Drita Pelinku in “Actor and character” | How I found the “seeds” of the Bude`s role!

Drita Pelinku in “Actor and character” | How I found the “seed” of the Bude`s role”

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The screenplay of the movie “When the foundations were laid” was taken from the drama “Pomegranate flowers” by the well-known playwright Kolë Jakova. So the genesis of the role of the Bude did not start with the telefilm, but in the work for the staging of this play at the “Teatri Popullor”.

“From the first reading of the work, this character attracted my attention, as I have always been attracted by the roles that carry dramatic conflict, whether these heroes carry thoughts of the work, have a richer emotional world. The most interesting and beloved phase in my work as an actress is the decomposition of the emotional world of the character, and yes I didn’t manage to discover the inner world of the character, I’m not calm, I act as if the role is yellow and as a conclusion… these are the reasons that attracted me to the role of Bude thirst for money’ and the practical difficulties to secure it, created an acting interest in me to find the artistic means necessary for the detailed unfolding of her inner world, where one can clearly see the moral and spiritual degradation that has nothing to do with in common with the young man emerging from the revolution and to underline its great danger as a class enemy. Bude is a typical character, she is the offspring of the country’s feudal bourgeoisie. As a fruit of this layer, it carries many of its features such as selfishness, thirst for money; it is guided by the principle “Man to man is a wolf”. This worldview sharpens to the maximum not real intelligence, but cunning, the ability to get out of the situation, to devise traps and intrigues….. For the achievement of the goal, the means are not important. She has unwavering confidence in his abilities. l knows well the intentions of Beqir Aga and Halil Nure and that is why they are afraid of her. Bude could not recognize only one thing, the revolution, its strength. “Where did you learn this great school, O Laje” — is the only moment of her sincerity. This should be underlined — I said to myself. Thus began my work on the rational decomposition of the picture.

Meanwhile, the collective rehearsals continued under the direction of Qenan Toro for the breakdown of the work, the definition of events and tasks, the main idea, etc. I looked forward to rehearsal time to consult with the director and partners about any concerns that arose from individual work. The creation of a certain figure is the fruit of the individual who creates it, but it should never be forgotten that a great role is played by the partners with whom your figure enters into a relationship.

Thus, in daily tests we tried, we searched. But the more I worked, the farther away the figure got, the more unfamiliar it became. We had collected material about the economic, social and political conditions of the time. Many of us had lived that time ourselves and yet I could not find the key to my role, what in professional language we call “the seed of the role”.

I was still far from the moment to see the general features in a complex way, in a single figure, that is, to concretize and individualize them in the figure of the Bude.

What was I missing? Mainly the regional knowledge, what made me special”. This feature would distinguish my Bude as a class enemy from Mukadezi, for example, who I played in the movie “Radio station”.

What was the degree of recognition of her? (We are talking about the Shkodra bourgeoisie, even Muslims with the names Beqir, Zenel, Halil). What place did these women occupy in the family, how did they live, how did they eat bread (at the table or …..), how did they dress, how did they make themselves, etc., etc. We visited the museums of Shkodra, the village where the events take place, but the greatest help was given to me by various people in the Shkodra families I entered. They got to know me with so much information that when I returned to Tirana it seemed as if I had known Bude myself. I asked them, for example, about the adaptation of these ladies after liberation.

This was a delicate point for me, because I wanted to concretize my adaptations on stage. An old man told me more or less these words: “When they fell from the fig tree, they began to treat us, their former servants, cordially. Someone even insulted them with a joke, but the ladies turned a blind eye and a deaf ear and passed the situation with tricks and sweetness”.

And he showed me some concrete examples of this nature. “A blind eye and a deaf ear”. This expression became the key with which my Bude would maneuver. This phenomenon of time, this general phenomenon had to be individualized in its image. It was this phenomenon that gave me the ideo-emotional sound of the picture, it gave me a solution to my stage adaptations regarding the people of the people.

Entering these families, I noticed that the elderly had a characteristic, typical provincial greeting! This made me happy. I started to try my hand on my heart, chin and forehead. I practiced this exercise every day until I got used to it and I used it in Bude to cover the local color. A lot of help was given by those good people, who were found and brought me photos to familiarize me with the clothing, combing, and even the plastic of the role took the initiative from these photos. The collection of this new material led me to define the “seed of the role”.

I called: snake! Releases poison and slides with stunts. This determination gave me impetus, gave me inspiration to continue with more confidence the work of creating the picture. I said to myself, the head of this snake must be visible, the poison must be visible. In the Bude scene with Zeneli, I would concretize this opinion more openly. In close cooperation with the well-known actor Ndrek Shkjezi, we decided in the final dialogue (where Bude encouraged him to kill Halil Nure) to try to convey to the viewer the thought: “bourgeois worldview, man to man is a wolf” brings moral and spiritual degradation, it strips the individual of every trace of humanity, turns him into a poisonous beast that must be annihilated in order not to release the poison.

That’s how the work continued for days with persistence…

When the filming of the telefilm “When the foundations were laid” (directed by Vladimir Prifti) began, I was very happy that I would play the role of Bude again. The “fever” of the role started again. Can someone ask: But why?

You had played the role so many times. But this is precisely where the danger lay. I had created the stage Bude, responding to the demands of the stage for the creation of a figure. For example, in the finale my Bude of the scene (which also had a wider dramatic scope), when she finds out that the gold barrels have been found, in order not to give the lowdown, he bursts into a wild laugh, removing his remarks to Zeneli, who falls to the ground: “Keep yourself, you fool…, they will come out of your nose”.

We had decided this solution not only to put an end to it, but to underline the great danger of this snake, which seeks to overturn the victory of the revolution.

Well, the sound bursts of the Buddha, like the voice of the beast that is busy in the cage, when it came to the film were not worth at all. The stage and the screen require other means of expression. And, while I had 30 years of experience on stage, I was almost a beginner in film. I had to get used to the script, which was much more synthesized than the drama. I had to increase the dynamics of the external actions and intensify the internal action. Adjusting to the camera was again the difficulty. I had played Bude role many times on stage and I was afraid of the “mechanism” in front of the camera.

The scenic self is closely related to the “likeness” of the environment. During the shoot, would I be able to stop myself?

This last worry went away as soon as we started the first shooting. We were going to the beautiful village of Zogaj located in Shkoder, where the “meeting with Hava and Selim” would be filmed. Approaching the shooting location, I felt that I had a lot of emotion.

“No, this emotion hurts me!” I scolded myself. The moment came. The director assigned me the point where I would get off to fill up with water. I looked around. Down there, Hava and Selim pulling the donkey, to the right the lake that glistened in the sunlight. Everything was concrete, real; the distance, the stones, the water, the limb in my hand, the animal, the bushes. This real environment gave me a new sense of self, where it was not included in the “stage”. Emotions disappeared, I snatched the body and hurried to fill water, camouflaging with this action the exit from the house.

In the real scene of digging the hole to hide the “pots of gold” (so much so that I even cut my hand), the darkness of the night where we didn’t see where we threw our feet, mud, bushes and later water to wash away the tracks, the nose…. .they helped me to get into the circumstances of the role, creating the feeling of anxiety and tension that were quite necessary to encourage the actions with Zenel. During the whole time we were filming, they were worried about the company. Now in another direction. To know as much as possible the language and requirements of the film, for the complete realization of this complex figure.

DRITA PELINKU (Published in “Scene and Screen” Magazine – No. 1 / 1986 / p. 42-43 / Personal Collection of the page.  

June 17, 2020 | (C) Copying is prohibited, reserved material.

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Albanian Cinematography – since 2013

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