In today’s age of ethereal media, where films seep within hard drives and emerge on command, even DVDs and Blu-Ray formats seem like attempts to hold onto the past. The VHS tape contains a spooled tape – thus closer to film reels – along with a hollowness, room for past spirits to inspire, or haunt. David Cronenberg’s early meditation on the medium, Videodrome, suggests that the permanent ownership of video will leave its permanence in the mind. Today, the videotape remains a bizarre forefather, one that most of us have sold off and forgotten as video grew sleeker, to disc, then disintegrated into digital code.

Like any pop cultural tradition, the videotape has its diehards, who are the diverting guests in Josh Johnson’s new documentary, Rewind This! Their fanaticism veers the film toward an eccentric tribute, like Seth Gordon’s The King of Kong, and like that entry Johnson’s details the unique history behind his subject. Truffaut spoke about the great age of film going, but most of us after his time found our love at the video store. A movie on the cable schedule didn’t belong to you as much as one you could lift off the shelf – the former films were usually happy accidents.

I caught up with Johnson over email before his film screened at Philadelphia’s Awesome Fest.

Matthew Sorrento: Have you always been interested in retro subjects as a filmmaker?

Josh Johnson: I’ve always had a really broad range of interests as a filmmaker, from surrealist comedies to intimate dramas. The decision to make a film about the video revolution speaks more to the impact it had on me on a personal level than to any fixation on the past.

I assume you must be very interested in interviewing and documenting oddballs, too…

I’m an oddball myself, and I identify with people who are passionate, regardless of the form in which that passion manifests. I like celebrating people for the way they are, especially individuals who aren’t ordinarily celebrated or recognized.

What aspect(s) of this project attracted you initially? What part of it is most fond to you?

Initially, it was the realization that there were thousands of films released on VHS that had never been released any other way. I thought it was interesting that there was a huge portion of film history that was at risk of disappearing, and nobody was talking about it. That idea led to exploring other aspects of the home video revolution, including the history of its creation and the different ways it has impacted global culture. The part of that story I am most fond of is the feeling of limitless discovery that came along with the advent of video, when anything and everything was released into the marketplace.

How do you personally feel about VHS tapes, over other formats, say?

I feel a powerful sense of nostalgia towards them as artifacts of a precious time in my life. I also think they are a compromised and inferior way to view a film. I’d always prefer to see a 35mm print screened theatrically, or watch a high-definition transfer. However, there are so many films that can only be accessed on VHS, and I want to see those films in whatever form I can.

How did you come across the idea to feature odd video releases, like Bubba Smith’s exercise video and Corey Haim’s biographical tape?

They are all tapes that are discussed by the interview subjects in the film. You can find a lot of these clips on YouTube, at least in pieces. Showing examples of these tapes was always a part of the plan though. I wanted to show the whole spectrum of material that is still only available on VHS, from art film classics to workout tapes. I think it is important to make the argument that all of this material can provide entertainment, and thus it is all worthy of preservation.

This type of footage makes your film seem like a tribute similar to Mark Hartley’s Not Quite Hollywood. Can you comment?

They are both loving and informative tributes to fondly remembered industries that hadn’t been properly documented. There is definitely a link between the two films. I think the main difference is that Rewind This! deals with a subject that had a wider reach, rather than focusing on a particular region. The advent of video had a major impact in every part of the world, and that impact was not always the same everywhere.

What films did you return to for inspiration?

Our team didn’t look at a lot of specific films for inspiration, but we did have a lot of conversations about what works best in other documentaries. In particular, we had a lot of discussions about how to present subcultures or eccentric individuals in a way that was loving, but didn’t ignore their eccentricity. Examples we discussed for comparison were Marwencol, Crumb, and Best Worst Movie.

I’m sure many viewers are interested in how you accessed your film’s talking heads.

We started with people we knew, and had access to. Those early interviewees suggested other people we should talk to, and it grew from there. Once we had a presence online, we actually had people start reaching out to us and asking to be in the movie. We also had a wish list, and getting some of those names took a lot of effort, while some were surprisingly easy. The period of time the film documents was a great period for many of the people featured in the film, so they were excited to go on the record.

I imagine that the streaming video age inspired your project. Can you tell me how so?

The streaming age is all about having immediate access to the media around us, on our own terms. That attitude towards media began with the home video revolution. It was the first time the audience had control over what they wanted to watch, and when they wanted to watch it. That shift in perception is irreversible. It has created a fundamental change in what we feel entitled to as consumers.

Did you feel obliged to cover details like aspect ratio issues and videotape’s involvement in the porn industry?

Yes, because they are definitely major parts of the home video story. The flaws of the format are just as important as the strengths, and that area of exploration offered fantastic opportunities for humor, which is extremely helpful when getting across a lot of information. And the adult entertainment industry had an impact on video that stretched well beyond porn, so the story would have felt incomplete without including it.

Would you like to discuss anything else about what you wanted to achieve with this project?

The video store was a major source of entertainment and education for a huge percentage of the population for several decades. The ability to document ourselves and the world around us with low-cost technology is something that is now commonplace for every person with a smart phone. The home video revolution touched every living person, even if they don’t realize it. I wanted to show those connections, and explore both the past and the future of video, in a very human way. I wanted the film to be dense with information, but also warm and funny. I hope people will walk away from the film feeling unreasonably good.

Matthew Sorrento teaches film at Rutgers University in Camden, NJ. He is the author of The New American Crime Film (McFarland, 2012) and a contributor to the forthcoming Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the War Film.

Beat the Devil

David A. Ellis talks to two legendary script supervisors.

Many people when watching a film don’t give a thought to all the hard work involved in bringing the movie to the screen. One job that rarely attracts attention is continuity. Part of the job of the continuity person, or script supervisor, is to make sure everything in the scene remains the same throughout the various set-ups taken at different times. A scene may take hours or days to shoot, with several camera angles used, and it is the job of continuity to make sure an actor’s hair and attire remain the same as well as anything else that is visible on the screen. It is a very responsible job and before Polaroid cameras and video assist, the continuity person had to make many notes and sketches. Since DVDs became popular some people watch films over again and can play scenes in slow motion and freeze frames. So after a few plays any continuity errors, such as long shot, person wears tie, close up, tie is missing, can become noticeable.

Angela Allen and Pamela Mann Francis are two notable script supervisors who have worked on many top features. Francis was known as Pamela Mann before marrying notable cinematographer and director Freddie Francis (1917-2007). Allen born in 1929 has worked on many memorable films including The Third Man (1949), The African Queen (1951) and Women in Love (1969), directed by Ken Russell (1927-2011).

ANGELA ALLEN was born in Maida Vale, London and after leaving school went to work for a theatrical agency. She originally wanted to work in the make up department but in those days a requirement of the job was that you had to draw and she says she was no good at that.

“I’d heard of continuity and I thought I’ll do that,” says Allen. “I’d learned shorthand typing, which was required for the job and started knocking on doors. My first job in that capacity was at Isleworth Studios at the age of eighteen. My first film as assistant continuity girl was Night Beat (1947) directed by Harold Huth [1882-1967]. This was followed by Mine own Executioner (1947), directed by Anthony Kimmins [1901-1964]. I was also an assistant on Bonnie Prince Charlie [1948], also directed by Kimmins, but finished the picture as continuity girl because the lady left to get married.”

The Third Man

Allen worked uncredited on the second unit of The Third Man, working on the sewer unit. Some of the sewer scenes were sets back in the studio. Assistant director Guy Hamilton was the one responsible for the famous zither music in the film. He had heard it being played in a bar and got the player to record it for the film. The studio didn’t want it, saying it wasn’t a proper score but the director Carol Reed (1906-1976) insisted and the rest is history. Allen says Reed was one of the best directors she ever worked for and learned a lot from him on The Third Man.

“I think he was my greatest teacher,” Allen says. “He was a brilliant technician, he knew how to make things match. You learned what you needed to look at and what you didn’t. I used to take notes to the cutting room for him and that is where I learned a great deal about how you can change things. I think he was underestimated in England and in my opinion he was as great as David Lean.”

The first feature she worked on alone was Old Mother Riley, Headmistress (1950), starring Arthur Lucan and Kitty McShane.

One of the tools of the continuity trade is the stopwatch. Allen explains why it is used.

“The stopwatch is one of the main ingredients of the job. Normally you get a script and have to time it. You haven’t seen the location or know who the actors are but you read and act it out around the house. You have to time the original script and all the versions that come after. Each has to be broken down. A progress report has to be made. This states what time the first shot was called, the lunch break and any hold-ups that occur because something broke down. When Pam Francis and I started every shot had to be typed in detail. This included what lenses were being used. You had to record when the camera started to track, when it stopped and when someone stood up. The dialogue would be typed in red and the action and descriptions in black. When I started we didn’t have the Polaroid camera, we had to draw and I was an incredibly bad artist. We got the Polaroid around 1950.”

The Night of the Iguana

She worked with the great director John Huston (1906-1987) on fourteen occasions. The films were The African Queen (1951), Beat the Devil (1953), Moulin Rouge (1953), Moby Dick (1956), Heaven Knows Mr Allison (1957), The Roots of Heaven (1958), The Barbarian and the Geisha (1958), The Unforgiven (1960), The Misfits (1961), Freud (1962), Night of the Iguana (1964), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and Wise Blood (1979).

Producer Sam Spiegel (1901-1985) interviewed her for the job of continuity on The African Queen. He thought because she was the youngest continuity girl in the business at the time she would be able to cope with working in Africa. Asked what Huston was like to work with she says,

“John never lost his temper. On African Queen he trusted me when Katherine Hepburn argued about what she was wearing. I told her she would have to change and she said ‘No, I don’t.’ John said, ‘That’s Angies job, we will go with what she says.’ I didn’t find out for another six weeks if I’d done the right thing, which was nerve racking. Fortunately I was right. David Lean’s continuity girl Maggie Unsworth once said to me, ‘One thing you mustn’t do if they ask you a question is dither and if you make a mistake admit it.’ I’ve always thought that to be good advice.”

Talking about Huston’s Beat the Devil Allen says,

“It was fun because you never knew what the story was going to be – everyday it used to change. We used to laugh so much when Robert Morley and Peter Lorre ad libed. Humphrey Bogart wasn’t an ad libber but the others were. It was a mad film; we never knew what the story was from day to day.”

Allen received an MBE in 1996, a BFI Industry Award and the Michael Balcon Award in 2005 presented by John Huston’s daughter Anjelica.

PAMELA MANN FRANCIS was born in London and went to school in Wembley Park, leaving at sixteen. We talked about her days as a script supervisor (continuity girl). Script supervisor was the American term and later used in the UK. Angela Allen was instrumental in the term being adopted in the UK. Francis, born in 1927 said the job attracted mainly women, possibly because of the enormous amount of typing that is required. Before becoming involved in the film industry she worked in advertising and music publishing. Her debut in the film business was for the Rank Organisation at Imperial House in Regent Street, London. She then moved to the publicity department for Wessex Films based at Pinewood Studios. It was the early days of actor Dirk Bogarde, who was under contract to Wessex Films. Her first film on publicity was Derby Day (1952) directed by Herbert Wilcox (1890-1977).

She eventually became secretary to producer and director David Lean (1908-1991) Asked how this came about she says,

“I was associate producer Norman Leslie Spencer’s secretary working on scripts at the Alexander Korda organisation at 146 Piccadilly, now gone. I didn’t work for David until he left Pinewood to join Korda. The first picture I worked with him on was The Sound Barrier (1952), shot at Shepperton studios.”

Francis remembers that David Lean had a saying, “Never come out of the same hole twice,” meaning the next film should be different.

Her first outing in continuity was on Summertime (1955), directed by David Lean, taking over from Maggie Unsworth, credited Margaret Shipway, who had taken ill. On that film Francis was the producer’s secretary, production secretary and continuity person, all for the one salary and no credit. At that time she wasn’t a member of the ACT (Association of Cinematograph Technicians) but because it was a foreign based film she was allowed to do the work.

She finally got into the ACT. Angela Allen, a good friend, spoke up for Francis at the ACT saying “Pam has been in the business for many years and hasn’t done the business any harm, so let her come into the ACT.” She then worked on Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) as a production secretary, which required ACT membership. Francis says it was a real train and bridge that was blown up on the film, photographed with five cameras.

She said that Lean wanted Charles Laughton for the part of colonel Nicholson, played in the film by Alec Guinness. Laughton didn’t accept saying he wouldn’t be able to lose weight.

Francis moved on to continuity and worked on the TV series Dial 999 a co-production between Britain’s ABC and the US company Ziv starring Robert Beatty and made at Elstree studios. Early features were In the Nick (1960, directed by Ken Hughes [1922-2001]) and Let’s Get Married (1960) directed by Peter Graham Scott (1923-2007).

She says,

“I always wanted to do continuity work but it took me a long time because at that time they had unions and when I first started in the publicity department I was in NATKE (National Association of Theatrical and Kine Employees). It took me a long time to transfer to ACT, which was required for continuity.”

Asked if she had help in the job, she replies,

“No, I didn’t have an assistant, I worked on my own. As far as the second unit is concerned I didn’t usually decide who would do the continuity; that was mainly left to the office.”

Francis remembers that a saying in the industry regarding continuity errors used to be, “They will never notice in the one and nines,” (the cheap seats costing one shilling and ninepence, or nine new pence).

Did she have a favourite director? “Among my favourites is Steven Spielberg, David Lean and Karel Reisz,” she says.

The continuity person in the UK is expected to keep an eye on everything. They have to time every scene with a stopwatch, make a note of everything, including which lenses the cinematographer is using. Usually the continuity person works alone on the unit, it is a very responsible job. In the States each department takes responsibility for the continuity.

Asked which was her most challenging film she says,

Summertime

“Probably Summertime, with Kate Hepburn, because I was put in at the deep end. Rushes didn’t come back for weeks in those days. In one instance Kate was wearing earrings when she left Venice and later when she arrived in Burano wasn’t. I told her she had to wear them to match continuity, which she did. I just had my doubts later. I remember being told the rushes had arrived so I rushed into the cutting room where they were being looked at on a Movieola and screaming ‘She’s not wearing them.’ The editor, Peter Taylor said, ‘What are you talking about, of course she’s wearing them.’ I was so convinced at that time she wasn’t.”

After working on Billy Liar (1963) directed by John Schlesinger (1926-2003), Francis took a break from the job, later returning to work on a few commercials, before going back into features, her first was The Empire Strikes Back (1980) directed by Irvin Kershner (1923-2010).

Francis said she didn’t have any particular favourites but among the ones she has enjoyed working on is Little Shop of Horrors (1986) directed by Frank Oz (1944-). Asked if she often worked with the same crew she said: “Not usually but I did work more than once with Douglas Slocombe, Chic Waterson and Robin Vidgeon.”

Other features include, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) directed by Karel Reisz (1926-2002), The Innocents (1961) directed by Jack Clayton (1921-1995) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) directed by Steven Spielberg (1947-). Whilst Francis’ TV work includes The Professionals and Dick Turpin.

Her last film before hanging up her stopwatch was Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), directed by Robert Zemeckis (1951-). Francis is now enjoying retirement and still keeps in touch with people from the business. An autobiography on her late husband Freddie called The Straight Story by Freddie Francis and Tony Dalton with a foreword by director David Lynch and Oswald Morris is to be published by American publisher Scarecrow Press.

David A. Ellis has written for a number of magazines and newspapers. He regularly writes for The British Cinematographer magazine and is the author of the book Conversations with Cinematographers, published by Scarecrow Press.

Lloyd Eyre-Morgan trained at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in film production. He has written and directed four successful plays and two feature films. This interview, completed by email on 8 May, explores the creative process behind his first, Dream On, which is released in the UK in June.

Tom Ue: Dream On began as a hugely successful play. What led you to adapt the play?

Lloyd Eyre-Morgan: I wrote Dream On as a play with the intention that I would, one day, adapt it into a feature film. I found that theatre offers a great opportunity to develop both stories and characters. Drawing on the theatre audience’s feedback, I was able to develop Dream On into the film that it is today.

What are some of the ways in which the film differs from the play?

The original play was actually a lot lighter and upbeat: it had quite an idealistic ending which I felt was perhaps a little too disconnected from reality, with George and Paul riding off into the sunset together. The audience complained that the ending was a little too easily resolved and not dark enough, so with the film, I definitely took a dark detour in the final chapter. I really hope that the play lives on after the film’s release; I’d love somebody else to put it on somewhere, with a new cast and director. It would be great to see what they do differently.

Did adapting the story change your perspective about the story?

The story made me think about the concept of youth dreaming, and how things are never the way we hope they’ll turn out. Paul is convinced he will run away with George into the sunset, facing the journey of growing up together when, in reality, the journey that he ultimately has to face is growing up on his own journey. We can take pieces of the people we meet with us but ultimately we face most of life’s biggest adventure alone – the transition into adulthood.

You have kept the film’s cast relatively small. Was this decision provoked by the play?

The play had a cast of five, so the film more than doubled this – I think to about 14. It is relatively small for a feature, but I didn’t want to lose the focus of the story around the five central characters.

The film’s dialogue is razor-sharp. Tell us about the writing.

I grew up going on holiday to Welsh campsites, so that’s the setting that inspired my writing. I wanted to embody Welsh culture in the dialogue by including some Welsh sayings and humor. My family are Welsh and people don’t ever want to leave Wales, “Why would they want to? There are beautiful valleys for miles around, a supermarket down the road, and lots of sheep”! I wanted to write a story where the two characters are gay but the film doesn’t dwell on it through dialogue. The two lead boys don’t really discuss the fact that they are gay: they just accept that they have fallen in love. Neither Paul nor George really understands why people around them don’t understand that they are in love. They are both very innocent and naïve to the world around them.

How do you see this project as being different from contemporaneous films about growing up and homosexuality?

The film is a period piece. Both boys are from sheltered homes where gay culture is presumably not discussed. There’s no gay popular culture in this world as there is now. I think this setting makes the boys’ love more innocent. Neither of them understands the attraction but they can’t fight it either. It’s only Denise [Paul’s mother] who fears the world for them. Her innocence is missing: she’s seen the horrors of the world; she knows it isn’t going to be an easy ride for her son to be gay in 1987. Denise has seen only negativity towards homosexuality and has a very fearful view about it – as did a lot of people in England in the 80s due to the AIDS epidemic.

Why set the story in 1987?

Apart from the reasons above, I love the 80s, the style, the music – Andy Oliver did a great 80s soundtrack for us which really embodied the feel of the 80s.

Was the film’s setting during Thatcher’s third election deliberate? How so?

This was deliberate. I wanted to include Thatcher to show the depression that working class England was in at the time. Everyone wanted to escape, which is a huge theme in the film. The time frame sets the tone of the film in a dark era, which is upset by Paul and George’s innocence on the campsite that summer.

Tell us about the casting.

Bradley Cross [Paul], Joe Gosling [George], Janet Bamford [Denise] and Mark Hill [Larry] reprised roles in the feature film. Bradley and Joe built great chemistry during the stage version, which I wanted to transfer onscreen. Janet shaped Denise’s character during the rehearsal process, taking her character on a wonderful journey. Her performance is fantastic, making us laugh one moment and cry the next. Emily Spowage [Angharad] came on board through open auditions in Manchester and she was instantly cast from her great comic timing. She has a real talent and brought Angharad new dimensions that I hadn’t seen before. Mark Hill and Matthew Seber [Norman] also brought great comic timing into the film. I can’t fault any of the cast.

The film looks excellent visually. Tell us about its visual style – particularly Paul’s and his mother Denise’s very distinctive tent – and your decisions with the costumes.

We had great directors of photography Andonis Anthony and Jonathan Boothby, who captured beautiful shots, and who really brought my vision to life. I wanted to make Paul’s world claustrophobic around his mother, hence the one-man tent being shared between them – horrific, I know. With costume, I wanted to go extreme 80s with Angharad. She really embodies young fashion in the 80s. Many of these costumes belonged to actress Emily Spowage who plays Angharad.

The use of camping, traditionally a way to bring together families, to show some of their dysfunctions is quite ironic. Was this decision informed by other films and/or literature?

From going to campsites as a child, you get fathers stomping off for walks to get away from their families. Rain trapping you in tents, where if an argument sparks you could be in there for a while – no escape. Camping is dysfunctionville. It’s just hidden by misconceptions created by Carry on Camping films and Disney movies. I find the whole concept of camping claustrophobic. You’re usually in the middle of a nowhere miles away from shops, there is no escape.

What works inspired Dream On?

Beautiful Thing by Jonathan Harvey. I am fan of his work so he definitely inspired me to write in this genre. 80s movies, and mostly camping in Wales myself and being a self-confessed Dreamer. I think that I realised I wanted to tell gay stories such as Dream On one day, when I secretly ordered the iconic series Queer as Folk when I was 16, hid it under my bed, and watched it when no one was in. Gay cinema and art can be escapism for young gay people who aren’t ready to come out the closet yet. It was for me.

Dream On centers on Paul’s and George’s romance, and the pressures that they face not only from their parents but also from George’s alcoholism. The parents in the film are largely dysfunctional despite their feelings for their children. What do you think separates Paul, George, and Angharad from earlier versions of their parents?

Interesting question, I think that we all reflect our parents and upbringings in some ways. George is searching desperately for his father’s approval, so he wants to become his father. George has been drinking with him from an early age, even with a bad liver. He tries and embodies his father’s approval by becoming the dysfunction that surrounds him. Whether his father had a similar upbringing is up to audience’s interpretation. I think that Paul’s mother was a wild child and saw a lot of horror in the world so she is trying desperately to protect her son – she fears being alone. Angharad is a free spirit, perhaps the freest, from her upbringings: she almost plays a mother figure with her father, cooking, looking after him, and helping to run the campsite.

All of the film’s characters have moments of vulnerability that are revealed to us but not to other characters. Was this decision deliberate?

Yes, I love how people have moments of hidden vulnerability in life. It’s fascinating. You can know someone for years and never see them cry, yet another loved one can see them cry every day. Angharad’s moment of vulnerability is the one that touches me the most.

To what extent do you find George personally responsible for the film’s resolution?

I think George’s youthful idealism inspires Paul’s ultimate resolution: he forces George to grow up, and he catalysts most of the change in the film.

Are Paul, George, and Angharad growing up too fast?

I like to think Paul, George and Angharad have an innocent glow that not many modern 16-years-olds hold in today’s society. They – especially the dreaming Paul – have a very idealistic view on the world where anything can happen as far as they are concerned.

Do you see any connection between one’s age and one’s maturity?

I think that maturity for the characters in this film lie in their experiences. Angharad is perhaps the most mature character: she understands the dangers of the world. She runs the campsite, and advises most characters during their breakdowns in the film, adults included.

Is their push for adulthood at odds with their idealism?

I feel that there is a lot of pressure to grow up which Paul fights throughout the film. Denise tries to suppress his idealism by not letting him have dreams. Paul can’t read comics, make friends, but his world and idealism explode open when he meets George. Without idealism, where are we all? If that didn’t exist, would we ever achieve anything creative? Once idealism is introduced to Paul, he begins to achieve and reach for his dreams, albeit adulthood and reality alter these dreams somewhat as the film concludes.

How do you keep this balance between their being forced to accept responsibility, sometimes for their parents, and their idealism?

I think that the balance is something a lot of young people have to deal with. We always apologize for our parents’ actions as children: it makes us aware of adulthood and sometimes delves further into idealism. As Denise’s actions play out, he delves further into idealism and tries to reach his dreams. He almost uses idealism to escape the world around him.

The film’s ending sees the seventeen-year-old Paul moving out. Are you optimistic for him?

I am optimistic for him, I think Angharad will move out with him and they’ll have adventures round Australia. Denise might turn up for the ride as well… Cough sequel.

What is next for you?

I’ve just completed shooting my second feature film Celluloid; it’s currently in postproduction. Celluloid is a dark psychological tale that really gets into the minds of family dysfunction and it also contains LGTB themes. I’m also about to start shooting a new feature film titled Three In a Bed, a gay rom-com which I’ve co-written with new writer Neil Ely.

Thanks very much for this film, and we look forward to many more from you!

Tom Ue is Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellow, and Canadian Centennial Scholar in the Department of English Language and Literature at University College London, where he researches Shakespeare’s influence on the writing of Henry James, George Gissing and Oscar Wilde.

Blackmail

By Michael T. Toole.

The ‘Hitchcock 9’ – the master of suspense’s nine earliest surviving works, newly restored by the British Film Institute – begin a US tour at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival on June 14-16 at the historic Castro Theater. Film International’s Michael T. Toole posed nine questions to Festival President Rob Byrne.

The Lodger

1. When did the Hitchcock Nine get onto your radar?

A year ago, as we got word that the BFI project was going on, we began to discuss options for programming with them and one thing led to another and then it snowballed into what will be presenting next month. I just think this is an amazing opportunity to bring these restored classics into the Bay Area.

2. Any problems of acquiring the movies for SF Silent Festival?

Not at all, we have a great relationship with the BFI, Bryony Dixon is great to work with. We’ve always had a healthy respect for each other for the hard work we bring for the preservation of classic films.

3. How much do you see the SF Silent Festival involved in film preservation? Some self-survival must be going on as it feeds into programming?

I feel we’re a centerpiece to all that. We are really involved; our presentations have a strong depth and are very educational. We also have a fellowship, which goes to a student in a preservation archive program, and we work closely with the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam and the Cinematheque in Paris. In short, we care very much about film preservation, because it serves our playlist well.

Downhill

4. What was on the agenda when looking for musical accompaniment?

We have a pretty amazing selection of musicians that specialize in musical accompaniment. And the right music and the right musician make a film great. If you can find the right pairing, it is magical. We have several pianists and several organ players. We don’t really seek submissions because the field out there is so rich and what musicians present when finding for us can be real gems.

5. Napoléon last year and now Hitchcock’s classic silents, pretty high bars for the film fans and scholars, no nerves about setting the bar even higher next time out?

Absolutely not! There’s too much rich film history for us to get complacent! It’s counter intuitive to think you’ve seen it all. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I enjoy that, the [silent] era is so creative, as films haven’t fallen into formula yet. We’re constantly surprised by what’s out there, from a variety of sources, whether a national film board or someone’s private collection, you just never know. The mystery of it all is what keeps us on our toes and keeps this job continually fascinating.

6. As a non-profit, do you see yourselves offering something so unique that fundraising from both institutions and individuals will be strong enough to keep your portfolio in the black and allow you to continue with such stellar programs?

Our level of contributions is well balanced. For one, there is a very strong membership that is very important to us. Like the model of NPR [National Public Radio] members, the collective is very impressive. When people give 50 bucks, it all adds up and we appreciate everyone that’s involved. Also, art grants and sponsorship from underwriters or various organizations – say we’re doing a French film, we can get support from the French consulate here in San Francisco. Support can come in a lot of different ways and a diverse portfolio is a healthy one.

7. How have the fan, academic and media reactions been since the announcements? Both Hitchcock and silent buffs must be creaming!

You are not kidding! We knew the response was going to be strong, not just with locals in the Bay Area but from fans around the world. There is so much to savor here with a rich, cinematic experience. Visitors from abroad will especially find it worthwhile since a city as charismatic as San Francisco has so much to offer with numerous attractions. It’s just going to be a memorable presentation for those attending.

8. If you care to answer about your personal fave of the nine?

I personally love Blackmail. The film was released during the transition to sound and two versions were released, one silent and one with sound using the R.C.A. Photophone System. I recently had the opportunity to see both versions back-to-back and without question the silent version is superior. Hitchcock’s imagery, supported by the musical accompaniment, drives the suspense at times to exquisite heights. In contrast, the sound version is less compelling and I felt the suspense to be far less gripping. The dialogue is solid, and for the most part the shots and sequencing are the same, but as a viewer I didn’t feel nearly as emotionally engaged with what was transpiring on the screen.

The Pleasure Garden

9. Any revelations the BFI or other academics have hinted at that will be revelations for the audience, you think?

I think that the revelation will be to audience members that don’t typically come to silent performances but may be coming for their first time. What they will experience will likely shatter whatever stereotype they may have about films from the silent era. The films are well acted, beautifully photographed, tight, and suspenseful – just what you would expect from Hitchcock – and the music accompaniment is transcendent. And of course the restoration work the BFI completed on these titles was as amazing. We expect to hear a lot of “I had no idea” in the lobby after the shows.

Michael T. Toole is a film journalist and filmmaker. He spent ten years writing for the Turner Classic Movies website and is currently working on a book on Harry Rapf. His short films can be seen here.

By Gary M. Kramer.

Former actor turned filmmaker Scott Coffey’s Adult World, which received its World Premiere at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, is a genial—and at times laugh-out-loud funny—comedy about Amy (Emma Roberts), a twenty-something would-be poet. While waiting for her big break as a writer (and the accompanying financial security), Amy takes a job at a sex shop to earn money. When she later happens upon a book by Rat Billings (John Cusack), a cult author who lives in her town, she stalks him and begs him to be her writing mentor.

Adult World deftly addresses the perils of fame and celebrity by having the obnoxiously sunny Amy irritating the curmudgeonly Rat at almost every opportunity. Roberts displays terrific comic timing in her role and Cusack lends strong support—as does Armando Riesco, as Rubia, a transgender character who takes Amy in and teaches her some life lessons before Rat gives her some cold, hard truths.

Coffey nimbly directs the comedy and the drama, making Adult World a savvy coming-of-age film, and an engaging sophomore effort by a director who is developing a fine career for himself behind the camera.

Film International met with Coffey at the festival for a Q&A.

GMK: This is your second feature film after your short-turned-feature Ellie Parker that deals with issues of celebrity. What is your fascination with this topic?

SC: I guess because I was an actor for a very long time. I’ve always been interested in how people—and it’s a very American thing—define themselves and their value by how other people perceive or think of them. Maybe that’s a personal struggle I have, but that’s not what totally attracted me to this movie. It is a big part of the movie, for sure—your value as a human being manifested by what’s reflected back to you. It’s interesting…

GMK: How do you feel other people value you?

SC: I don’t know. It’s nothing I think too deeply about—that just leads to unhappiness. I think I’ve had a lot of experience doing that as an actor: you put your work out there in the world, and its value is often what people think of it. What the reviews are going to be, is one person’s opinion going to dissuade you from having a sense of value about yourself? Those are important themes, especially for young people.

GMK: Because you’ve been in the public eye, and you are making films about people in the public eye, is there something you are trying to reconcile?

SC: I did try to make Adult World as personal as I could, and put myself in each of the characters in some way and make them as full and rich as I could. In a lot of ways, I really relate to Amy, and I relate to John Cusack’s character as well—that guy talking to younger people and going, “Jesus Christ, you’re not anything yet! Have a life and some experience!” and then [hoping] something should come of that as opposed to just desiring fame and needing attention.

GMK: Ellie Parker was very indie, with handheld digital video camerawork. This film was much more accomplished. How do you feel you have developed as a filmmaker?

SC: My first movie was more of a jangly series of events that are interconnected. This film is much more of a traditional beginning-middle-end story, even though it’s also character-driven, and [at times] the plot takes a backseat. It wasn’t my script, but I spent a lot of time making it as much “mine” as I could. But it was a much bigger movie.

GMK: The film celebrates difference—there’s even a friendly transgender character. As a gay man, was it important to tell a story about marginalized characters?

SC: I think that everything informs my point of view on that outsider status. I grew up in Hawaii, and that was tough because I didn’t surf and I wasn’t a jock. I was fair-haired and outside of the mainstream. I retreated into the movies, and into a fantasy life. I imagined being an actor and being famous, so I could relate to Amy a lot.

GMK: What can you say about your experience in sex shops?

SC: I don’t really have much. My brother worked in one in San Francisco, and I used to go visit him. And it was unpleasant. It wasn’t a friendly, nice sex shop like the one in Adult World. It was sleazy.

GMK: One of the things Amy deals with is learning to cope with failure. How do you cope with failure?

SC: Um….I don’t know….I guess I just—time.

GMK: I guess you’ve never had to!

SC: No, I have—a lot—it’s just hard, you know!

GMK: Have you been in a situation where you’ve had to find yourself, or define yourself, as Amy does?

Scott Coffey and Emma Roberts

SC: I guess being an actor was really tough for me. I didn’t love doing that, even though I made a living at it, and I loved being on set, and the process of working on movies. I was a little bit miserable as an actor. I didn’t love that. Even when I had really good roles, it wasn’t totally fulfilling to me. Once I sort of admitted that to myself, and still continued to do that, it was tough. I lost my sense of identity I think, my self-value. That was hard. I was living in Los Angeles, and really hating LA, the drudgery, and the sameness of it. When I finished Ellie Parker, I ejected myself out of the city. I moved to New York, and I lived in Oregon, and I wrote a bunch of scripts. A couple of things got made, and I did a lot of music videos and commercials in the meantime. It’s hard to make the kind of things I’m interested in making—indie, character-driven films. A lot of that stuff has migrated to television. [There are] a couple of movies I’ve been close on getting together and they haven’t gone…

GMK: Do you feel pressured to make your own opportunities?

SC: Whenever I’ve done things for myself, I’ve been rewarded and for the most part they have been the most successful [projects] for me.

GMK: Books and authors are important to Amy. What books or authors have made the greatest impact on you?
SC: Loon Lake by E. L. Doctorow, Dennis Cooper’s Closer, and The Sheltering Sky—that’s a book that I could read over and over and over again. It’s really haunting and amazing. Those are the three.

GMK: What about filmmakers you admire, or do you have any mentors?

SC: Bertolucci, Woody Allen, Robert Altman, and David Lynch—even though he’s a mentor to me, he’s also an idol. He taught me the most about being on set and directing.

GMK: How did you work with Emma and your other actors on their roles?

SC: I gave them a lot of freedom, and guided them to moments that were the most honest. That’s what I was mindful of. Instead of “Be angry,” I say stuff like, “When he says that line, it’s hurtful—defend yourself” as opposed to throwing out abstractions. But watching is really important—be the best audience member ever. I love watching actors.

GMK: Last question: Do you have any regrets like the characters in Adult World do?

SC: There’s a lot of stuff I’ve done that I wish I hadn’t. What Amy does in the movie, but wishes she had not done, is pretty benign. They are pretty minor things. I’ve reacted in ways that I regret reacting. I lost my temper in ways I wish I hadn’t. I don’t do that much anymore. I don’t have regrets about too many things. Guilt is a real human thing—especially weird misplaced guilt that’s not specific. That’s interesting, I wonder if that’s a very American thing or not…

Gary M. Kramer is the author of Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews, and co-editor of the forthcoming Directory of World Cinema: Argentina.

1492: Conquest of Paradise

By David A. Ellis.

David Worley was brought up in Rickmansworth, London and finished his schooling at Watford Grammar School. He has worked as camera operator with some of the greatest directors, actors and directors of photography in the business. His films include The World is not Enough, Aliens, Alien 3, 101 Dalmatians and The Full Monty.

David Ellis: I understand you started working with film at British Transport Films?

David Worley: I’d shot some 16mm material and I went to show it to the chief cameraman Ronnie Cragon. He said he would bear me in mind for a trainee position. Nine months later David Watkin, who at that time was a staff cameraman was going to get a break to light a film called Sparrers Can’t Sing, a Joan Littlewood film, which he actually never did. He left and took two camera assistants with him. That meant there was a vacancy for a trainee and that is how I got in.

How long did you stay?

I started in 1962 and left in 1966. Then I went to the BBC on a summer contract. It was the time of the World Cup. I was there for two months. Then they offered me a permanent job but I decided to go freelance. I did some freelance work on documentaries and TV material. I went on to become a film loader on a film called The Mini Mob, later renamed The Mini-Affair.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

When did you move on to operating?

I started as a focus puller in 1971. My first job as operator was on the second unit of Raiders of the Lost Ark with the late Paul Beeson. Towards the end of the shooting, which was in Tunisia, I operated the B camera on the main unit. I went on to operate the B camera on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (main unit) and on the main unit of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

What skills and knowledge are required to be a camera operator?

You have to know the script, understand all about eye lines and know about screen direction lefts and rights. Communication is important. For instance there may be a crowd scene and it is essential you work with the first assistant director to make sure that there are no extras in off screen areas. Also to be able to spot any make-up or costume faults. Sometimes hair will go out of place, so you have a quite word. On the technical side being able to use any kind of head, film and digital camera. What is really important is to know the crew’s names. Being able to communicate with the director, DP and actors is important. Finally to be able to make creative, constructive suggestions when called upon.

How do you work with DPs and directors. Are you consulted about set-ups?

The Full Monty

I did a number of films with the late Adrian Biddle. We had a good working relationship and he would often let me deal with directors knowing I wasn’t going to screw him up. The ideal situation is to have a three-way conversation; director, DP and operator. It is all very well planning but on the day things can change and the three of us could then discuss a solution that wasn’t envisaged. Some of the American DPs like to be in command of all the set-ups. The ideal to me is to work on a three-way basis. I’ve worked on some big films where the director is very good with the script and the actors but hasn’t got a great visual flair. They then leave it to us to come up with the set-ups, which is great because it gives you a lot more chance to have input.

How many cameras are usually used and how many takes would you do on a scene?

A lot of DPs say you can only light for one camera. On the bigger films there is at least two. Some directors, for example David Fincher likes to do up to twenty takes. That is not because of any inefficiency, that is just his preference. It is all about options.

Do you like digital as much as film?

To me it doesn’t matter. My contribution is the same if its film or digital.

Are you sad to see film disappearing?

Yes because there is something about it, even the smell. With film there is a definite discipline because film running through the camera is money. With film we go to rushes and discuss them with the editor. Now, with digital we don’t have rushes to view so you don’t get a chance to sit down, watch and discuss them.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

What was your first all digital feature?

My first digital feature was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, directed by David Fincher. This was shot using the Epic camera. On that it made more sense to operate off a monitor. So I was operating off a little monitor at the top of the camera instead of the eyepiece.

What was the biggest challenge you have faced on a production?

Cliffhanger was difficult because of the locations. We had to go up the Italian Dolomites everyday and you never knew what you were going to get. The weather would be good when you got up there and within half an hour it would change and we would have to come back down, which could be dangerous. Technically, on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade we had a West Cam, which is usually mounted on helicopters. Spielberg wanted it mounted on a crane, which it wasn’t really designed for. It was operated from a small switch and I was to follow Harrison Ford, who was riding a horse. The shot was exacting and it was the worst experience I’ve had, especially when Spielberg put his head out of the window of a cab in front and said, “Is that the best you can do.”

Do you sometimes look at a film you have done and thought I could have shot that better?

Not so much because it’s usually the way something is cut. More often than not the shots you do are topped and tailed. Sometimes something you have spent a lot of time on just gets cut. Some shots are heavily shortened or cut out altogether.

What are your favourites out of the films you have worked on and why?

The Mummy

My favourites are The Mummy and The Mummy Returns because they were really good fun to do. We all got on well; the director cast and crew were all great. Then Aliens, which I went in for one day and stayed four months. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason was very enjoyable. Renee Zellweger was a delight. On that we went to Thailand and Austria. Next is 1492: Conquest of Paradise, directed by Ridley Scott. We were in Spain in the winter then we shot in Costa Rica, which was a really interesting place to go to. Finally Hellraiser. It was my second film with DP Robin Vidgeon. It was shot in a real house so it presented a challenge.

Finally, if you could only list five films on your CV what would they be and why?

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

I would put Raiders of the Lost Ark because that was the first film I was involved with operating on and it was working with Steven Spielberg so that has got to be a plus. Then, Who Framed Roger Rabbit because in its day it was very innovative. It is a bit old hat now but it was mixing live action and cartoons. Next is The World is not Enough. That was the only Bond movie that I did all the way through as a main operator. Then The Full Monty, which was one of the most successful British films. The last one is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because that was my first digital feature.

David A. Ellis has written for a number of magazines and newspapers. He regularly writes for The British Cinematographer magazine and is the author of the book Conversations with Cinematographers, published by Scarecrow Press.

By Gary M. Kramer.

A stunning coming-of-age drama about rural childhood and the fragile line between life and death, Hide Your Smiling Faces was one of the best narrative features at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival. Writer/director Daniel Patrick Carbone’s small, absorbing film concerns two brother, the older Eric (Nathan Varnson) and the younger Tommy (Ryan Jones), who play out in the woods that surround their home. They explore the various abandoned houses and bridges in the area, encountering dead animals, and in Eric’s case, the body of a dead boy, Ian, who was a friend of Tommy’s. They also wrestle with other local youths in the nearby fields, while Eric wrestles with the knowledge that his friend Tristan is contemplating suicide.

Carbone lets his film unfold at an unhurried pace, allowing the characters to bask in their emotions and in the natural environment. When a character stands with his arms out in the rain, the feeling of water hitting him is palpable. Likewise, scenes of animals—such as a snake devouring its prey—are freighted with meaning.

The director and his two leads met with Film International at the Tribeca Film Festival to discuss Hide Your Smiling Faces. In the interview, the writer/director admitted that he was “really confused” as a teen, and his development of the story was his way of “trying to figure [adolescence] out. You grow up in an area like that [central New Jersey/the Poconos] where you don’t get [exposure] to culture—it’s just farmland and woods—and your parents become your friends, and that’s your whole [sphere of] influence.”

He continued, “I don’t think I ever went through anything as dark as…” he pauses, and recants, “Well, that’s not true—the death of my grandparents, the death of my dog. In college I had a roommate that either was an accident or committed suicide. People still don’t really know, so that’s where that [plot point] came from… There’s a lot of trauma. I wanted to diffuse all that into one thing. There are so many films about being young that become this big overarching thing you can’t grab onto. I wanted this film to be about this specific feeling.”

The themes of innocence—and its corruption—are imbued with meaning in the film’s many symbols. Carbone explained he wanted to explore, “The atmosphere of being out in the forest and that washing over you,” adding, “I knew I wanted nature, the environment, and wildlife to be as much of a character as these two guys.”

The relationship between the brothers forms the backbone of the film, and Tommy often looks to—if not always up to—Eric. Carbone explained that he had a not-dissimilar experience with his sibling growing up. “I definitely had a kind of back and forth relationship with my brother, which is probably something anyone with an older or younger brother can relate to. I think it depends on your distance age-wise; we were five and a half years apart. I think that’s right at that age where you don’t really hang out. You’re looking up to them, but also learning from them. I have a lot of experiences where I got to learn from the mistakes of my brother so I might have had it a tad bit easier in some cases. I guess when you’re that young, you need a figure to look up to and learn from. I think it wasn’t necessarily an all-positive thing. Sometimes, I was looking and realizing I shouldn’t do that, or make those mistakes. That was part of the film.”

For the young actors, they bonded like brothers from the beginning. Each used their own experiences to inform their roles. Varnson is the third of six kids, while Jones has four younger siblings.

“We used a lot of Nate’s personal relationship with his siblings, when we talked about his scenes, and that was a big help for him, I think,” Carbone said, referring to a scene in which Eric and Tommy destroy the house of a neighbor they suspect tied their dog to a cinderblock in the middle of the street. [Fun Fact: The house in question belongs to Carbone’s parents. Not a fun fact: the filmmaker’s dog did suffer such a fate in real life.]

“Dan and I had a couple of conversations before the scene, walking up to the house. They were good talks that made me get more and more mad.” He revealed that he has a special needs sister, whom he is very close to and defensive of. When Dan said, “What if somebody made fun of her?” he used that to create Eric’s mindset. “I became Eric, so I felt his rage,” he said.

Still, as angry as Eric gets in the film—breaking into someone’s home to destroy it, or even holding a gun to another kid’s head—he demurs about being so aggressive in real life. “I can get very mad, but I don’t know if I could ever get to that peak.” Regarding the film’s gunplay, he admitted, “It wasn’t very fun. I’m not a very violent person, so I can’t imagine myself doing that in real life. But then it’s a childhood fantasy to hold a gun, so that was fun. But I didn’t like it when they put a gun to my head. “

The young actor, who gives an incredibly accomplished performance, has a theory about why Eric is so angry. “I think it’s Eric’s denial of having to grow up. I don’t know if he doesn’t want to or if he is scared of it. His parents are not the best. His neighbor is a terrible person. All the adults around him are not good people. He’s worried about what he’s going to be like.” The film also suggests that the knowledge of his friend’s possible suicide attempt weighs on him. Such is the complexity of Hide Your Smiling Faces.

In contrast, Jones has the less serious part, and he seemed to enjoy playing on screen. The young actor admitted that while Tommy is outdoorsy, he is outdoorsy “in a different way,” preferring to play sports rather than with dead animals. Jones exhibited a mischievous streak on set, rubbing the prop of a dead cat against his face, “It was weird—it looked so real!” he recalled with enthusiasm.

Gary M. Kramer is the author of Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews, and co-editor of the forthcoming Directory of World Cinema: Argentina. 

By Gary M. Kramer.

One of the best documentaries at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival was director Sean Dunne’s Oxyana, a strong and searing film about an epidemic of addiction. Showcasing 18 residents of Oceana, a West Virginian town crippled by Oxycontin drug dependency, the film features lyrical shots of the town and the locals. Some interviewees talk at first about Oceana being a great place to grow up and/or raise children. However, now most folks are scared, distrustful, and depressed. This once tight-knit coal mining community is facing an unending number of drug users who either become numb to combat pain or are numb to the pain they are causing their families and loved ones.

The stories are painful but gripping—from Bob, a man with a brain tumor, to a young woman who lost her husband to jail, her car to repossession, and her child to social services. Other interviews show how drugs have made individuals who live with pain functional. However, the most devastating tale is of a young man who lost his family because of pills. The images are tough—guys shooting up—and tender—a mother trying to coax her son into rehab—but they all have an undeniable power that is respectful, never exploitative, and always heartbreaking.

Film International met with director Sean Dunne and one of the film’s interview subjects, Oceana dentist Michael Moore, to talk about Oxyana.

GMK: Sean, what was your criteria for the people who you interviewed for your film?

SD: They had to be from the area and have some perspective on [the topic]—which everyone there did. As Mike says in the film, there’s no one who’s not affected by this. It doesn’t discriminate, and anyone you ask was either on the drug themselves or had a family member who was.

GMK: You display a remarkable affinity for showcasing the underbelly of American society here and in your previous short, American Juggalo. Can you explain why?

SD: It wasn’t a conscious thing—it’s the type of subject matter that I’m drawn to. I’m drawn to stripped-down honesty, and you tend to find that a lot on the fringes.

GMK: What is your background as a filmmaker?

SD: I’ve been making these films for five years, and before that I watched a lot of documentaries in school. But I never did any hands-on film school training. I worked at the History Channel for a while, and did 30-second spots, and graduated to commercials. I went to telling 30 second to 2 minute shorts, and built up to shorts that were 7 minutes. They gradually became bigger stories, and I got better at telling bigger stories. When I came across this place [Oceana]—it spoke to me in a personal way—and appealed to all of my filmmaking senses. It was the perfect candidate for my first feature.

GMK: Why did it speak to you?

SD: I grew up with my father struggling with prescription pill abuse. It went from recreational, to consuming his whole life, to where he spent 14 months in prison. It was a tough time seeing how that can take a life from someone. He got clean 5 or 6 years ago, and I had some unresolved issues with that ordeal. I’ll never forget going to Oceana the first time and being totally captivated by the beauty of this place as we pulled in, and when I got out of the car, having that feeling of what life was like when my dad was all fucked up. It just sat in the pit of [my] stomach, this anxiousness. So it spoke to me on a personal level. The natural beauty and the cinematic quality of this place—I don’t think is often captured, or captured in this way.

GMK: Given that, how painful was it to shoot Oxyana?

SD: It is painful when you become friends with these people, and get to know them, and you see them hurting themselves on this daily basis. But you become a little desensitized to it. It’s so ingrained in the culture down there—it was such a part of the everyday life, and seeing these drugs, and seeing people do these drugs, it becomes second nature after a while. But all that went away when we edited, and that was really where most of the tears were shed. You really have to delve into and think about these stories and picture them and how they work in the overall film.

GMK: How did you construct the film—how people live and the beauty of it?

SD: It can be a visceral journey. You had to immerse people in this place. The first act was to introduce the place—the natural beauty and the people, and this problem, and the history behind it. Act two gets into their personal lives a bit more, and shows their family members and how they are all connected. Act three is the epilogue for the film—the future—what these people’s lives might look like five or ten years from now.

GMK: Why tell the story so conventionally?

SD: We’re doing so many other things unconventionally in terms of not feeding information to the audience in a traditional way. This was an instinctual way that felt right for this story to unfold.

GMK: The narrative is a bit like how drugs manifest themselves in people—it feels good, then better, then worse, then really worse…

SD: Visually, in our first montage, all of the shots are moving into the town and getting into this problem. Our last montage is pulling back, giving you a second to digest and take this in. So there was a lot of attention paid to how the story would unfold, almost mimicking the use of this drug.

GMK: Was that your original intention, or did your focus change during filming?

SD: I wanted to make a portrait of this place, and I wanted to do it in an artistic way. It was wise to do something less informational and more immersive. We’re putting a face on this issue. We’re seeing these people and watching the struggle. That’s the stuff that sticks with you—not such and such percentage of this town is hooked and graphs and animations. That’s not the kind of stuff that sticks with an audience. This is the type of film that sticks with you one or two days later. You’re picturing these people—those images that maybe make a difference in the way of thinking towards these people; they are human beings, too.

GMK: What person or image stuck with you the most?

SD: James. He was the guy who, when we interviewed him, we said, “We have a film here.” Having gained so much more knowledge of this place, and the people and the depths of this problem, he was the one that really represented how bad shit could get. Jason is another one—we have a relationship with him—and Bob and Shadow—my heart breaks for them. It’s hard to rank them. To me, each story is worse than the previous one.

GMK: Yes, James’ testimony is disturbing, but Shadow’s story stuck with me most.

SD: With Shadow—beyond what she was saying—there was so much else you can deduce from what was going on there. Her insecurities, seeing her barely able to read, etcetera. You think, “What’s the situation that created a person like this?” Then she starts taking about how her mother’s always hated her. You start to really sympathize with her—this is a person who was disregarded throughout her entire life. It breaks your heart. It’s a love story in a weird way.

GMK: I like that you don’t identify a single cause—or solution—to the problem. But what do you think about the escalating situation?

SD: Everyone emphasizes the boredom factor. That’s a convenient excuse, but it plays a role. Everyone [in the film] says, “We don’t have a movie theatre.” The drug problem is ingrained, almost, sadly to the point of pride. People brag to us that they were the first to bring Oxycontin to the area. I don’t try to offer easy solutions, because there are no easy solutions. That would have been really making a bold step for a documentary filmmaker to try to solve all of the world’s problems. I wanted to put a face on the issue. This is the beginning of people learning about this. Maybe the film that answers all this is two, three or five years down the line.

The interview switches over to Mike Moore…

GMK: You talk in the film about extracting 2,000 teeth. Is it the drugs that are causing people to lose teeth, or are people losing teeth to get drugs?

MM: It’s a combination of both. When I first went into practice, I was young and naive and taken advantage of. People would come in and want teeth taken out, they had small cavities, and they wanted pain medication. But it didn’t take long for me to put two and two together and figure it out. Shortly after that, I put an end to it. I write little to no pain medication [now] whatsoever. When people come in to get an extraction—and word travels through the community pretty quick—I’ll take it out, but they’re not going to get medication.

GMK: Does Oxycontin destroy teeth?

MM: Oxycontin and narcotics in general destroy their teeth because people just quit taking care of them. It’s not like meth, where the actual smoking of the meth has this huge impact on their teeth. I’ll see people who, by my estimation, have not brushed their teeth in months. It’s just covered with food and plaque.

GMK: You seem heroic for staying in the community and having a non-tolerance policy towards drugs. What makes you stay in Oceana?

MM: I love it there. It’s my wife’s hometown—she’s also a dentist—and we practice together. Another interviewer asked, “If there’s such hopelessness there, why don’t people just leave?” and I think that one reason is that there’s something about mountain people. We’re drawn to the area, we’re drawn to our families. We feel this intense ownership of the value of community there. My deal is, if I’m not going to stay there and make a difference, who is?

SD: The thought of Mike leaving that area is pretty scary. Not only is he a pillar of the community in making himself available, but he talks to everyone there. Eventually, they are going to have a hot tooth and they are going to have to deal with him.

GMK: What sign indicated the severity of the problem in Oceana?

MM: It’s people dying. For me, it first hit home—we had been in Oceana three years—and one of my best friends, his little brother who was 18 died of an overdose. So, you see people dying, and you see in our office, people would come in with no teeth and have a sore spot from their dentures and want [medication]. I know when people come in and are jonesing, and going through withdrawal. They are sweating and white and not talking about their tooth, but the pills. We have a small town and if you have a prostitution problem, it’s not because everybody’s horny.

GMK Did you know all the interviewees in the film?

MM: I know who all of the people are in the film. Some of them I know better than others. All but two or three have been patients in my office at some point in the past 15 years. I made a couple of recommendations [to Sean] about whom he should talk to.

GMK: You are the voice of reason in the film. What can you say about that responsibility?

MM: There are a lot of people in our community who heard there was a film being made and thought, “We don’t have a problem.” They are moving in circles that never encounter it, and they never step outside that circle. I don’t have that luxury. Everyone with a toothache, I get this far from their nose. I have to deal with them. It’s right there for me. I’m hoping that some people from my community say, “That’s us. There is a problem.” I think some of the anger and indignation about the film was that there were so many people who think we’re no different than any other small community; we’re not that bad here. And there have been a lot of us ringing this bell and saying, “It’s bad, it’s bad! Look around!” I live it every day, but to see this on the big screen was difficult for me. It was necessary, but difficult. I hope other people in the community also have a wake up moment when they can see it.

GMK: Do you think there is a solution to the problem?

MM: I think it depends on what you define as a solution. I have one of my daughters’ friends living with us. His family has completely fallen apart. I’m in his ear every day. He’s not on pills now, but he could be next week if left to his own devices. If I get him through high school and get him into community college somewhere, and keep up a relationship with him and he doesn’t get on pills: that’s one for the good guys. For me, success is we get more and more people to build relationships and keep them from going the wrong way. To say we’re going to start this program, and this treatment center and BAM! it’s going to go away? It isn’t going to happen. It’s going to take a whole group of people who are going to commit to this person or that person. I’ve seen it happen, it just needs to happen more. Every time I write a prescription, I say to myself, “Is this a pill that goes through two or three people and ends up in my daughter’s hands as her first experience with narcotics?” That tends to make me write a lot less.

SD: That’s a really responsible way to think about it. This isn’t a “throw money at it” type of issue. Throwing money at it might make it worse. The money in the community now is cycling through that whole underground economy.

Gary M. Kramer is the author of Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews, and co-editor of the forthcoming Directory of World Cinema: Argentina.

Big Bad Wolves

By Gary M. Kramer.

The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival presented the world premiere of Big Bad Wolves, a thriller from Israeli filmmakers Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado. The pair’s previous film, Rabies, showed at Tribeca in 2011, and this stylish film shows their maturation. Big Bad Wolves is an intense horror-comedy about Miki (Lior Ashkenazi), a cop who investigates the disappearance of a young girl. In the course of his pursuit—which includes a nifty chase scene—he ends up handcuffed in the basement of a house belonging to Gidi (Tzahi Grad), a man hellbent on revenge. Dror (Rotem Keinan), a suspect in the crime, is also tied up and being tortured in Gidi’s basement. Keshales and Papushado met with Film International at the festival to discuss their film. 

GMK: After Rabies, you have made a second, and possibly scarier, horror film. What prompted you to make Big Bad Wolves?

NP: Aharon and I are more interested in genre films that work; the political message or allegory is not very in your face. It’s subtle.

GMK: Such as the representation of the Arab man in the film?

AK: Yes, it starts scary—you don’t know where it’s going to go—but he [the Arab] is your white knight in this movie. He gives his iPhone to the cop, or wants to smoke a cigarette with a grieving father. When we thought about this scene, we thought about a scene in a Western in which the Indian and the cowboy share a peace pipe and they smoked together.

GMK: So, you’re looking at issues of Jewish guilt and vengeance?

NP: The past plays a big role in the way we act as a country, as a society. We have to survive and we do.

AK: The Holocaust, Palestinians coming to kill us—these things make us paranoid; guilt is in our DNA. Inglourious Basterds was the face of Jewish vengeance. [In our film,] Lior’s character is the moral compass—he has a guilty conscience. There’s also a Jewish mother everyone’s afraid of. It’s all an allegory for the state of mind of the Jewish citizen.

GMK: Big Bad Wolves is a slicker, more visually accomplished film compared to Rabies. How did you grow as filmmakers from your previous film? 

Rabies

AK: When we did Rabies,we tried to find the right aesthetic for it. It’s a hectic story with twelve characters and everybody is on the edge. It’s very edgy and crazy, and the language of the film is also crazy—handheld. It has something to do with our low budget. When we went to write Big Bad Wolves, we wanted it larger than life and to make a fairy tale. I don’t want to compare us to the great minds of the Coen Brothers, or Hitchcock, but we wanted some elegance to it. Not just blood in the woods.

GMK: It’s got elements of torture porn….

NP: It’s a hard [rough] movie. But we also love to see torture porn. Hostel 2 is a brilliant metaphor for a consumerist, capitalist society. Expectation in a movie like this is everything. You have to build your set up, create the tension, and play with the expectation of the audience to make them uncomfortable. With every second something wrong could happen, but not always. You have to keep the audience guessing.

AK: We love to single out stuff in the first act and then play with it. The bicycle—it’s laughed at [early in the film], but in the end, someone uses it to escape. Another great thing was the red herring with one of the cops being [described as someone who] couldn’t find a corpse in a morgue…

GMK: How did come up with the elements of torture?

Big Bad Wolves

AK: When we watch films, we always want to see what would make you scream the most!

NP: There is a lot of blood in these movies/torture porn, but it is not always the thing with the most blood that is the scariest. When you think about something that scares you—like pulling the teeth in Marathon Man—that is an excruciating scene. You can’t watch it. Just thinking about it, and you don’t want to hear anymore. We knew when we were told to stop talking about [what’s shown in the film], we knew we had something.

AK: No one really knows what it’s like to lose an arm, or a head, or to be shot, but everybody knows what it’s like to break a fingernail, or get burned by hot coffee.

GMK: This is your second film with Lior Ashkenazi. He literally phoned in his performance in Rabies, and in Big Bad Wolves, you tie him up in handcuffs. What gives?

NP: It’s the only way to control him!

AK: He’s very hyperactive. You have to build a script that always handcuffs him. We cuffed him to the steering wheel in Rabies. We love to cuff Lior Ashkenazi. It’s the only way to get along with him.

NP: I love what Sylvester Stallone did in Copland.It’s heavy stuff. He’s walking heavily. He’s barely talking. I see something different like that in Lior. We know him in real life. There’s something dark in Lior. He’s a character.

Big Bad Wolves

AK: We know there is another layer to Lior. He’s not just a hot guy. He’s a capable actor. I think there’s something beautiful in taking an active actor and make him do passive stuff.

NP: In many ways, he’s the moral compass of the film. His instinct—he knows he’s right, but somewhere along the way, he’s questioning himself, and having second thoughts. Him being tied up reflects the audience being captive and knowing what’s right and wrong but not being able to react.

GMK: How or why do you mesh humor with horror?

AK: Some scenes make you feel uncomfortable laughing. In the first fifteen to twenty minutes, people don’t know it’s okay to laugh. But once you catch our mood and go along with it—the ‘bring your daughter to work’ day scene happens—and you know it’s going to be a comedy too.

GMK: What’s your fascination with crime?

AK: We’re geeks. We hardly drink or smoke, we just watch movies all day. I think we have fun through our movies. When we think about fun movies, we think of crime or action or horror films. Through them, we can do what we love to do. The directors we admire are always keen to that sort of subject matter—Coen Brothers, Tarantino, Spielberg.

Gary M. Kramer is the author of Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews, and co-editor of the forthcoming Directory of World Cinema: Argentina.

Documentary filmmaker Shola Lynch’s new film, Free Angela & All Political Prisoners, tells the story of how the brilliant young intellectual Angela Davis was transformed into an international icon in the space of a few short years in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The film focuses primarily on the episode that saw her wrongly accused of having provided the guns used in 17-year-old Jonathan Jackson’s attempt to free his brother, writer and Black Panther Party activist George Jackson and his co-defendants Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette (collectively known as the Soledad Brothers), during a trial in Marin County, California in August 1970. The subsequent FBI manhunt and arrest of Angela Davis gave rise to a global campaign in her defence. The film culminates with her trial in the early summer of 1972 that sees an all-white jury pronounce her not guilty of murder, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy charges. Davis spent 18 months behind bars between her arrest in October 1970 and her release on bail shortly before the trial. This experience, together with her previous involvement with the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee and her friendship with George Jackson, laid the foundation for Davis’ on-going struggle against the ever-expanding American prison-industrial complex. I met director Shola Lynch as she visited Stockholm for the annual Tempo Documentary Festival in early March 2013.

Daniel Lindvall: Tell me about the origins of this project.

Shola Lynch

Shola Lynch: It came to me as a question. Why do I know her image, from t-shirts and posters? She’s an important historical figure but I couldn’t tell you the story really. I just knew that there was this attractive picture and she was associated with the Black Panthers and Black Power and I wanted the details of that story. I wanted to know how this 26-year-old philosophy graduate student, very intellectual, becomes an international political icon. How is that possible?

Was there a kind of identification also at work?

As a woman of colour, a black woman in the United States, she’s… Well, her name is well known. She is up there with some very distinguished historical characters. But I couldn’t really tell you the story behind why. And I think a lot of that has to do with that period in time, from 1968 to 1972, which is about exploding boundaries. Whether you are anti-Vietnam or you’re a student, it is this crazy time when nobody is behaving very well, to understate it.

Do you think “68” – revolution in the air – is a story that appeals to us now because it is hard to imagine that kind of hope today?

Absolutely. I think it is two things. It is a story that appeals to us because we can’t imagine it, but it’s also an untold story. So all the people that lived through it remember it, but those that didn’t, we don’t have the frame of reference for understanding it. There isn’t the cultural material, there aren’t that many documentaries, there aren’t that many books written about it – with some distance. They’re all still first person narratives. So, now it’s been 40 years and people are willing to look back a little bit and not be so… One reporter that I interviewed in the film, David Weir, said it best. He said, there was a cultural revolution – there was a change in how people dressed, in how people related to each other across race and gender lines – politically we believed the revolution was around the corner, and it didn’t happen. So there is anger, disappointment, shame about the political side for those that were in the hard-core political camp. And so they’ve spent the last 40 years avoiding talking about it. With that distance, and this younger generation wanting to ask questions and understand it, there’s the beginning of this kind of discussion and so this film kind of fits into that.

It’s interesting that you say that this story hasn’t really been told. I don’t know if you know the Swedish documentary, co-produced by Danny Glover among others, The Black Power Mix Tape 1967-1975?

Yes, but even then – the perfect example – what’s so powerful about that film is the raw footage. And the director, at least when I heard him speak, said that it’s a mix tape because what he is doing is showing you the footage. He’s not telling you the story. He’s letting the footage speak for itself. For younger people who saw that film, it was fascinating to see, but it didn’t help them understand the context and the time and the motivation. And so what was important for me is, what is the narrative story? It is a documentary, so when I say narrative it’s like… What is the story? How do you get from point A to point B? So it’s not just about exhibiting the footage, it’s about telling the story.

It’s the next step. First you do the excavation and then…

Yes, you’re right, it is. It’s archaeology.

What amazed me when I first read about Mix Tapes is that all of this was Swedish television footage. I would have imagined that you had all this footage in the United States, but apparently there is very little of that kind of footage?

Yeah. There are two things. It’s not that there is very little. It’s the way that corporate America works. There was quite a large amount of footage that was taken at the time by local TV-stations that then were bought by bigger stations and so, what happens is that some people are interested in archiving, others aren’t. Your country, European countries are better at archiving than the United States of America, so we lose a lot. And you know, there is the possibility that – just as the director [of Mix Tapes] stumbled across this box – that there are these boxes sitting around in local stations. You hope as a filmmaker, when you’re working on something, that you can get closer. But you never feel like you’ve found everything. Because, it is like that archaeology, you find a few bones, a few artefacts, and you use that to tell your story and what you hope is that it helps raise the interest and then more material surfaces.

You mention corporate America. Looking at your career, it’s sort of in and out of corporate America in a way. You have these commercial-sounding projects and then you have, maybe, the things you really wanted to do..?

Yes, you have to make a living. You have to feed your family. But also, I’ve tried to stay committed to the personal projects. What I mean by personal projects are projects that wouldn’t exist, like I couldn’t pitch Angela Davis through a corporate… It wouldn’t happen and it would be a completely different film. They wouldn’t have given me the time to do the research, to spend in the editing. Corporate America wants things like this [snaps her fingers]. And there’s a place for that, there are lots of stories to tell that way. But then there are some things that require you to put the flame on low and let it simmer. Free Angela was definitely one of those and I had the flexibility, because I controlled the budget, to say no, we’re not done editing now, we need to keep on editing and if I need to raise more money then I’m going to do it.

Was it difficult to raise the money? Danny Glover’s been trying to finance his movie about Toussaint Louverture for ages and it’s often said that black director and black hero is a difficult combination to finance?

Yeah, because what people on the business side will say is that these stories are marginal. Who’s the audience? That’s the reality that you have to deal with. It’s why for this film it was very important for me to get distribution and to be in theatres and to begin to prove that to be wrong, hopefully. So, in the United States we got picked up by CodeBlack and Lionsgate and we’re going to be in theatres on April 5^th. We’ve got picked up in France theatrically. We got picked up here theatrically. I think, probably in June the release will be. It’s very important for me to say, yes, these are not just interesting and important films but they are viable in the market place.

Angela Davis is an icon here, for the left at least. She’s very well known.

Yes, and it’s the same in the States. But somehow, people on the business side in filmmaking aren’t sure of that translating into ticket sales yet. Whereas she is not a hard sale over here. The other thing is that she is also not considered a safe character, or palatable historical character, the way Rosa Parks and some of the other women that we know about are packaged. They were actually more radical than they were packaged to be, but with Angela you can’t hide her politics, you can’t hide the questions that she asks because they make you uncomfortable. She was a communist. She was very much into pushing the limits of how we thought about race and gender and justice in the United States.

Angela Davis was controversial also among black Americans for her critique of black nationalism, wasn’t she?

Exactly. She scared people and she was unapologetic about it. And that alone was so striking, especially in the sixties and seventies. Her agenda was not to convince you that she was right in the way that the civil rights movement was saying we are right, we need to convince you, we have morality on our side. She’s part of that newer generation, saying, you did that and now we have the right to be here and to exist unapologetically.

When others like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X went down a similar path, adding class to race, they got killed.

Absolutely. She survived and that’s miraculous in a certain way. What I wanted in the film was to show all the contradictions of that time and how scary it was and how people were armed. I mean guns were everywhere, no matter what side you were on you were packing.

In a tragically different way, it is still so today.

It’s absolutely relatable, the gun issue in the United States today. No, all over the world.

Thinking about what we mentioned earlier, about the cultural revolution taking place but not the socio-economical revolution, and Angela Davis’ struggle against prisons, I read somewhere recently that there are more black men in the prison system today than there were male black slaves at the time of the Civil War.

And to put it into that kind of perspective is unbelievable. How is that possible? The beginning of her prison work happens in this period, through George Jackson and getting to know the Soledad Brothers and getting involved in that defence committee. That’s where it begins for her, this realization. This is in a way the story of her becoming Angela Davis, the public figure.

Was she open to this project when you first approached her?

Initially, no. No. She doesn’t live in the past. It’s not like she is, “Oh, these were the glory days.” She lives in the present, so she’s still doing the work that she does in the present. So, that’s what’s most important to her. It took me a number of months to talk her into allowing me to interview her and participating in this project. But for me, that was the lynchpin, if I didn’t have her point of view in a film about her, what’s the point?

Looking a bit more at your background, you were in Sesame Street, as a child actor..?

For the record, that was not acting! [Laughs out loud.] You know, Sesame Street is a brilliant formula because none of the kids are actors. They are basically kids that are talkative, that will have a conversation with adults or puppets or muppets. You don’t even know the scenarios. You know that it’s about heavy and light, or near and far, so you have fun playing with the muppets and puppets. So, it’s not acting. But, yes, I was on Sesame Street.

Did you come from a media family?

Not at all. It happened totally by accident, like things happened in the seventies. One of the Channel 13 executives lived nearby and my mum was friendly with her and she used to see me and my sister running around and chatting, so she asked my mum, “There’s this new show. They are always looking for kids, would you be interested?” and mum, “Sure, why not.” And so we went to the audition. I don’t remember any of this of course. I was two and a half, but I was potty trained, so it was okay. They wouldn’t accept any kids that were not potty trained. But I do have memories of being on the set and on the stage. It was a lot of fun, cause kids are great at make-believe and that was all make-believe.

In 2004 you made a film about politician and congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, your first film as a director [Chisholm ’72: Unbought & Unbossed]. How do you see these two films relating to each other? In a way these two women followed two distinct political paths, an inside and an outside path…

Yeah… See… Well, I mean, I’m attracted, I think, to historical characters that are considered difficult, that don’t quite follow the rules. Shirley Chisholm was one of those. People kept telling her, that this is crazy. She was the first black woman elected to Congress in 1968. In 1972 she runs for the Democratic presidential nomination. And everybody told her not to. Her colleagues in Congress. The black political figures at the time. It should be a man first. But she goes ahead and does this. But it wasn’t really thought of as valuable. If you did an Internet search, the only kinds of information that would come up would be about her Congressional run. People were embarrassed by her run for president. So it was marginalized in the history books and the political science books and the women’s history books. But she was still alive. And I thought, why would you do that, run for president, when you knew you were going to lose? That’s how it started and it turned out to be this fascinating story that gives you an insight into politics. And, you know, when I finished it, I thought, she really did win in so many ways. Not the nomination, but other ways. So, Angela Davis is also a really difficult figure. People are afraid of her. There is both this kind of lionization of her and then there’s some fear around her. So I was really curious about how you go from a 26-year-old graduate student to an international political icon. And what I like about her story is that if I had scripted it, you know, written it as a narrative, no one would believe it. It’s not believable, but it’s true. That’s what I love about that story. It’s too much. From the FBI chase, from what happens with George, to the farmer who puts up the bail. How is that believable?

Is he alive, the farmer?

No, he’s not alive. There are a lot of people… The prosecutor is not alive, Ronald Reagan is not alive, Nixon is not alive. There were two FBI agents on the case. One of them had passed away. We were able to talk to the other. I do wish… It wouldn’t have been possible to tell this story 25 years ago. People weren’t ready to do it. But what would have been good is if more people had been alive.

There was some great European material in the film. The footage of Jean Genet for instance. How did you find that?

Actually, I raised about a third of the budget in France, working with French producers who came on to the project very early. And we knew it was an international movement, so we were looking for international footage. We actually tried in other countries, but it was much harder. But we were able to find that footage and I thought that Jean Genet was just so strong. I mean, it’s his words but then his… When he takes off his glasses. It’s the insistence, the passion from that period. It’s hard to translate into words. The images do it so much better. I don’t want to romanticize that period. It was hard for the people that lived it, but you were in the moment and it was important and there was so much passion along with fear, along with uncertainty, along with all these contradictory ideas. But things were getting worked out.

How do you feel when you think about that time compared to today? Do you feel sadness or is there hope again today?

I don’t know. I feel both. What’s good about stories like these is that they remind us that it’s important, if you’re going to be a citizen, for your politics to be part of your everyday. It’s not something you do just when you’re called on to vote. It doesn’t have to be about taking your own body on to the street, about protesting. It’s really about realizing that your choices are partially politics. I think we’ve gotten away from that. People have gotten a lot more materialistic and individualistic. What was great about the sixties and seventies – and this is not something that is in the film, but it is something that I was very aware of – I mean, nowadays in the United States when you get out of school, college, you have so much debt – it’s either credit card and/or to pay for school – that it’s not possible to do what the college kids did in the sixties and seventies, because school was much less expensive, things were far more affordable. When you left school you were not burdened with debt. You actually had the time, emotional, physical time and space to be able to work on things, passion projects. Now, you’re tied to financial responsibilities before you even have a chance to find out what your passions are, and so largely the people that do [have that time] are people who have means, kids who have means. So, there is an inequity in that. It’s not something we think about, but it makes a huge difference to the personal choices that you make: I have a lot of debt, I’m going to go work for Kraft, you know. I’m not going to go to organize to change the world or join a union. Cause I can’t pay my rent.

But if you look just a couple of years back there is a little more going on now, with Occupy and so on, than there was 15 or 20 years ago.

Yes, and what I think has happened is that because now it’s become impossible so people are like… Screw it! This is ridiculous! It’s gone too far. A lot of those kids that are part of Occupy are college kids that haven’t been able to find jobs, that haven’t been able to find work. And so, in that – it’s not hopelessness – but they can’t go through the system, they can’t do it the right way. So it’s like argh! And with that anger comes movement. And I love it! I think these are conversations that should be had. I don’t think we should be afraid of… We should never be afraid of ideas.

They have nothing left to lose…

Yes, their credit is already screwed, the have no employment, they are living at home. I mean, exactly – nothing left to lose.

And it’s also global – southern Europe, the UK. I read somewhere recently that the UK was now even more unequal than the US.

Well, you know part of it is that public education is no longer the strongest. We used to take care of all kids because we were in the Cold War and so it was paramount in order to win the war for citizens to be educated. Guess what, the Cold War is over! Why educate kids? I don’t know if it’s that cynical, but I think that there are these unintended consequences of the global positioning. And then, also health care. I mean it’s not affordable. If you are a teacher or a documentary filmmaker, mid-level, college educated, working. These things become very difficult to afford. They should be something that you shouldn’t have to worry about.

I keep getting spam emails from the US about buying health insurance after the health care reform. The health care reform seems to be only about telling people that you have to go out and buy private insurance or you’re punished with a fine.

Yes, there are two arguments. People should have health care and the idea is that the more people that buy health care, like anything else, it brings the price down. But the business of health care and the business of insurance also have to be regulated so they are not gouging people. I’ll give you an example. After I finished my Chisholm project I let my health insurance lapse a little and I ended up having to go to hospital for an emergency appendectomy. There was no putting it off. When it came to the bill, they wanted to charge me $40,000. I said, that is ridiculous. The administrator admitted that the health insurance companies only paid $10,000. The government pays $30,000, so she said she’d give me the government price. Shouldn’t there be one price for a surgery? Why should benefit be given to the corporation and not to the individual? But regardless, there should be one price. And if there is a price difference, how can it be tens of thousands of dollars? So I sent them a cheque for $10,000 and tried to fight it. But it just wasn’t worth it in the end, so I paid off like $20 a month. That’s an example of how these things work.

Either price would be beyond the means of about half the population.

Absolutely. That’s ridiculous.

How did you become a filmmaker?

Hm, what’s the easy answer to that? In a way, I followed my path. I became interested in history. Particularly in college. I realized there was just so much about American history that I hadn’t understood or hadn’t been taught. So I was taking literature classes and philosophy classes and history classes. And then I thought, there’s got to be a way to make this information more accessible. That history should be part of our legacy and heritage. We should know about ourselves. Particularly as women and black people. But nobody reads in the United States. Well, that’s not true, but fewer people read. So what I wanted to do was work in a museum, do installations so that people could experience history. I couldn’t really find a job doing that and it was low-paying etc. So I ended up in documentary filmmaking and I worked for Ken Burns, who makes historical documentaries, by luck. I was researcher and associate producer on a story on Frank Lloyd Wright, the American architect. And then on the ten-part 20-hour Jazz series, which is the history of jazz music from 1890 to the present, which is really the history of black people and immigrants in the United States of America. It was really exciting and I guess through the course of those years, which essentially were my film school, I said to myself, gosh, I really would like to do that, I’d like to see if I can direct. I want to be able to make those choices, how the story is told. And so, the Chisholm piece was my first as a director.

You didn’t go to film school at all?

I didn’t go to film school. I apprenticed. And what was great about that apprenticeship, especially working on the Jazz series, is that if you’re a young musician, if you’re a Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker, and you’re in Cab Calloway’s band or you’re in Duke Ellington’s band, the whole point of being there is to learn and to experience and then it helps you find your own voice. You never copy, right. So, working for Ken Burns, I’m not going to make bad imitations of Ken Burns films. I’m trying to figure out what a Shola Lynch film is. And it was really instructive to be in that environment. It was absolutely the best film school for me.

You also worked on this documentary on the US ice hockey team winning the 1980 Olympics [Do You Believe in Miracles? The Story of the 1980 U.S. Hockey Team (2001)]. A Cold War story.

Yeah, after Jazz, I was like, “Oh my gosh, I want to work on something that has nothing to do with women or black people.” And that was perfect. Working class guys from all over in a great sport story.

You’ve done a lot of work for television. How do you see the developments in television over this period that you’ve been working? Is it getting more difficult?

It is getting more difficult. The budgets are getting smaller and that means the time you can spend on a project is shorter. It’s like rushing Thanksgiving dinner. You end up with undercooked turkey.

There’s been a lot of debate recently about films by white filmmakers on “black issues,” Tarantino, Lincoln.

You know, I’m not anti that. I haven’t seen Lincoln though. I’ve read some of the criticism. The thing about a story round slavery is that when you give all agency to only white characters…[makes a sceptical clicking noise].

White male upper class characters even.

Yeah, it’s not accurate by the omission of all the other characters. And that’s my general contention with how slavery is often taught in the United States, as though black people did not play a role except as victims. Bullshit! It’s not realistic. And so, when I tell a story I’m interested in incorporating discussion about that point of view, because it is not true. I did see Django Unchained. It’s not historically accurate, but the form of pulp and western to tell a story about slavery is. Django is not a realistic character. He would have been killed. There is a certain point where you know he would be dead. But this is a movie and it’s Quentin Tarantino etc. But what is accurate, I think, is the idea that it took a tremendous amount of violence to completely dehumanize Africans, create them into slaves and create a system that kept that in place. There was a huge amount of violence that was part of that. So, if the violence bothers you, too bad. That’s reality. And I thought that the violence around slavery was actually tastefully down. You don’t actually see Django whipped. You don’t actually see Kerry Washington’s character shoved in the hole or violated or anything like that. But the image of her in that hole will haunt me forever. So I think it was important in that way. And unfortunately, Quentin could raise the money for that film, there isn’t a black filmmaker that could. And that’s the messed up part. Because it’s not as though there aren’t black filmmakers that have a more violent vision or a more realistic vision, but it’s harder to make those films happen.

At least there was that violence and there was some agency in Django. If you take Amistad or Lincoln, Spielberg always finds the white upper class male hero. Like Schindler.

Exactly. And I think he’s allowed to have his point of view, but it shouldn’t be the only point of view. That’s my point. People make that kind of criticism of Ken Burns. But that’s his way of seeing the world and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but there should be room for other points of view and they should be considered on equal ground.

Do you think that these films – Lincoln, Django – by putting the spotlight on the subject of slavery could make it easier to fund films representing these other points of view as well?

That’s what I’m hoping. Because there are a lot of stories to tell. I would like to tell a story about slavery, I would like to tell one about Harriet Tubman as a freedom fighter. In a way, she’s an action heroine who could literally cloak herself in darkness. It was amazing. She’s not a runaway slave. She’s actually an agent of complete change. And I’ve started trying to talk about it, really, slavery, Harriet and I feel like oh gosh I’m starting from ground zero again. I’d like to do that. I’d like to do it as a documentary and then to write and direct it as a narrative movie. And also, I think it’s really important, especially with all of this research I’ve done on the Angela Davis project, to write a book. So I’m getting the pieces together to write a book. It should exist on film and in print.

I read that Spielberg’s film was supposed to have been about the relationship between Lincoln and Fredrick Douglass initially.

Which would have been amazing! If the film had had the counterbalancing character of Fredrick Douglass it would have been incredible. He was there. Fredrick Douglass was a major part of it.

And that would have been a real story. Now you just get this, sort of… end of a story.

It’s unfortunate. It is also that we shouldn’t look to Hollywood to tell us who we are completely. I love docs for that, because you are kind of bound by the truth. And if you’re doing a historical story in Hollywood it should be mandatory to properly fund a documentary as a companion piece. Like, this is how we are telling it in the narrative Hollywood way and here is what really happened. And I nominate myself to make those documentaries. [Laughs]

Daniel Lindvall is Film International’s editor-in-chief.