In July 2007 I lived for two weeks

in a little Sicilian townlet.

Gangi is in the Madonie, south-east of Palermo

at an altitude of around 1000 metres.

The town is on a hillock

like the point of a pyramid.

The narrow streets are too steep for traffic.

But in spite of it’s medieval streetscape, Gangi is full of life.

A couple of thousand people, young and old,

live together in quite a confined space,

but in a somewhat utopian fashion.

Around evening time I would always go from the guesthouse down to the plains,

from ‘Gangi Vecchio’ to the Piazza Belvedere,

up to the highest place in the little town

to drink a glass,

observe the locals and look far out over the country.

Bit by bit I got to know a few people,

the mayor, the cultural advisers, a teacher

and the few police officers in Gangi.

All of them cineastes!

They acknowledged and talked to me as one as well …

In Gangi there had been a cinema up until a short time ago,

but now it was closed,

and the posters it displayed

were already a couple of years old.

In the old guesthouse I worked on the screenplay for the film

I wanted to shoot nearby in the city of Palermo.

I’d started in my home town of Düsseldorf

and now I was sitting here writing the ending.

The story had changed over time.

The main character had been a photographer from the beginning,

who I’d given the name Finn.

I had the actor and singer of the punk band Die Toten Hosen

Campino (the German equivalent of The Clash, only still playing)

in mind for the role.

I’d wanted to make a film about a photographer for years.

I considered it a vocation

in which one could uniquely perceive

the passage of time,

and how the digital revolution slowly but surely

seized and altered every aspect of our lives.

There weren’t many films about photographers,

not many feature films at least.

The only one that really meant anything to me

was Antonioni’s Blow-Up,

one of the great modern classics,

a mysterious film,

in which Antonioni explores the nature of photography,

but also the life of a photographer.

As a film student I watched this film over and over again …

The great theme of my film

was closely connected to the essence of photography.

To ‘watch death at work …’

Was it Cocteau who first said that about film?

Or Roland Barthes about photography?

In the course of working on the book

another figure stepped into the spotlight:

Death, personified.

At first, I eyed this notion with some suspicion,

but then it seemed to me that I could do more having Death as a player

than with just the mere idea of death.

And in Dennis Hopper

I soon found a performer for this undoubtedly tricky task.

There was one thing I had to admit to myself, of course:

just as Blow-Up was an unavoidable force behind my project,

another film’s significance simply could not be overlooked:

Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.

As a young medical student in Freiburg

I watched a retrospective of all the films

Ingmar Bergman had made up to that point.

I remember the force with which

The Seventh Seal hit me at the time.

I took a long wander through the night

to process what I’d seen.

That was long before cinema entered

my life as a career possibility …

I’ve watched the film many times throughout my life.

This is why I surely have Ingmar Bergman to thank

for the idea, but also the courage

to include Death as a person.

And that’s why there was a dedication

on my draft of the screenplay for quite some time

for both of these films,

for Blow-Up and The Seventh Seal.

One day at the end of July

I went back to my café up in the town,

and the owner greeted me rather sadly.

Had I already heard the news on the radio?

No, I didn’t know anything about it.

Ingmar Bergman had died.

He looked at me mournfully.

We sat there for a long time without sharing a word, until the sun went down.

What a loss!

The others already knew about the news

when they arrived.

It was a solemn evening in Gangi.

Bergman grew dear to my heart

during his time

as President of the European Film Academy.

He had invested himself

heart and soul

in the idea of a united pan-European institution

and was one of its founding fathers.

I worked by his side for a couple of years

as Chairman of the EFA

and I was constantly impressed by his warmth

and candour towards us all.

His death in July 2007 felt as if

an entire age of cinema had come to an end.

The next morning I drove by car

across the only crossroads in Gangi,

where one either went up into the town

or down to circumnavigate the mountain through the vast landscape.

My friend, the policeman, was directing traffic.

When he saw me, he waved me over.

I pulled over next to him and wound down the window.

He had tears in his eyes

as he told me the news:

Michelangelo Antonioni had died the same night!

He knew that we had shot Beyond the Clouds together

and he consoled me as if I were a member of his family.

He didn’t want to let go of my hand!

And yes, we were a kind of film family in Gangi too.

Both of the last greats of European film

left us on the same night.

I didn’t understand at the time how much

the screenplay I was working on owed to both of them.

For a couple of days it was as if I’d been hit over the head.

I drove to Michelangelo’s funeral in Ferrara,

stood beside Tonino Guerra and watched

a mason

build a wall inside the Antonioni family tomb

until you could no longer see the coffin.

But I had to, in both senses, keep writing.

And Blow-Up and The Seventh Seal

would remain my reference films.

I changed the dedication, however,

and it would later appear at the end of...