Cinema’s Thoreau Is Begging You Not to Make Another Movie or Write Another Book

Victor Kossakovsky has no time for fools, especially when it comes to directors and cinema. He’s even came up with ten rules for would-be helmers, the main one being: “Don’t film if you can live without filming.”

He nods. It’s 10:30 AM, and the no-frills Russian filmmaker, with his graying beard, disheveled silver locks, and bohemian charm joins me in a Mondrian Park Avenue Hotel suite. A publicist monitors the door as the director/screenwriter/editor/cinematographer and winner of 100 worldwide awards for his past work, chats up his critically acclaimed paean to tumultuous water, Aquarela. Variety describes this current effort as a “grandiose, sense-pummeling documentary ride.” The British Film Institute settles for “poetic and multi-sensorial . . . a thundering technical achievement.”

Victor Kossakovsky insists: “In life, we are doing two things. We are getting older and spoiling water. These are the only two things we are doing. We are doing nothing else.”

Back to his rule: “I guess I steal it from Tolstoy,” Kossakovsky laughs, which he does a lot. “I believe Tolstoy wrote something somewhere in his diaries or somewhere. . . . This is my way. I believe we live in a time when there are too many products, too many films, too many books, too many music . . . and it’s actually pollution…