretend that I can't see him. I realize that there's a kind of a divine Buddha truth in that. I should be doing more things where I'm pretending that I can't see my son and making him laugh. And that is for me is the brighter side of being a father, that there is something to be said for silliness. My son has given me that. In my career I have chosen sort of more difficult, intense acting things and the reality is the most fun I've had on stage or on film sets was probably the moments of laughter.
http://www.parade.com/celebrity/celebri ... iance.html
Liev Schreiber and Daniel Craig co-star in Defiance as Jewish brothers who take refuge in the forest to escape the Nazis during WWII. And Schreiber admits that he and Craig pushed each other's buttons during filming.
Schreiber also gets ready for a juicy role as the fearsome Sabretooth in the much anticipated X-Men Origins: Wolverine opposite Hugh Jackman. In addition to his busy career, the actor welcomed a second son, Samuel Kai, with actress Naomi Watts just days before Christmas.
Q: Were you aware of the real-life story of the WWII Jewish resistance in Defiance?
A: My grandfather was a tough guy, so I had an image that Jews were not passive or victims at all. Plus, I was a fan of Sandy Koufax, Mark Spitz and every Jewish boxer from the 1940s. The fact that they were champions was something that I was proud of. But it completely surprised me that I hadn't heard of this story before. Three brothers helping 1,200 Jews escape the Nazis in the woods of Belarus and building a fairly advanced community. They had a synagogue. They had weddings. They had life.
Q: What was it like to share the set with James Bond?
A: I was really impressed that Daniel Craig was this major motion picture star who didn't go to his trailer in between takes. I'm accustomed to that with A-list actors. They go to their trailer and then we all wait for them to come out. But Daniel didn't. He sat with us and told stories and we had snowball fights and we bonded. Actually we got really silly. We spent a lot of time being silly.
Q: You play a pair of brothers who are at odds with each other. Did that rivalry come out during filming?
A: I know there have been rumors that we took it literally. Let's be accurate. Daniel didn't get in my face but he got in my chest when we had our fight scenes. We may have pushed each other's buttons a little bit but basically we had a great sense of camaraderie.
Q: You were filming in winter under some tough conditions. Did it begin to seem real?
A: Our secret for staying warm was vodka. We had lots of good Lithuanian vodka. It was very good — so good that we drank a lot of it. I mean we were in the woods and it was freezing. You didn't have to pretend you were cold because we were all shivering.
Q: We'll soon see you in X-Men Origins. What's it like to play a comic book character?
A: I don't think it was different at all. Victor Creed/Sabretooth reminded me a lot of my character in Defiance, and, not to get too Shakespearean, but Iago in Othello. I didn't find anything really unfamiliar except the weightlifting regimen I had to go through to pump up for the role. I'm a big fan of the X-Men comic books, and we definitely got to explore the dark side in an R-rated movie.
Q: Has becoming a daddy changed your life?
A: I've had a compulsion about working, like I want to be acting all the time. But now I've had a child and I have an infant son, so that's changed things a little bit. I think what I need to do is to stop and get some sense of perspective. It's not good for me to work all the time.
Q: What do you do for fun with your toddler, Alexander?
A: The only thing he's interested in is this game we play where he hides behind the arm of the couch and I pretend that I can't see him. I realize that there's a kind of a divine Buddha truth in that. I should be doing more things where I'm pretending that I can't see my son and making him laugh. And that is for me is the brighter side of being a father, that there is something to be said for silliness. My son has given me that. In my career I have chosen sort of more difficult, intense acting things and the reality is the most fun I've had on stage or on film sets was probably the moments of laughter.
http://www.parade.com/celebrity/celebri ... iance.html
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Daskedusken
- Posts: 14137
- Joined: Thu May 31, 2007 8:14 pm
- Location: Always heading somewhere
Bond in Belarus
Daniel Craig’s latest movie Defiance sees the 007 star once again pushing himself to his physical limits.
There are guns, shooting and explosions, much as we have come to expect from the action hero.
But much more taxing were the sub-zero conditions in which the World War II Holocaust movie was filmed.
Nazi-occupied Belarus in 1941 is the setting for Defiance, which was shot in a winter-gripped forest in Lithuania.
“To keep warm we did a lot of drinking and I was wearing a little thermal on the sly but the cold definitely had an effect,” says Craig.
“We were there 12 hours a day, six days a week and it got really cold, but there was something about that experience. Nobody did this for the money.
“We were all in it together and we all huddled. There was male and female bonding - but not in that way.”
Thanks to 007, a lot more scripts are sent Craig’s way, but he remains very picky about what he does.
Therefore hearing that his attachment to Defiance was instantaneous says a lot.
“This came along, I read it and immediately said, ‘I want to make this movie. It’s a story I want to tell,’” he says.
Defiance tells the incredible true-life tale of the Bielski brothers, Jewish working-class farmers from the remote countryside of what is now independent Belarus, but was then under Soviet control.
When the Nazis invaded and began executing Jews, the brothers - who had also lost family - led a small group to safety in the forests.
Their aim at first was purely survival and to exact vengeance wherever they could.
But as word of their daring spread and more and more of the persecuted sought them out, the priority became saving as many Jews as possible.
Under the leadership of elder brother Tuvia (Craig), the mission was so successful that by the end of the war more than 1,200 emerged from the deep forests.
The story was published in 1993 after much research by Holocaust historian Dr Nechama Tec, but has remained largely unknown.
The film does not shy from showing the brutal reality of what the group’s resistance involved - including in one instance the group murder of a German soldier.
And, suggests Craig, perhaps the difficulty of dealing with bloody memories has contributed to keeping the story buried.
“It was much more complicated than we can ever portray on screen.
“They did commit gruesome acts and one of the reasons the story has not been told is because these people wanted to forget,” he says.
“But in those moments, it was very clear to me why - Tuvia was trying to keep spirits up and stop the group from infighting, so they had to be given their kill.
“He has responsibility for these people who are not on the face of it survivors. He has to teach and encourage them to survive and that’s what I find so fascinating.”
Less engaging for Craig, who left school at 16, was having to learn Russian - he says he is not a natural pupil.
“It was dreadful. I am just so bad at languages and so I had do it phonetically. I had a great coach who is also an actress, which helped, so I could sort of shout lines at her and then it was a leap of faith.”
Joining Craig in Defiance as the other Bielski brothers are Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell.
Schreiber plays the volatile Zus who struggles with what he considers to be Tuvia’s idealism while Bell plays the young Asael, forced to grow up fast.
And for the Billy Elliot star, the making of Defiance also proved a quick learning curve.
“Action films and running around with guns doesn’t come naturally to me,” he says. “My instinct is to run the other way but that doesn’t work on camera.
“But I would look at Daniel, who does it brilliantly, making it look very fluid and dynamic and ask him for advice.”
He says he had “instant chemistry” with Craig and Schreiber, which made acting as brothers all the more believable.
It also helped keep the sense of community authentic for the whole cast between takes.
“There were lots of jokes and lots of board games like backgammon,” says Bell.
He also found he learned a lot more about World War II than he ever did at school.
Defiance is one of a slew of other new movies about events of the period, including The Reader and Valkyrie.
Director Ed Zwick thinks these films could be coming out now because of a “fin-de-siecle anxiety” to tell the story of World War II to young people before those who lived through it are gone.
But it still took several years for the Legends of a Fall and Glory director to get this “tough” story off the ground.
“It was a real struggle. We just couldn’t get this made in the US,” says Craig.
“Bond helped, but I think that if I had chosen to make a romantic comedy it would have easier to raise the money.
“But this is a tough story and so thank God for the film company that finally stepped in to help us out. The Bielskis [the descendants] have been to see it and have reacted very well, so I am very glad.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7817409.stm
Daniel Craig’s latest movie Defiance sees the 007 star once again pushing himself to his physical limits.
There are guns, shooting and explosions, much as we have come to expect from the action hero.
But much more taxing were the sub-zero conditions in which the World War II Holocaust movie was filmed.
Nazi-occupied Belarus in 1941 is the setting for Defiance, which was shot in a winter-gripped forest in Lithuania.
“To keep warm we did a lot of drinking and I was wearing a little thermal on the sly but the cold definitely had an effect,” says Craig.
“We were there 12 hours a day, six days a week and it got really cold, but there was something about that experience. Nobody did this for the money.
“We were all in it together and we all huddled. There was male and female bonding - but not in that way.”
Thanks to 007, a lot more scripts are sent Craig’s way, but he remains very picky about what he does.
Therefore hearing that his attachment to Defiance was instantaneous says a lot.
“This came along, I read it and immediately said, ‘I want to make this movie. It’s a story I want to tell,’” he says.
Defiance tells the incredible true-life tale of the Bielski brothers, Jewish working-class farmers from the remote countryside of what is now independent Belarus, but was then under Soviet control.
When the Nazis invaded and began executing Jews, the brothers - who had also lost family - led a small group to safety in the forests.
Their aim at first was purely survival and to exact vengeance wherever they could.
But as word of their daring spread and more and more of the persecuted sought them out, the priority became saving as many Jews as possible.
Under the leadership of elder brother Tuvia (Craig), the mission was so successful that by the end of the war more than 1,200 emerged from the deep forests.
The story was published in 1993 after much research by Holocaust historian Dr Nechama Tec, but has remained largely unknown.
The film does not shy from showing the brutal reality of what the group’s resistance involved - including in one instance the group murder of a German soldier.
And, suggests Craig, perhaps the difficulty of dealing with bloody memories has contributed to keeping the story buried.
“It was much more complicated than we can ever portray on screen.
“They did commit gruesome acts and one of the reasons the story has not been told is because these people wanted to forget,” he says.
“But in those moments, it was very clear to me why - Tuvia was trying to keep spirits up and stop the group from infighting, so they had to be given their kill.
“He has responsibility for these people who are not on the face of it survivors. He has to teach and encourage them to survive and that’s what I find so fascinating.”
Less engaging for Craig, who left school at 16, was having to learn Russian - he says he is not a natural pupil.
“It was dreadful. I am just so bad at languages and so I had do it phonetically. I had a great coach who is also an actress, which helped, so I could sort of shout lines at her and then it was a leap of faith.”
Joining Craig in Defiance as the other Bielski brothers are Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell.
Schreiber plays the volatile Zus who struggles with what he considers to be Tuvia’s idealism while Bell plays the young Asael, forced to grow up fast.
And for the Billy Elliot star, the making of Defiance also proved a quick learning curve.
“Action films and running around with guns doesn’t come naturally to me,” he says. “My instinct is to run the other way but that doesn’t work on camera.
“But I would look at Daniel, who does it brilliantly, making it look very fluid and dynamic and ask him for advice.”
He says he had “instant chemistry” with Craig and Schreiber, which made acting as brothers all the more believable.
It also helped keep the sense of community authentic for the whole cast between takes.
“There were lots of jokes and lots of board games like backgammon,” says Bell.
He also found he learned a lot more about World War II than he ever did at school.
Defiance is one of a slew of other new movies about events of the period, including The Reader and Valkyrie.
Director Ed Zwick thinks these films could be coming out now because of a “fin-de-siecle anxiety” to tell the story of World War II to young people before those who lived through it are gone.
But it still took several years for the Legends of a Fall and Glory director to get this “tough” story off the ground.
“It was a real struggle. We just couldn’t get this made in the US,” says Craig.
“Bond helped, but I think that if I had chosen to make a romantic comedy it would have easier to raise the money.
“But this is a tough story and so thank God for the film company that finally stepped in to help us out. The Bielskis [the descendants] have been to see it and have reacted very well, so I am very glad.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7817409.stm
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Daskedusken
- Posts: 14137
- Joined: Thu May 31, 2007 8:14 pm
- Location: Always heading somewhere
DANIEL CRAIG - CRAIG'S ACCENT WORRY
DANIEL CRAIG was so worried about speaking Russian in new movie DEFIANCE, he practiced his lines in secret so nobody could hear him.
The James Bond star, who appears alongside fellow British actor Jamie Bell in the war drama, was nervous as he tried to master the language for the role.
And Bell reveals no one on set was confident about speaking their lines - because they sounded so bad.
He tells BBC Radio One, "Everyone was so nervous about their accents. We literally turned up on the set on the first day of rehearsals and everyone was saying their lines very quietly. No-one wanted to give away how bad their accent actually sounded, Daniel included. Anything that brought more authenticity to these characters, we thought was important."
The Billy Elliot star was equally as nervous about having to speak in a Polish accent for the movie and practised hard before takes - but is pleased with the final cut of the film, as it was as "true" as he could make it.
He adds, "I feel like you have to at least try. I didn't detect a single accent in it. And I feel like if you're really portraying real people who did something, in this case incredibly heroic, I feel like you have to be as true to them as possible.
"I actually got off lightly. Daniel (Craig) and Live (Schreiber) actually had to speak fluent Russian, which isn't the easiest language to master. So I got off lightly. I just had to do a kind of Belarusian accent."
http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/ar ... ry_1091301
DANIEL CRAIG was so worried about speaking Russian in new movie DEFIANCE, he practiced his lines in secret so nobody could hear him.
The James Bond star, who appears alongside fellow British actor Jamie Bell in the war drama, was nervous as he tried to master the language for the role.
And Bell reveals no one on set was confident about speaking their lines - because they sounded so bad.
He tells BBC Radio One, "Everyone was so nervous about their accents. We literally turned up on the set on the first day of rehearsals and everyone was saying their lines very quietly. No-one wanted to give away how bad their accent actually sounded, Daniel included. Anything that brought more authenticity to these characters, we thought was important."
The Billy Elliot star was equally as nervous about having to speak in a Polish accent for the movie and practised hard before takes - but is pleased with the final cut of the film, as it was as "true" as he could make it.
He adds, "I feel like you have to at least try. I didn't detect a single accent in it. And I feel like if you're really portraying real people who did something, in this case incredibly heroic, I feel like you have to be as true to them as possible.
"I actually got off lightly. Daniel (Craig) and Live (Schreiber) actually had to speak fluent Russian, which isn't the easiest language to master. So I got off lightly. I just had to do a kind of Belarusian accent."
http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/ar ... ry_1091301
Edward Zwick on Defiance
Defiance, starring Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell, opens nationwide on January 16. The movie is based on the book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans by Nechama Tec, originally published in 1993. The new edition of the book has a foreword by Edward Zwick, who directed the movie. In it, he shares the how he discovered the story of the Bielski brothers and why he was inspired to make a movie about them. The following is an excerpt from the foreword.
An inevitable rite of passage in any Jewish child’s informal initiation to adulthood is to study, with grim fascination, the grainy, out-of-focus images of hollow-eyed survivors in striped pajamas, the amateur photos of corpses piled high in freshly dug pits, or possibly the 16 mm handheld GI footage of living skeletons clinging to barbed wire during the liberation of the camps. Such grisly iconography of passivity and victimization was, during my childhood, and probably is still today, not only an article of faith, but also a source of secret shame. As an assimilated suburban kid growing up in the Midwest, I had thrilled to World War II stories about John Kennedy and PT 109 (Cliff Robertson in the movie version), the leatherneck marines at Guadalcanal (John Wayne), the flying fortresses over Germany (Gregory Peck), and so many more. In feeble contrast, Jewish heroes were the ancient biblical warriors evoked by uninspired Sunday school teachers—Bar Kochba and Judah Macabee wielding spears and jawbones, or young David with his little slingshot.
So when my friend and collaborator, Clay Frohman, came to me with a book called Defiance, I was skeptical.
“Not another Holocaust movie,” I said.
What was to be accomplished, I asked myself, in telling yet another story of familiar and unspeakable horror, especially when an entire canon of literature, not to mention films… have already dramatized it in the most exacting and harrowing detail? What’s more, the greatest historians and philosophers of our time have devoted entire careers to plumbing the roots and magnitude of its evil. What could I possibly add?
But Clay was insistent. Here, he said, was something fresh and utterly provocative. And so, somewhat grudgingly, I plunged into Nechama’s Tec’s remarkable book and found myself deeply moved. That was ten years ago. And the feelings I had upon that first reading have only grown stronger with time. To read of the Bielski brothers and their fight to create a safe haven in the midst of a hell-on-earth evokes in me something utterly primitive and deeply personal, a roiling wave of fear, awe, humility, and admiration. And outrage, too—that such a story was not better known.
Here, clutching captured Schmeisser submachine guns and “potatomasher” grenades, were Jewish fighters whose deeds were as stirring and brave as any I had ever encountered.
And what’s more, it was all true.
In an age when the term “hero” has been so overused as to become meaningless, the Bielskis remind us that real heroism is not the stuff of comic books. Rather, it is a set of decisions, sometimes impulsive, often made by simple men of whom nothing of the sort could ever have been expected. Their story is not simply one of courage or fortitude in the face of adversity; it includes any number of daunting moral decisions—whether to seek vengeance or to rescue, how to re-create a sense of community among those who have lost everything, how to maintain hope when all seems forsaken.
… [P]resuming to adapt a work of such great complexity and nuance such as Defiance involves confronting a host of issues the likes of which one rarely contemplates in making a movie. To anyone with a serious interest in the historical record, a fiction film purporting to tell a “true story” is a contradiction in terms, if not something much worse. Movies are not just reductionist—compressing months, even years, into a tidy two-hour experience (not counting time out at the popcorn stand); they also attempt to impose order and shape on events that were, in their moment, chaotic, complex, even random. In the name of drama, events are rearranged, ideas are simplified, and perhaps worst of all, the maddening, often unfathomable messiness of human behavior is made knowable for the sake of emotion.
Once before, I had confronted such a challenge. It derived from another little-known moment of history (and became the film Glory) in which African Americans had been willing to fight and die for their freedom in the American Civil War. While the stories of the 54th Massachusetts regiment and that of Jewish partisans are analogous only in part, one thing is true of both. Each of these histories presented an opportunity for some necessary historical redress. The iconic image of a black man in Union blue charging up a hill was long overdue, adding deserved complexity to the conventional textbook view of the Civil War by suggesting that freedom was not simply bestowed, but also fought for. Similarly, to see Jewish men and women standing shoulder to shoulder in the snowy woods, brandishing automatic weapons in their own defense, flies in the face of the most pernicious oversimplification of the Holocaust—one that minimizes the impulse of its victims to resist. And it is this impulse that Nechama Tec details with such ferocious clarity…
There is one caveat I feel obliged to offer by way of introduction. Anyone picking up this book in the hope of reading a tacky “novelization” of Defiance, the movie, is bound to be disappointed. This is a brilliant narrative, written with an insight and analysis that only a lifetime spent studying its subject can provide. Its rewards are for those who seek the richness and complexity a film can only suggest… I am grateful to Nechama Tec for her guidance, her generosity, and most of all her forbearance. From the very outset she understood the dilemma of trying to put her book on film. Even more important, she understood our intentions in trying to do so. I like to imagine a boy like myself, growing up in search of his identity and coming upon this story. And I’d like to think it is in that spirit that she has graciously forgiven us any number of exaggerations, compressions, and omissions, not to mention the limits of our imagination in capturing, on film, the extraordinary spirit of her work.
Edward Zwick
Santa Monica, Calif., 2008
http://blog.oup.com/2009/01/zwick_defiance/[/i]
Defiance, starring Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell, opens nationwide on January 16. The movie is based on the book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans by Nechama Tec, originally published in 1993. The new edition of the book has a foreword by Edward Zwick, who directed the movie. In it, he shares the how he discovered the story of the Bielski brothers and why he was inspired to make a movie about them. The following is an excerpt from the foreword.
An inevitable rite of passage in any Jewish child’s informal initiation to adulthood is to study, with grim fascination, the grainy, out-of-focus images of hollow-eyed survivors in striped pajamas, the amateur photos of corpses piled high in freshly dug pits, or possibly the 16 mm handheld GI footage of living skeletons clinging to barbed wire during the liberation of the camps. Such grisly iconography of passivity and victimization was, during my childhood, and probably is still today, not only an article of faith, but also a source of secret shame. As an assimilated suburban kid growing up in the Midwest, I had thrilled to World War II stories about John Kennedy and PT 109 (Cliff Robertson in the movie version), the leatherneck marines at Guadalcanal (John Wayne), the flying fortresses over Germany (Gregory Peck), and so many more. In feeble contrast, Jewish heroes were the ancient biblical warriors evoked by uninspired Sunday school teachers—Bar Kochba and Judah Macabee wielding spears and jawbones, or young David with his little slingshot.
So when my friend and collaborator, Clay Frohman, came to me with a book called Defiance, I was skeptical.
“Not another Holocaust movie,” I said.
What was to be accomplished, I asked myself, in telling yet another story of familiar and unspeakable horror, especially when an entire canon of literature, not to mention films… have already dramatized it in the most exacting and harrowing detail? What’s more, the greatest historians and philosophers of our time have devoted entire careers to plumbing the roots and magnitude of its evil. What could I possibly add?
But Clay was insistent. Here, he said, was something fresh and utterly provocative. And so, somewhat grudgingly, I plunged into Nechama’s Tec’s remarkable book and found myself deeply moved. That was ten years ago. And the feelings I had upon that first reading have only grown stronger with time. To read of the Bielski brothers and their fight to create a safe haven in the midst of a hell-on-earth evokes in me something utterly primitive and deeply personal, a roiling wave of fear, awe, humility, and admiration. And outrage, too—that such a story was not better known.
Here, clutching captured Schmeisser submachine guns and “potatomasher” grenades, were Jewish fighters whose deeds were as stirring and brave as any I had ever encountered.
And what’s more, it was all true.
In an age when the term “hero” has been so overused as to become meaningless, the Bielskis remind us that real heroism is not the stuff of comic books. Rather, it is a set of decisions, sometimes impulsive, often made by simple men of whom nothing of the sort could ever have been expected. Their story is not simply one of courage or fortitude in the face of adversity; it includes any number of daunting moral decisions—whether to seek vengeance or to rescue, how to re-create a sense of community among those who have lost everything, how to maintain hope when all seems forsaken.
… [P]resuming to adapt a work of such great complexity and nuance such as Defiance involves confronting a host of issues the likes of which one rarely contemplates in making a movie. To anyone with a serious interest in the historical record, a fiction film purporting to tell a “true story” is a contradiction in terms, if not something much worse. Movies are not just reductionist—compressing months, even years, into a tidy two-hour experience (not counting time out at the popcorn stand); they also attempt to impose order and shape on events that were, in their moment, chaotic, complex, even random. In the name of drama, events are rearranged, ideas are simplified, and perhaps worst of all, the maddening, often unfathomable messiness of human behavior is made knowable for the sake of emotion.
Once before, I had confronted such a challenge. It derived from another little-known moment of history (and became the film Glory) in which African Americans had been willing to fight and die for their freedom in the American Civil War. While the stories of the 54th Massachusetts regiment and that of Jewish partisans are analogous only in part, one thing is true of both. Each of these histories presented an opportunity for some necessary historical redress. The iconic image of a black man in Union blue charging up a hill was long overdue, adding deserved complexity to the conventional textbook view of the Civil War by suggesting that freedom was not simply bestowed, but also fought for. Similarly, to see Jewish men and women standing shoulder to shoulder in the snowy woods, brandishing automatic weapons in their own defense, flies in the face of the most pernicious oversimplification of the Holocaust—one that minimizes the impulse of its victims to resist. And it is this impulse that Nechama Tec details with such ferocious clarity…
There is one caveat I feel obliged to offer by way of introduction. Anyone picking up this book in the hope of reading a tacky “novelization” of Defiance, the movie, is bound to be disappointed. This is a brilliant narrative, written with an insight and analysis that only a lifetime spent studying its subject can provide. Its rewards are for those who seek the richness and complexity a film can only suggest… I am grateful to Nechama Tec for her guidance, her generosity, and most of all her forbearance. From the very outset she understood the dilemma of trying to put her book on film. Even more important, she understood our intentions in trying to do so. I like to imagine a boy like myself, growing up in search of his identity and coming upon this story. And I’d like to think it is in that spirit that she has graciously forgiven us any number of exaggerations, compressions, and omissions, not to mention the limits of our imagination in capturing, on film, the extraordinary spirit of her work.
Edward Zwick
Santa Monica, Calif., 2008
http://blog.oup.com/2009/01/zwick_defiance/[/i]
Premiere of “Defiance” with participation of Belarusian James Bond
Premiere of Defiance has taken place in London. The film is based on a true story from the World War II time in the forests of Belarus.
As the portal Open.by writes with the reference to BBC, film director Edward Zwick (The Last Samurai, Legends of the Fall) was inspired by screenplay by Clayton Frohman based on the novel of Nechama Tec “Defiance: Bielski partisans”, a real story of the Bielskis brothers. The brothers organized a Jewish partisan party, disobeying the Nazi who had occupied Belarus. Daniel Craig, known as James Bond star, is starring in the role of Tuvia Bielski, one of the four brothers. Another celebrity, Liev Schreiber (The Omen), performed as another brother.
“Kupalinka” was sung in the film
Impenetrable woods of Belarus were filmed in 30 kilometers from Vilnius. The film crew arrived to Lithuania hoping for a snowy winter, but there was hopeless thawing weather. So partisans’ deeds were shot against the background of artificial snow and silicone icicles.
No only weather have made to make modifications. For instance, Belarusian actors debated with Ed Zwick over the song partisans could sing around the fire. According to the idea of the director, they were signing a Russian national song “A Black Crow”, while according to the actors, they would rather singing “Kupalinka” which is dear to every Belarusian. The film crew liked the song. There were people among the crowd of extras who were singing well. Zwick even noted that partisans were singing like a professional choir. But it wasn’t a flattering remark.
“Partisans are tired after a battle!” the director was shaking his head. “And they must sing this way!”
So they had to sing again…
By the way, actors were pleased by Zwick’s manner of work.
“After every take he said: “Terrific! Wonderful!” and continued: “Retake the single scene!” Anna Myaleshka, an actress performing a poor Jewish girl, recalls. “And we repeated again and again and again… And each take was brilliant, simply ideal, perfect, according to the director!”,
Even Prima cigarettes are enjoyable beside Daniel Craig
Students of the Vilnius European Humanities University were taking part in the crowd of extras.
“Each of us wanted to stand near James Bond, but it was not so easy to get near him! Once a scene was shot where two Soviet partisans were accompanying Bielski-Craig to their party’s commander passing a group of smoking guerillas. It was announced that smokers are needed for filming the scene. Both smokers and non-smokers rushed forward! Four takes were needed for rehearsal, and seven for shooting the episode. All this time I was near Daniel Craig. By the way, we were smoking “Prima” cigarettes. Later I asked the Lithuanian artistic director are they captured cigarettes, and he sadly answered: “I wish they were!... I managed to find them in Vilnius at a price of 7 Lithuanian litas (2.5 litas are equal to $1) per pack with difficulty!” a second year student Ihar Stankevich.
Your tea, sir!
Daniel Craig was diligently learning phrases, repeating them in every key. He tried to concentrate on the Russian text before the beginning of each take. The Hollywood star wasn’t to say anything difficult. Sometimes it was just two words, like “Good afternoon!” But the sensation of the film set was his affected “I demand categorically!” from a dialogue with a Soviet commanding officer, where he “timidly” asked medicines for his party.
Craig was patient. And only once he lost his temper. He was to sit with a mug of hot tea in his hands. An assistant was pouring more and more boiling water into the mug so that the tea seemed hot. By the end of the day the tea turned absolutely opaque… So Craig rebelled: “After all, I am an Englishman. Why should I sit with this pig wash in my cup?!”
And the actor was given fresh tea at once.
Smiling through tears
When a war drama is shot, it’s almost like actors live through a tragedy themselves. That is why jokes in the breaks, funny blunders help to recover balance of mind.
When one of the scenes was filmed, a mobile phone of an old man who performed as a ghetto elder rang. Shooting is a long process, and the elderly man dozed off. Groggy after the sleep, he could not turn off the insistent signal. Shooting was paused, and the director tried to help, but could not manage the phone as well. Finally, Zwick switched off the phone, while the whole filming crew was laughing. And then he had to apologize to the elder, as he didn’t remember his phone’s PIN-code!
And actress Anna Myaleshka recalled how “Bond” was making others laugh.
“Craig was so amusing! He was telling lots of funny stories to his partners. I was filmed in an episode where Bielski offers Jews to flee form the ghetto, and I was standing in front if “Bond” the whole day. When the film crew was tired, he started to brace us up, to wink, and make faces. It was rather unexpected, and everybody had to control himself in order t not to laugh. Craig was communicating with everybody rather informally. And in the end of the working day he started to hug everybody, even extras. All women were in agony of utter delight from him!” the actress said.
http://www.charter97.org/en/news/2009/1/10/13827/
Premiere of Defiance has taken place in London. The film is based on a true story from the World War II time in the forests of Belarus.
As the portal Open.by writes with the reference to BBC, film director Edward Zwick (The Last Samurai, Legends of the Fall) was inspired by screenplay by Clayton Frohman based on the novel of Nechama Tec “Defiance: Bielski partisans”, a real story of the Bielskis brothers. The brothers organized a Jewish partisan party, disobeying the Nazi who had occupied Belarus. Daniel Craig, known as James Bond star, is starring in the role of Tuvia Bielski, one of the four brothers. Another celebrity, Liev Schreiber (The Omen), performed as another brother.
“Kupalinka” was sung in the film
Impenetrable woods of Belarus were filmed in 30 kilometers from Vilnius. The film crew arrived to Lithuania hoping for a snowy winter, but there was hopeless thawing weather. So partisans’ deeds were shot against the background of artificial snow and silicone icicles.
No only weather have made to make modifications. For instance, Belarusian actors debated with Ed Zwick over the song partisans could sing around the fire. According to the idea of the director, they were signing a Russian national song “A Black Crow”, while according to the actors, they would rather singing “Kupalinka” which is dear to every Belarusian. The film crew liked the song. There were people among the crowd of extras who were singing well. Zwick even noted that partisans were singing like a professional choir. But it wasn’t a flattering remark.
“Partisans are tired after a battle!” the director was shaking his head. “And they must sing this way!”
So they had to sing again…
By the way, actors were pleased by Zwick’s manner of work.
“After every take he said: “Terrific! Wonderful!” and continued: “Retake the single scene!” Anna Myaleshka, an actress performing a poor Jewish girl, recalls. “And we repeated again and again and again… And each take was brilliant, simply ideal, perfect, according to the director!”,
Even Prima cigarettes are enjoyable beside Daniel Craig
Students of the Vilnius European Humanities University were taking part in the crowd of extras.
“Each of us wanted to stand near James Bond, but it was not so easy to get near him! Once a scene was shot where two Soviet partisans were accompanying Bielski-Craig to their party’s commander passing a group of smoking guerillas. It was announced that smokers are needed for filming the scene. Both smokers and non-smokers rushed forward! Four takes were needed for rehearsal, and seven for shooting the episode. All this time I was near Daniel Craig. By the way, we were smoking “Prima” cigarettes. Later I asked the Lithuanian artistic director are they captured cigarettes, and he sadly answered: “I wish they were!... I managed to find them in Vilnius at a price of 7 Lithuanian litas (2.5 litas are equal to $1) per pack with difficulty!” a second year student Ihar Stankevich.
Your tea, sir!
Daniel Craig was diligently learning phrases, repeating them in every key. He tried to concentrate on the Russian text before the beginning of each take. The Hollywood star wasn’t to say anything difficult. Sometimes it was just two words, like “Good afternoon!” But the sensation of the film set was his affected “I demand categorically!” from a dialogue with a Soviet commanding officer, where he “timidly” asked medicines for his party.
Craig was patient. And only once he lost his temper. He was to sit with a mug of hot tea in his hands. An assistant was pouring more and more boiling water into the mug so that the tea seemed hot. By the end of the day the tea turned absolutely opaque… So Craig rebelled: “After all, I am an Englishman. Why should I sit with this pig wash in my cup?!”
And the actor was given fresh tea at once.
Smiling through tears
When a war drama is shot, it’s almost like actors live through a tragedy themselves. That is why jokes in the breaks, funny blunders help to recover balance of mind.
When one of the scenes was filmed, a mobile phone of an old man who performed as a ghetto elder rang. Shooting is a long process, and the elderly man dozed off. Groggy after the sleep, he could not turn off the insistent signal. Shooting was paused, and the director tried to help, but could not manage the phone as well. Finally, Zwick switched off the phone, while the whole filming crew was laughing. And then he had to apologize to the elder, as he didn’t remember his phone’s PIN-code!
And actress Anna Myaleshka recalled how “Bond” was making others laugh.
“Craig was so amusing! He was telling lots of funny stories to his partners. I was filmed in an episode where Bielski offers Jews to flee form the ghetto, and I was standing in front if “Bond” the whole day. When the film crew was tired, he started to brace us up, to wink, and make faces. It was rather unexpected, and everybody had to control himself in order t not to laugh. Craig was communicating with everybody rather informally. And in the end of the working day he started to hug everybody, even extras. All women were in agony of utter delight from him!” the actress said.
http://www.charter97.org/en/news/2009/1/10/13827/