Timo Jacobs
1.What is the story behind your film?
It's about desires, personal needs and failure. Charlie Schwarzer's great career in comedy just won't take off and his forgetfulness is diagnosed as dementia – at the same time as his wife is involved in a serious car accident. Charlie sets off on an odyssey to get back up onto life's stage and we stand witness to two people who are lost in search of belonging. STAND UP! is a film about the beauty of failure and transience.
2. What should people take away, gain, realize after watching your film?
Even when everything around you is really dark, you can find the glow-worm once you start to look for it. Also after a bright shiny day, you have to close the curtain to catch a better sleep. But what's in between the darkness and the light?
3. Do you think that films can change people for the better or for the worse?
Yes. At Least I'd like to believe that's possible. And I prefer films that are open to different interpretations – and for that very reason, their potential to affect a change in people.
4. How was the creation of your project at the time of COVID-19?
Fortunately it was free from covid, but it soon became fully infected by movie making.
5. What creation style did you use in the production of your project? What cameraman elements did you use?
Neo Film Noir Style Elements
6. How did you select the actors for your project?
I have a casting process where I prefer to do interviews with potential actors, meaning I consider and adjust my questions depending on the reactions that they give me in connection with the story that I want to tell. I like to see how we get along and how the instincts play together.
7. Why do you think your film should appeal to distributors?
The movie fills a certain gap. It strikes a balance between being serious and funny at the same time. It tells the drama of humanity, that we cannot live forever and that we sometimes have to learn to let go. We strive to find a meaning in life and a certain kind of fulfilment, but who cares apart from ourselves? What kind of corpse do we want to leave behind? Or is death just a rumour invented by life?
8. At which festival has your film been screened?
The movie was shown at festivals around the world and luckily it has picked up to 46 Awards so far, and I'm really happy that imdb has given it a very good overview.
9. How did your acquaintances react when they first saw the film?
We had a kind of test screening and showed a rough version of the movie, and the reactions were bizarre because of the film's complexity, but I think that is quite good, because I was pretty determined about the direction that I wanted to take the movie, and where I wanted it to arrive at in the end.
10. If you could change something in your film, what would it be?
Nothing. Don't look back. Maybe if you ask me five years from now I might see it differently but for now I wouldn't change a single hair on my head.
11. Which movies are your favorites and why?
This question is my at least favourite one because I like too many movies for their uniqueness. To name just a few would make me feel like I'm disrespecting some others. Let me give you an all-rounder:
A movie is not there to show you a certain reality, it's there to give you some magic. It should make you understand more about what's going on in between the consciousness and the unconscious.
Anyway, I like to tame my wandering mind with these evergreens:
„The Swimmer" Frank Perry
„Life of Brain" Terry Jones
„Breakfast at Tiffany's" Blake Edwards
„What's Up, Doc?" Peter Bogdanovich
„Heat" Michael Mann
„A Hidden Life" Terrence Malik
12. What topics do you like to address in your stories?
Life, Death and Laughter – with a capital 'L' a capital 'D' and another capital 'L'.
13. What is your motivation in making films?
It's a fantastic medium with which to communicate our desires and our behaviour. A cinema is like a church for a cineaste, you contemplate life and believe in something bigger, and the process of getting there is the beauty of survival, we all know there is no chance to escape from the grim reaper, but that doesn't matter at all, just as long there is fantasy, there is creation, and there are movies.
14. Which contemporary filmmakers motivate you the most?
A true motivation comes from within you and I try to figure out what that really means to me and why. Even that is constantly changing, but that is what motivates me. To admire others too much is triggering the wrong desires.
15. What projects do you plan to shoot in the future?
The table is full of cookie crumbs, so let me tell you once the table's been cleaned. But there's a series documentary that I've just finished Title: Der Tanz ums schwarze Loch (Benches of Berlin)