First Word: A Look Back at Sheffield DocFest World Premieres

festival, , , , , , , ,

It’s time for Sheffield DocFest 2022. Although I won’t be attending in person this year, it’s sprung to life across all of my socials, reminding me what a wonderful festival it is, and how instrumental it has been to my professional life.

From 2002 to 2019 I wrote film descriptions for the festival, a job that I loved. In the early days I’d be sent a huge box of VHS tapes, then later DVDs, and most recently streaming links. As I watched the films with my notebook in hand I built up an enormous documentary database in my head. It serves me in good stead juggling a number of doc teaching gigs.

One of my biggest pleasures was being the first to write about a film for its world premiere. Many of these were television films, showing at Sheffield before their broadcast. Some of them were so new I’d travel down to the edit suite to watch them. 

Here’s a selection of my write-ups from some of these world premieres. With Channel 4 and the BBC both under threat, I think revisiting them can remind us that public service broadcasting can indeed be a fertile environment for quality documentary storytelling:

Battle Hospital (Olly Lambert, 2003)

Nobody wants to be at the Battle Hospital. The giant tented camp close to the Iraqi border is run by the British Territorial Army to provide crucial trauma care to coalition soldiers. But more often doctors find themselves treating injured Iraqi children on fly-ridden operating tables. The hospital’s 650 staff, most of whom have abandoned their civilian practices, try to escape their surroundings through brass bands and discos, but it’s an uphill struggle. And now the increasingly frustrated Iraqi fathers and children in ward 2 are threatening to go on hunger strike in a bid to persuade the army to take them home. Embedded filmmaker Olly Lambert’s exclusive access provides a rare and sobering glimpse of modern war field hospitals, first made famous in M*A*S*H. In stunning cinematography – shot on DV – Lambert contrasts the graphic horrors of the operating theatre with the dreamlike state invoked by living in a desert limbo. 

Battle Hospital

The Liberace of Baghdad (Sean McAllister, 2004)

Life is a little complicated for Samir Peter. Once the most famous pianist in Iraq, he now plays to half empty lounges, sleeping in a hotel basement, afraid to cross Baghdad to his seven-bedroomed mansion. Samir’s string of Western girlfriends over the years led to his wife and two of his kids leaving for the States. Now he too has a visa to move to America, but he is having second thoughts. Samir is happy to introduce director Sean McAllister to his world, but as the months progress and violence escalates around them, he grows understandably nervous about filming. And indeed it seems that nowhere is safe – Samir’s next door neighbour’s body is discovered by his son: she had been shot three times. As conditions deteriorate, the pianist and the filmmaker together try to survive the ‘peace’ of post-war Iraq. 

The Lost World of Tibet (Emma Hindley, 2006)

A recently restored treasure-trove of colour films from the 1940s and 1950s provides the core of this astonishing film, which allows us to see what Tibet was like before its brutal occupation by China. As members of the aristocracy and the Tibetan government in exile recall, the Tibetans’ world revolved around a series of colourful religious festivals, taking up 68 days of the year. In the great Prayer Festival, monks took over from the government for a few days and, whilst ceremoniously whipping their subjects, imposed fines for such offences as singing in public or having a dirty house. The film includes a revealing interview with the Dalai Lama, who reminisces about how much he missed his mother and his envy of his brother who got to play with all his toys. The Dalai Lama found himself studying for his rigorous final monastic exams – which included public debates with his elders – at the same time that the Chinese were preparing to take over the country. “We were just so engrossed in our little pond,” recalls one interviewee. “We knew nothing, what was happening in the world, what could happen. And so we lost our country.”

The English Surgeon (Geoffrey Smith, 2007)

When brain surgeon Henry Marsh first visited a Ukraine hospital in 1992, he found the medical conditions absolutely appalling. Since then he has worked with his Ukrainian protege, Igor Petrovich, to help create a viable clinic using discarded NHS equipment, and to bring hope to people where there was none. In Geoffrey Smith’s moving, beautifully shot documentary, we follow Henry on his latest trip, to yet another corridor filled with patients for whom he is their last chance. Marion is among them, determined to do something about the enormous brain tumour threatening his life, even if it means undergoing an operation he must stay awake throughout. As Henry tackles increasingly risky procedures, he is haunted by the memory of an operation which went catastrophically wrong. 

The Fighting Spirit (George Aponsah, 2007)

There aren’t a lot of ways to leave Bukom. A pooer village in Ghana, its main industry is fishing, with a paltry annual salary of three hundred dollars. So its young people are fighting their way out – literally. Thanks to tenacious coaches who turn rough street fighters into money-churning professional boxers, the village has produced several champions and is looking for its next big winner. Twenty-two year-old George is excited to box overseas for the first time, but has girlfriend troubles back home. Known as the first lady of boxing, Yarkor is using the memory of her cheating ex-boyfriend to fuel her fire, but is struggling to win her first big fight. Having already achieved international success, Joshua is training for the world featherweight title, with the help of dodgy manager Vinnie Scolpino. A spirited look at Ghana through the eyes of those fighting for their dreams.

Just Do It (Emily James, 2011)

“I put my body in the way and I don’t mind being arrested.” Marina Pepper is a domestic extremist, renowned for making tea for police officers and bailiffs while they are in the middle of evicting her. Marina is one of a growing number of modern-day outlaws – people who care about what is happening to our planet and are prepared to take action to stop it. Previously a secretive world, filmmaker Emily James was granted unprecedented access to follow a community of UK environmental activists. It’s an action-packed time, with activists scaling the chimney of Didcot Power Station, locking themselves to the Royal Bank of Scotland and tangling with gung ho policemen at the Copenhagen Summit. Articulate, funny and engaging, the ensemble cast care passionately about the environment on a global level, but work locally, with courage, determination and manners to take a stand.

Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die (Charlie Russell, 2011)

It’s a plotline he can’t rewrite: Sir Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer’s. In his early 60s and faced with a failing brain, he is terrified that he will no longer be able to write novels – he has 37 under his belt. He can try, however, to control the ending and sets out to investigate the option of assisted dying. His query is a simple one: “is it possible for someone like me, or like you, to arrange for themselves the death that they want?”. He meets two British men with degenerative illnesses who have booked appointments at the Suissse assisted death clinic Dignitas in the same week. Thirty years apart in age, both are engaging, articulare, stoic, and accompanied by equally stoic loved ones. And both men are utterly determined to die, long before their illnesses have run their course. In powerfully heart wrenching scenes, Pratchett and his horrified assistant observe their final hours. 

The Man Whose Mind Exploded (Toby Amies, 2013)

Draco Zarhazar lives in the here and now. He doesn’t have much choice: his anterograde amnesia means he can’t create new memories. He’s certainly had his share of life’s woes – he’s quick to tell you he has survived two comas, two nervous breakdowns and two suicide attempts. Despite past angst, the Drako of the present is cheerful and extroverted, and more than happy to let Toby Amies film him, in all his tattooed, frequently naked glory. His heaving Brighton flat is a phallic-themed art installation, with many mementoes of Drako’s colourful past. It’s also increasingly a health hazard. Over the months, Toby becomes more than documentarian, filling in as both carer and friend. He struggles to keep Drako safe and under the radar from social services in this tender and nuanced portrait of an outsider. 

The Road to Fame (Hao Wu, 2013)

Beijing, China. At the Central Academy of Drama, anticipation is running high. The prestigious school’s graduation production of Fame will be the first official collaboration between China and Broadway. As musical director Jasper arrives from America to run auditions, the students find the pressure intense. It’s something they are used to: as only children born of China’s one child policy, they carry the hopes and dreams of the older generations on their shoulders. From wildly disparate backgrounds, some families have sacrificed everything to send their children to the Academy. Most of the students hope to compete on sheer talent – but know that connections in China, like in America, are all important. With 300,000 actors already in Beijing, there is everything to lose. Director Hao Wu weaves an intricate portrait of modern China through the stories of these students and their families. 

Attacking the Devil: Harold Evans and the Last Nazi War Crime (Jacqui and David Morris, 2014)

As editor of the Sunday Times for fourteen years, Sir Harold Evans proved to be the right man in the right place at the right time. In an investigative climate all too rare by today’s standards, Evans had the freedom and resources to allow teams of journalists to work on long term projects, including the exposure of Kim Philby as a Soviet spy. As Evans himself details in this stylish documentary, his longest and most hard fought campaign was for the victims of Thalidomide. Originally developed by the Germans in World War II to counter effect sarin gas, post war the drug was blithely prescribed by British doctors as an antidote to morning sickness, leading to tens of thousands of children being born with serious defects. The Sunday Times’ fight to win compensation for their struggling families would take more than a decade, as Evans tenaciously pursued the drug companies through the English courts and beyond. 

Addicted to Sheep (Magali Pettier, 2015)

In the North Pennines, tenant farmers Tom and Kay spend their days looking after their flock of prized sheep, and hoping that this will be the year they breed the perfect one. Director Magali Pettier, herself a farmer’s daughter, follows a year in their lives, capturing both the stark, stunning beauty of the landscape, and the brutally hard graft it takes just to survive. Their three children are growing up close to the land, attending a school entirely comprised of farmers’ children, thoroughly immersed in their remote rural world. As the seasons change the couple help birth, groom, nurture and sell their sheep even when the odds often seem stacked against them. A treat for the senses, Addicted to Sheep allows us to experience life on a hill farm without having to get mucked in ourselves.

The Divide (Katharine Round, 2015)

Alden is an ambitious Wall Street psychologist, while Rochelle struggles as a carer on a zero hours contract and Keith tries to make sense of his life behind bars, as a result of Clinton’s “three strikes and you’re out” policy. Through their stories, and four others, Katharine Round humanises the bleak fact that growing inequality is driving a terrible wedge through modern society. Jumping back and forth in time, and between characters and experts, this is an engrossing, cinematic, thought-provoking essay which flags up some root causes of today’s societal woes – and raises disturbing questions about the future. Inspired by the bestselling book The Spirit Level, The Divide demonstrates the terrible impact that decades of misguided economic decisions is having on modern lives – and the truth behind the adage that money can’t buy happiness.

Sheffield DocFest runs from 23 – 28 June.

Director Sue Carpenter on making I Am Belmaya

Interview, , , , , ,

Journalist and photographer Sue Carpenter first met the teenage Belmaya Nepali in 2006 when Sue moved to Pokhara, Nepal for a year to run a photo project working with disadvantaged Nepali girls. Fast forward to 2013 and Sue, now a filmmaker, reconnects with Belmaya, and they begin to collaborate on a film project together. The resulting feature doc I Am Belmaya has recently been released in the UK, and has garnered huge audience love, as well as two nominations for the BIFA awards. The film, directed by Carpenter with Belmaya credited as co-director, chronicles Belmaya’s transformation from an uneducated teen bride and mother to an empowered filmmaker speaking at international film festivals about the need to educate girls. It’s a truly inspiring watch, not least for the chance to see Belmaya’s education in filmmaking unfold on screen, through her own lens. I spoke on zoom with Sue about the making of the film, and her remarkable collaboration with Belmaya, half her age and half a world away. Our chat can be seen in its entirety on youtube – below is an edited transcript.

Carol Nahra: Can you tell me about how your partnership with Belmaya evolved to her becoming co-director? 

Sue Carpenter: I always wanted her to have a voice and for it not to be my film about her, but for it to be her film or at least a co-creator in some way. And I didn’t know quite how that would be. But I certainly envisioned including her footage and interweaving that with the footage of her. But a lot of the early footage we had, some of it is very very powerful, were of things going wrong in her domestic life, at the same time that she is learning and becoming more powerful in her own career. That footage was always of her. So I had to kind of root around to give her an equal and powerful voice in that first section training of the film while she was training. And we found those training videos of her with her fellow student where they are interviewing each other. And I like that because instead of the powerful director person saying “what don’t you like about your husband” (although that is probably not a question that we would ask!), her peer says “What don’t you like about your husband?” And she says “Oh I don’t like it when he drinks and smokes and gets drunk.” And it just feels so much more natural there and you feel she has agency. She is saying it because she wants to say it. She tells him she’s not gonna answer a question if she doesn’t want to. With a director-subject relationship she wouldn’t be able to say that – she would feel obliged to speak. So I tried to give her those moments in that first section. And then after the crisis point when the film really takes off more she is much more at the helm. She was taking more footage and she was making much more decisions about what to film.

Sue Carpenter and Belmaya Nepali in 2007

CN: Will you continue to collaborate with Belmaya?

SC: Yes I very much want to. What we’ve done with this film is we’ve had lots of fundraising online screenings working with in tandem with some British charities working in Nepal. And Belmaya has had about five or six commissions through those charities saying “would she make a film about our projects?”

Belmaya filming boatwomen for her film Rowing Against the Flow

CN: After being a labour of love for so many years the film is out there and it has been very warmly received –  what’s that like?

SC: In a way the very first review I got, which was five stars, had the biggest impact on me because I had no idea at that stage whether it was going to be received well in the industry or by anybody. I actually cried. It was a really lovely review in the UK Film Review – they actually got what it was all about. It was a relief and gratifying.

I am Belmaya is available to watch on demand on BFI Iplayer and Curzon Home Cinemas, and is screening through November at selected cinemas. See here for full details.

Charm Circle Director Nira Burstein: “The Personal is Universal”

festival, Interview, , , , , ,

When filmmaker Nira Burstein picked up a Black Magic camera, she knew where she wanted to point it: at her own family. Over the course of six years she would re-enter her cluttered childhood home in the Queens borough of New York City, on a cul de sac called Charm Circle, where her parents eked out a precarious existence. Against the background of her younger sister’s impending polyamorous wedding, and through childhood home videos, Burstein explores the dysfunction and mental illness which have been a constant in her family.  Charm Circle is an intimate, emotional and often funny foray into Burstein’s family life, richly deserving of the audience award it won at Sheffield DocFest, where it had its world premiere and was a word of mouth hit. I met with Burstein during the festival to ask her about the making of it.  

Nira Burstein

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Carol Nahra: Could you talk me through the process of moving out and whether you began to look through your family differently once you left home and how the film came about? 

Nira Burstein: I moved out when I was 18 or 19 and it took me a while to want to go back again. As the years went on after I left, it seemed to feel increasingly worse going over there. Bringing the camera in was a way to bring in something that I enjoy doing to their house. And in a selfish way I thought ‘if I’m going to be here I have to figure out a way to feel welcome’. The filming started in 2015. I would go over maybe every two or three months. And then as I saw a story element developing I would spend more time there. I thought ‘I need to be around to get this while it was happening. No one’s reaction is ever the same in hindsight so you have to get it in the moment.’ 

CN: How did you go about getting their participation and being on board with it? I know you have one scene where your dad is snapping at you about filming and it’s great to have that in there. Talk me a little bit through their cooperation and did you feel like they ever acted differently because you had the camera there? 

NB: I honestly think it was very natural. I don’t think they treated me any differently with the camera or without a camera. I had just bought the camera and I was really wanting to shoot and make something. I don’t know if any of us knew that it would get quite as involved as it did. But my parents have always been really supportive about my projects and have participated in other ways.

There’s this idea in American culture that there are certain things you can’t talk about. You’re supposed to be really strong and everything is a blessing.

Nira Burstein

CN: That’s what’s so great about the film is that it’s clearly a loving family but with a lot of problems. 

NB: Yes it’s very much the way things are. What I am so grateful for about my family is how much love there is. I think that is what gives people space to watch this movie even in the more difficult moments, because that does exist. And I think that’s the way that people feel safe about it. I am very inspired by my parents. I think they have a wonderful spirit for what they have been through and their sense of humour is incredible. 

CN: Did you get them to talk about things that they wouldn’t usually have talked about, as is often the case in autobiographical filmmaking? Like the disparity in their sex drives – I felt like your mum was getting that on the record.

NB: I definitely feel that my mum felt this was a platform to let things out that she maybe hasn’t had a chance to say. And whether it was just meant for me or whether she meant it for the whole world I’m not really sure. Ultimately she’s okay with sharing all of it.

CN: What was it like for you looking through all those home videos? I imagine it was a bit painful to see your parents, as it was striking in the film how much they have changed, and how much more mainstream they seemed thirty years ago.

NB: This was part of the journey that went on behind the camera: me recognising how one can take for granted their childhood and not realise how that ends up playing a part in everyone’s life. And realising how much this thing they went through affected them; it changed them. 

Nira’s parents

CN: Which thing is that?

NB: Specifically I think taking care of my older sister (who has lifelong learning disabilities). There’s this idea in American culture that there are certain things you can’t talk about. You’re supposed to be really strong and everything’s a blessing. And that’s all true but it’s still really hard. 

CN: You look back on your childhood as a happy one, do you?

NB: Yes for the most part. When I was eight, and this is in the movie, for various reasons my childhood just kind of stopped. It just became a lot of responsibility. But there was still a lot of happiness and fun after that. 

CN: You’ve described how the camera was useful for you, giving something that you like to do when you visit them and I totally get that. Is there anything that you are hoping that the film does in a larger sense now that it’s made? Is there an impact that you hope it has? 

NB: The personal is universal. If we can be okay about sharing personal stuff then it opens a conversation. And so I do hope that the film gets seen. I hope that it brings some joy and brings about a conversation they might not have had otherwise. We don’t really know what’s going on with the person across the room or on the sofa or wherever they are.

Nira with her rig and Black Magic camera

—————————————–

Charm Circle will have its North American premiere October 1st at the Nashville Film Festival. It is exec produced by Fred Armisen and Gigantic Pictures and Nira’s dad Uri Burstein scored the film.

Shanida Scotland on finding her voice and the journey from BBC Storyville to Doc Society’s Head of Film

Interview, , , , , ,
Shanida Scotland

Having begun her career working at BBC Storyville seventeen years ago, Shanida Scotland has now arrived at Doc Society, via the Guardian. In a recent zoom call, she reflected on her journey. Her voice has been slightly edited for length.

Storyville was such an incredible time for me and such an incredible place to be. Nick (Fraser) worked in a very collegiate manner. So on the one hand within the Storyville bubble I had some voice and I was able to develop a voice and develop my own language and thoughts and feelings around documentary filmmaking and the sorts of films that we did. Within the wider institutional space of the BBC, that’s a different story. I guess it’s that that I have been reflecting on since since the George Floyd protests, but obviously since before that as well. 

After Storyville I went to the Guardian. That’s where it became clear to me what it takes to try to have a voice in institutional spaces. The idea of an industry or company or organisation believing or wanting to be deeply progressive, but also sometimes wanting to balance that with financial consideration. It was a great place to be and it was an interesting place to be.

I had great great relationships with journalists such as Gary Younge which I will remember for a lifetime. Being able to push his knife crime series Beyond the Blade into the multimedia space was so enriching. 

Thinking through the work of image making within a new space is just an experience that I will treasure forever.  It forced really strong discussions and revelations and thought processes around the work of image making when it pertains to black people, people of colour. When  you are telling the story about police brutality, you need to consider that sometimes the only image of a black person in the paper and the online space might be a dead or brutalised black body. And one of the things I was really pleased to do when I was there was have Lubaina Himid come to the building to be an artist of residents of sorts. She is interrogating image making in the Guardian space specifically but also in the journalistic space around black people. 

When  you are telling the story about police brutality, you need to consider that sometimes the only image of a black person in the paper and the online space might be a dead or brutalised black body.

Shanida Scotland

The Guardian was an enriching place to be: a place to test thoughts and beliefs around story and narrative, character driven elements that I had been building and working through at Storyville but in a much more agile shorter more reactive space. And I especially loved working on Windrush. I made a short documentary about Paulette Wilson the Windrush activist and of course a victim of the Windrush scandal for the Guardian. I wanted to explore the story from the Caribbean and looking back at the motherland if you like. My grandad was ill and dying at the time and he was in a hospital room that was opposite the Houses of Parliament and the scandal was happening at the time. And I thought of how across the river decisions were being made to deport Caribbean people and what it must be like. 

Since about 2017 I’ve been experimenting with audio documentary.  I was interested in what does my voice as a black person sound like in the space? I made a James Baldwin piece for the BBC which then developed into a strand called Afterwords,  which continues. It’s really nice that the idea developed that something that can live and breathe on its own.

Over the summer I also worked on Mothers of Invention which is Doc Society’s only podcast, about feminist responses to the climate crisis. That was my first experience working with Doc Society.  I always love the way that Doc Society were slightly ferocious defenders of documentarians and documentary filmmakers and image making. The importance of image making seemed to always be at the forefront of their consideration of documentary projects and film producers. And it was incredibly enriching working with that women- led team. But also on the specific season season three of the podcast it was working entirely with women of colour on our team. Which was great and wonderful.

Now as Head of Film I am looking after and distributing the BFI money. I started in October. In the UK the Doc Society distributes all of the BFI’s documentary funding. We do that through two key funds. The first is Made of Truth, which is the short filmmaking fund for emerging documentary filmmakers. There is an elasticity to that in that it can be character driven, essay style, observational. It’s really a space to solidify the work of emerging documentary filmmakers. Each film can get up to £15,000. They have just closed the funding round. And also through the Features Fund, for tried and tested filmmakers in the community who are trying to get their next feature documentary work off the ground. That round also just closed: it was a really strong selection of top topics and filmmakers who are really thinking about the world that we are living in right now through the most intriguing and thoughtful and illuminating actually unexpected ways. That’s really exciting – it’s like my Storyville sweet spot.

The way the role morphed ahead of me joining the team was actually Doc Society’s commitment for equity and human economic justice and climate justice. And so Doc Society had updated its mission statement at the end of summer to further commit themselves to that equity lens. And what that means pursuant to my role is that I will be looking at all of that strategy through an equity lens. Which is great – I love that. 

When you think about the 80s and 90s and the Black Audio Film Collective and all that, there is so much brilliant work, but it’s also quite male led. The Black British female voice is really missing. It’s something that I’ve specifically had discussions around as we thought about recent funding rounds. There are voices that will be coming up, that are emerging but doing really interesting things.

Being one of the only documentary women of colour in the UK it’s taken a long time to gain voice. And that is a problem that I think documentary in this country needs to reckon with. Not with me, necessarily, but it shouldn’t take this long. 

London Film Festival 2020 Interview: African Apocalypse Director Rob Lemkin

festival, Interview, , , , , ,

Rob Lemkin always does a lot of reading in preparation for his films. As an Oxford-based filmmaker, perhaps it’s par for the course. In the years he spent making the award winning Enemies of the People, as well as his earlier 1990s BBC films about colonialism in Southeast Asia, he came to realise that there were very few films that really query colonialism. “So I kind of gravitated towards thinking about readings that I had done and thinking about how Heart of Darkness has been a universal text that still stands, notwithstanding all of the criticisms that are made of Conrad’s racism, language and so on and so forth.”

In the course of further research into Heart of Darkness, Lemkin discovered the story of a rogue French army commander, Paul Voulet, who was slaughtering his way through Niger in 1898 at the same time that Conrad was writing his book. Lemkin persuaded the BFI to fund him to go to Niger to see what he could find out about Voulet.

During his recce trip he found that the Voulet story was still incredibly present, not least because Voulet’s terrible path of murderous destruction led to the highway that runs through the country. “The idea that that his journey still existed now as a road just felt to me like wow this was a way of really connecting Colonialism to a universal present,” Lemkin says.

After his recce trip, Lemkin was wondering how to approach the film when his partner came across Femi Nylander performing in a pub down the road from their home. “He was performing songs including one about the Congo, which obviously is where Conrad’s book is set. She came back and she said ‘maybe you should look at him’”. Nylander is a British-Nigerian poet-activist who had recently been active in the Rhodes Must Fall campaign. Soon Lemkin and Nylander decided to make the film together.

In African Apocalypse, which had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival, Nylander follows the path of Voulet’s destruction, with the help of two local guides. On top of scenes of their journey, and various encounters with the locals, we hear Nylander’s thoughts as he reads the diaries of Voulet. In the verité footage, however, when interacting with descendants of his victims – who are clearly still traumatised – Nylander often seems impassive. 

Femi Nylander

Extraordinarily, in the middle of the film, the two guides confront him about his lack of emotion. “I think it’s a testament to him and to his courage that he was happy to have that scene included, because it was a bit of a forceful personality critique,” says Lemkin. “He is a young guy for whom colonialism is an enormous issue amongst the student population. In the environment of the student hothouse, world colonialism is an issue, a subject, a topic for discussion, a thing. You don’t actually breathe it, touch it and feel it; you  read it, you watch about it, you talk about it.”

Lemkin says that whilst Nylander is very effective at being forceful in television discussions, he found it much more difficult on the road with limited language and various pressures. “I realised that Femi would need a lot of orientation because suddenly were not in the Oxford Union or in some student hub. And it’s raw but it’s also random and there’s a lot of different kinds of things that are going on– present tense issues and awareness of historical issues.”

Lemkin says Femi found it quite hard to be constantly under the scrutiny of the camera. “It’s a difficult pressure to be on for anyone,” he says.  “When he was going into the real community he still had the feeling that he was a consumer of testimonies. One of the things that we were able to deploy as a mechanism is trying to ask: How does a young black person coming from a formerly colonised country deal with this kind of history?”  

Guide and Filmmaker Amina Weira

This question works as a motif that threads through the narrative, Lemkin says. “Although at the time when we shot that scene, I wasn’t really thinking about it in such a motif and narrative kind of way. I was just thinking more about the fact that in reality both of the guides and myself were feeling a sense of frustration about the fact that he did not seem to be able to or want to connect in a totally full throttle human way with the groups of people that we were meeting.”

Lemkin says that although Nylander had learned rudimentary Hausa and French for the trip, the rushes reveal that the people really couldn’t understand him. “It’s kind of google translate hausa and they’re not getting it. And the people that we are speaking to are not necessarily literate people, so there’s quite a gap. But I think they also feel a sense of feeling like they can educate Femi with what they say to him in a way that responding to me as a white person there is a different power dynamic.”

By interweaving Nylander’s voiceover with the verité footage, and existing archive, the final film is an engrossing narrative with many layers which succeeds, as Lemkin intended in querying colonialism and bringing its often terrible legacy into the here and now.

Lemkin’s aesthetic approach to filming was to treat the shoot like a road movie. “We wanted to really capture the sense that we were going from encounter to encounter, and it was actually going into places where Femi was meeting people for the first time. This was really critical for me. Even Claude (Garnier, the DoP) was saying ‘do we really have to film them going in?’ and I said ‘yes we really have to film them going in’. And we use that a lot of the time just because I think it gives you a feeling of the freshness and unpredictability of the encounter”. 

Rob Lemkin

The meetings that we see Nylander have are the result of Lemkin’s two previous trips to Niger, where he spent a lot of time scouting the right people to talk to. “What appears to be a spontaneous journey isn’t,” he admits.  “It was very important to have actual community meetings very well established so we could put in archive and make it feel it was something that you are mentally flipping to and from across time all the way through.”

Such personal connections are necessary for the viewer to then be able to connect with the archive, Lemkin says. “Otherwise you could just end up feeling that the whole thing was theoretical and abstract and academic. Not like I don’t like academic, but I think it’s important that it’s rooted in human experience.”

African Apocalypse is available now on the BFI player. 

London Film Festival 2020 Interview: Director Benjamin Ree

Interview, , , , ,

The Painter and the Thief not only tells a remarkable story but it does so in a remarkable way. The film chronicles the unlikely friendship between the Czech painter Barbora Kysilkova and heroin addict Karl-Bertil Nordland – a friendship which develops after Nordland is jailed for the brazen theft of two of Kysilkova’s paintings from a gallery. Norwegian Director Benjamin Ree follows his two protagonists for three and a half years, as Nordland becomes a new muse for Kysilkova, even as he indulges in increasingly self-destructive behaviour. But what really sets this film apart is its approach to storytelling – Ree has viewers inhabit the perspectives of both Nordland and Kysilkova, going back to replay scenes with different narrative overlays.  It’s an exciting film which keeps you guessing, and in my books makes Ree (who is 31 and also made the excellent Magnus) a filmmaker to watch. I spoke to him via zoom while the film had its BFI London Film Festival run, where it won Best Documentary. The following interview contains spoilers and has been edited for length and clarity. 

Carol Nahra: At what stage was their relationship when you started filming them?

Benjamin Ree: I started filming them the fourth time they met. I read about the story in the newspapers in Norway and it always takes a bit of time to get access –  in this case getting access to a thief who didn’t know anything about me! I was really fortunate because a friend of mine had documented Barbora’s life a lot – taking photos of her paintings being made, filming her exhibition – we even had surveillance footage! Barbora had brought with her an audio recording recorder to the trial because she doesn’t understand the region so she recorded the whole trial and also during the break when she approached Karl-Bertil. So there was so much footage there from the very beginning. It was just pure luck to have such great footage before I came along.

CN: I have read that you’re inspired by observational documentary filmmakers like Steve James. But was there any point in time when you thought that you might become part of the story? Because clearly you must have interacted with them all the time during the shoot. 

BR: During filming we did a lot of interviews and and we hear my questions and of course we could have chosen another approach to this where I am more visible. But I do believe that I am very there in the film as well. What I do with those interviews is I convert that to cinematic language. The film is very self reflective in a way but it but it is self reflective in a way that I haven’t seen before in a verité documentary film. I am very present in the whole film because we force the audience to think about the filmmaking process, having overlapping scenes. And some people become a bit uncomfortable with that, some love it, but I think it’s fun to try something new in a verité documentary.

Nordland and Kysilkova

CN: Absolutely and I am in the category of loving it and I really enjoyed the non-linear storytelling and the fact that it always kept you guessing. Did you have any idea when you were shooting it that you were going to be doing this in the edit?

BR: It was kind of two choices that made the structure happen. For me dramaturgy is not only an artistic choice in documentary, it is also an ethical choice. And that’s very important to keep in mind. So during filming we really wanted to portray Karl‑Bertil in a complex way to show how funny he is, how intelligent, how self-destructive and sad he is. And the only way to really get to know Karl-Bertil was to show the world from his point of view. And in the editing room we found the way to do it: that we wanted overlapping scenes. And the reason that we do that is because the themes of the film is what we humans do in order to be seen and appreciated. We would explore the film’s themes in a playful, fun and complex way to see the scenes over again so we had both of the subjects’ points of view of each other. And I think that was really relevant for this film. But it was in the editing room we found out how to do it.

CN: How did you get involved with Morgan Neville and what role did he play?

Ben: Morgan Neville saw the film at Sundance, so he came into it after the film. He loved the film and wanted to support it. I asked him if he wanted to become an ambassador. But in film words we don’t call it an ambassador, we call it executive producer!

CN: In the film Karl-Bertil has a bad accident. How soon did you talk to Karl-Bertil before he had it, and what was that like for you?

BR: It was not right before he had his accident. There was a period when he almost died several times and it was almost pure luck that he survived that accident. And Karl-Bertil and I had several conversations, and I said to him and he agreed both of us thought that he was going to die during filming. And I told him ‘if you die we’re not gonna make this film’ and Karl-Bertil responded by saying ‘if I die you have to promise to me to make this film’. So those are some of the conversations that we had. I was nervous all the time. I was waking up in the middle of the night worrying about him. There were of course long periods of time when I couldn’t reach him at all.

Benjamin Ree

CN: When he sees the portrait and cries in that very moving scene,  was he using at the time? He seemed quite out of it.

BR: For me that is a great scene filmed by Kristoffer Kumar. Karl-Bertil explains that this is maybe the first time he has been seen in his life, and that’s why he behaved that way. But the first half of the film yes he’s on drugs all the time.

CN: Is he doing okay now? 

BR: He’s doing great today. He’s not single anymore. Bad guys like that don’t stay single for long! He has finished his second year at a school of sport science and he has got a new job. He’s not counting months anymore of being sober, he is counting years. I’m extremely proud of him and I think that the journey he goes through from the lowest point in the film, almost dying and being addicted to heroin, to where he is today is the most impressive thing I have experienced ever in my life.

The Painter and the Thief is released in UK cinemas and on demand 30 October.

London Film Festival 2020 One Man and His Shoes Interview: Yemi Bamiro

Interview, , , , , , , ,

One Man and His Shoes, a new feature length doc from South London filmmaker Yemi Bamiro, tells the often astonishing story of the rise of the Air Jordan brand, the first mega superstar endorsement that remains a cultural phenomenon. Thanks in large part to a series of iconic ads made with director Spike Lee, the shoes became a highly coveted status symbol which has endured for decades, and taken some dark turns, not least the murder of teenagers for the trainers.

Made independently over seven years, Bamiro interweaves a number of themes, from America’s love affair with consumerism to the mass-market 1980s breakthrough of African Americans such as Jordan, Eddie Murphy and Prince. In the wake of its screening at the BFI London Film Festival, I spoke with Bamiro via Zoom about the making of it. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Carol Nahra (CN): I enjoyed the film and as an American of a certain age this is my era. But how did you, a much younger Brit, come to be telling the story?

Yemi Bamiro (YB): I guess I started thinking about the story in 2012-2013 when I was thinking up ideas for longer form films. I had always been interested in trainers. The first iteration of this film was going to be about Air Jordan collectors because I felt that I had never seen anything like that before – I was interested in the culture and their enthusiasm and their obsessiveness over this one brand. So I started to make that film, and some of the collectors that I profiled are actually made the cut for the feature film. But I realised maybe after a year that I needed more to sustain a feature length narrative arc. So then I started thinking about the origin story of the Air Jordan. I started to seriously think about Michael Jordan in terms of marketing and how much that has given the world, given that that was the first foray into superstar endorsement deals. And that’s pretty much how the story came about. I knew that it was an idea that I wouldn’t get bored of  after a couple of years, that it would be something that I would be able to stick with. And I thought that was important given the fact that I realised it was going to be take a long time to make this film independently.

CN: How easy was it to get access to your interviewees? What was that like as an outsider?

YB: The access was pretty straightforward but I only say that because we had the luxury of time. Everyone that you asked to put in your documentary is not necessarily going to say yes straight away. They want to know who else is in your films. I think if someone had given us a pot of money in 2013 and said deliver this film in 2015 I think you know we might not necessarily have had the contributors that we ended up having in the film. Because when you ask somebody to be in your documentary they might say no and you have to persevere and keep knocking and gently knocking until they say yes. I am not really a person who goes away easily given I was so invested in this project. 

An Air Jordan collector in a still from the film

CN: Did you try to get Michael Jordan or Spike Lee? 

YB: I never entertained the idea of getting Michael Jordan because it would’ve completely changed what the film is. The film is about Michael Jordan in part, but it’s essentially about his sneakers; it’s about marketing; it’s about all of those interesting facets centred around this phenomenon. You couldn’t have Michael Jordan in your film as a talking head: he would have to be beginning middle and end. We did definitely try to get to Spike Lee but he is an Oscar winning director and he’s got lots of things on. So we didn’t get him.

CN: You made this independently. Where did you get money from?

YB: We self-funded it for many years. After about two years I met this guy, James Ramkoleea, who is now really good friend of mine in my NCT classes. And he lives locally and is an Arsenal supporter and we just started speaking about our lives and I told him about this film. He said ‘I’ve always wanted to invest in film’. I kind of laughed at him and then over the next six months he kept prodding me about getting involved in this film. Then he gave us a chunk of money and invested in the film! And his contribution and him coming on board as an exec producer was the thing that allowed us to get the film across the line. We got in to SXSW and that pretty much changed everything for us. 

CN: When did Christo (Hird, Dartmouth Films) get involved?

We met Christo in like 2016 when we got into MeetMarket at Sheffield Docfest. And I think we basically felt a little bit fatigued because we had met everybody, but we only met a few people who were really champions of the film, that really got it. And Christo was one of them. We made the decision in 2017 to go back to all the people who have just championed this film. Christo was one of the people that believed in the idea and bought into it so I think we formalised everything in terms of him coming on board with Dartmouth in 2018.

Yemi Bamiro

CN: At what point did you become aware of The Last Dance series? You must’ve both been moving ahead at the same time.

YB: I knew that ESPN and Netflix were making this mammoth 10 hour special on Michael Jordan. I think I became aware of it maybe two years ago. I didn’t think anything of it because I always hoped that our film would be out in the world and we would be quite clear down the road before that mammoth came along, you know? But then the global pandemic happened and SXSW got cancelled and ESPN obviously pushed it forward because they had huge programming slots in their schedule because of no live sport.

It was like the number one trending topic on Twitter every week that they dropped an episode. It was too close to home for me – I couldn’t engage with it because I was thinking what’s the point of us even putting this film out when this thing has stolen all of our thunder? But thankfully the Last Dance team had a different objective. Their objective was about Michael Jordan and his last season with the Bulls and our film was completely different. So we are able to co-exist. 

We then very much existed in the slipstream of The Last Dance because I think it showed that there was an appetite for all things Michael Jordan,  nostalgia,  1990s NBA basketball. And we just happened to have a film that dealt with all of those things at a time when everybody was at home and wanting content so I think we got really lucky. That’s how we sold our US TV  rights to Vice – they saw the reception that The Last Dance got.

One Man and His Shoes is playing in UK cinemas from 23 October, and on demand from 26 October.

New Podcast: DocHouse Conversations

news, , , , , , ,

As we remain in lockdown for the foreseeable future it’s sometimes hard to focus on the positive. But I know what has given me a great deal of enjoyment and fulfillment during these strange, endless weeks. In late March, in the first days of lockdown, we launched a podcast at Bertha DocHouse, where I work as a Programming Associate. So every two weeks for the last couple of months I have had the chance to talk with one of my favourite documentary makers about their working lives. All four of my guests to date have a number of films available online to stream – so the idea is that you can dig deep into their body of work before listening to our chat. It’s been a fascinating journey – I hope you will subscribe and share with any doc lovers out there. It’s available on Apple Podcasts and just about any other podcasting platform.

Here are the first four episode guests, starting with the most recent:

Dan Reed

In a documentary-making career spanning a quarter century, Dan Reed has established a reputation as one of the most dedicated and talented filmmakers working in Britain today. With a slew of awards under his belt, he is also one of the most heralded. 

Long known in the UK, Dan came to worldwide prominence last year with his devastating portrait of sexual abuse Leaving Neverland. The two-part Channel 4/HBO film won a number of awards and was widely hailed by viewers and critics as a forensic examination of the longterm trauma of sexual abuse.

At the same time, Dan found himself bombarded by a global legion of Michael Jackson supporters, many of whom had never watched the film. 

As Dan himself admits, he’s no stranger to navigating difficult terrain. From his work amongst gang members in South Africa in Cape of Fear (1994), to covering both sides of the Balkan conflict in The Valley (2000), he has often placed himself in dangerous positions.

In recent years, Dan has explored complex stories of trauma through intimate personal testimony. The films use user-generated content, CCTV and interviews to powerful effect, depicting the timeline of terrorism events as they erupt across everyday settings: an opera in Moscow, a mall in Nairobi, luxury hotels in Mumbai, and the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo. 

Alongside his terrorism films, Dan has built up a stable of observational documentaries, embedding himself amongst Russian gangsters, drug abusers and escorts. The Paedophile Hunter (Channel 4, 2014) won two BAFTAs and a Grierson award for its portrait of paedophile vigilante Stinson Hunter. 

Watch Dan’s films: 

Leaving Neverland (2019)

Calais: To The End of The Jungle (2017) 

Three Days of Terror: The Charlie Hebdo Attacks (2016)

From Russia with Cash (2015)

Escorts (2015)

The Paedophile Hunter (2014)

Terror at the Mall (2014)

Legally High (2013)

#SHOUTINGBACK (2013)

Children of the Tsunami (2012)

Terror in Mumbai (2009)

Terror in Moscow (2003)

The Valley (2000)

Cape of Fear (1994)

Daisy Asquith

In more than twenty years as a filmmaker, Daisy Asquith has told human stories the length and breadth of the UK, and beyond.

She has also taken viewers into the world of clowns, young mums, Holocaust survivors and house clearers, in empathetic, nuanced portraits which have earned her multiple awards. She forms tight bonds with her subjects, some of whom she has been filming for many years. 

In Crazy About 1D for Channel 4, Daisy memorably explored the legion of passionate One Direction fans. The response to her film was so vitriolic that she decided it was worthy of further study. The resulting PhD thesis This is Not Us focuses on performance, relationships and shame in documentary filmmaking. Daisy now runs the MA in Screen Documentary at Goldsmiths. 

Daisy’s most recent work includes her moving personal documentary After the Dance. From behind her camera she embarks on a journey with her mum to find out more about her grandparents, who gave her mother up for adoption after she was born illegitimately in Ireland in the 1940s. 

Daisy has also directed the archive based Queerama. Released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967 the film edits together 100 queer films to an original soundtrack by John Grant, Goldfrapp and Hercules & Love Affair.

WATCH DAISY’S FILMS

THIS IS THE REAL ME: DOC PARTICIPANTS SPEAK! (2018) 
QUEERAMA (2017) 
AFTER THE DANCE (2015) 
CRAZY ABOUT 1D (2013) 
MY GAY DADS (2010) 

Orlando von Einsiedel

Orlando von Einsiedel is drawn to telling inspiring stories of humble heroism from around the world, often combining intimate personal narratives with macro level politics, powerful visual aesthetics and on-the-ground journalistic muck-racking. He has worked in impenetrable and difficult environments, from pirate boats to war zones, and has won over 100 international film and advertising awards.

Orlando’s debut feature documentary VIRUNGA charted the story of a group of courageous park rangers risking their lives to build a better future in the Democratic Republic of Congo. BAFTA and Academy Award nominated, the documentary won over 50 international awards including an EMMY, a Grierson and a duPont-Columbia Award for outstanding journalism. The film was also recognised for its role in protecting the Virunga National Park winning a Peabody, a Television Academy Honor and the prestigious 2015 Doc Impact Award.

Orlando’s forty minute film THE WHITE HELMETS follows the lives of a group of heroic Syrian civilian rescue workers in 2016. The film was released as a Netflix Original and won the Academy Award for best documentary short. It was also nominated for two EMMYs, including one for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking.

His subsequent feature EVELYN, a deeply personal story and road trip odyssey about the loss of his brother to suicide, won the 2018 British Independent Film Award (BIFA) for Best Documentary. The Evening Standard newspaper called it “Phenomenal” and “Life-changing”.

Watch Orlando’s films: 
SKATEISTAN (2011) on Vimeo or YouTube.
VIRUNGA (2014): watch on Netflix.
THE WHITE HELMETS (2016): watch on Netflix.
EVELYN (2019): watch on Netflix and DocHouse’s Q&A
RADIO AMNIA (2011): watch on IDFA.
AISHA’S SONG (2011): watch on Vimeo. 

Victoria Mapplebeck

Victoria Mapplebeck doesn’t shy away from telling difficult stories about her personal life. In her first smartphone short 160 Characters, Victoria documents the highs and lows of raising her son alone.

She took the journey even further in the BAFTA-winning film Missed Call, made in collaboration with her teenage son Jim, as they decide to reconnect with a father who’s been gone over a decade. 

Victoria was nearing completion of Missed Call when a routine mammogram revealed she had breast cancer. She decided to keep filming, using her iPhone to chronicle life after the diagnosis, as she undergoes chemo and months of uncertainty. The resulting film, The Waiting Room, is a nuanced and intimate account of the toll of undergoing cancer treatment. An accompanying VR piece takes you even further inside Victoria’s perspective.

During the global lockdown caused by COVID-19, Victoria is continuing to film. As she told me in this interview  “There’s something about scrutinizing the hell out of difficult stuff that I find helps. It maybe doesn’t help everybody but it helps me. It’s almost like it brings emotional dramas into closeup and puts it at a distance at the same time.”  

Watch Victoria’s Films:
THE WAITING ROOM (2019)
THE WAITING ROOM VR
MISSED CALL (2018)
160 CHARACTERS: (2015)
SMART HEARTS (1999) 

You can sign up to DocHouse Conversations here. The next episode will feature a panel of filmmakers whose plans for the release of their latest documentary have been blown up by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Six Excellent Netflix Docs

commentary, , , ,

Here are some recommendations we came up with at Bertha Dochouse, where I am working as a Programme Associate. I will be posting more content soon – including highlighting docs for kids. Stay tuned!

Weiner

Two years after resigning from Congress for tweeting a picture of his bulging briefs, Anthony Weiner is running for Mayor of New York. His loyal wife Huma (Hillary Clinton’s right-hand woman) is at his side, and the tenacious politician has even invited a documentary crew along for the ride. The trouble is, he’s neglected to curb his digital dalliances, giving us jaw-dropping access to a campaign that is soon in total meltdown.

Shirkers

A good one to distract you from pandemic woes, this is a highly original and entertaining personal documentary. In the early 1990s young punk cinephile Sandi Tan wrote and starred in Shirkers, a quirky girl road movie, directed by her older, enigmatic mentor Georges. But her dreams of making a big splash in Singapore’s nascent film industry were cut cruelly short – find out why.

Icarus

In this nonfiction thriller, which won the 2018 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Director Brian Fogel immerses himself in the world of performance enhancing drugs, and soon stumbles into the centre of Russia’s extensive state-sponsored doping programme. It’s a wild ride – and one of the most electric nonfiction films in recent years.

Life, Animated

After years of silence as a child, Owen Suskind amazed his family by beginning to communicate through his biggest passion: Disney films. Now leaving home, Owen is learning that not every step in life has a Disney guru. Director Roger Ross Williams’ masterful film shows how one close-knit family navigates life with autism. The film won a number of awards including the Critics’ Choice Award for “Most Compelling Living Subject of a Documentary.”

Cartel Land

In this double Sundance winner, Matthew Heineman takes us deep into the world of Mexican drug cartels by embedding himself with two vigilante groups on either side of the US-Mexico border. Camouflaged to help spy on drug runners, veteran Tim Foley is a man who wears his hard past on his face. 

Meanwhile, across the Rio Grande, surgeon Dr. Jose Mireles looks straight out of central casting, with chiselled features and a prominent moustache. As head of the Autodefansas, he is leading a group of men determined to obliterate the region’s most dangerous drug cartel, the Knights Templar. 

Heineman repeatedly places himself in harm’s way, filming the chaos as the group begin taking over towns – in so doing adapting many of the violent tactics of the drug lords they’re trying to overpower. A visceral journey into North America’s heart of darkness.

Last Breath

Experience the gripping, life-or-death true story of commercial deep-sea diver Chris Lemons in Last Breath. Lemons had spent weeks in a claustrophobic decompression chamber with his diving partner, preparing for their routine maintenance dive to a North Sea oil well off the coast of Scotland. Once submerged, the pair were tethered to the ship by umbilical cords providing light, oxygen and pumping heated water around their suits to protect them from dangerous sub-zero temperatures. When a storm caused total loss of control for the ship, it became a race to get the divers back to safety.

With a combination of interviews with colleagues, reconstruction, and Lemon’s own footage, Last Breath is a visceral story of how it feels to be lost on the North Sea bed, with 5 minutes of oxygen, and a rescue team over 30 minutes away.

You can see a Q&A that I did with the makers of Last Breath (and a special guest) here.

Paddy Wivell on the Making of Prison, Series 2

Interview, previews, , , , , ,

The last time I interviewed Paddy Wivell, he was just putting the finishing touches on the first series of Prison. The three part series, filmed in Durham Prison, was a revelatory look at a system in crisis. It took a themed approach, with an episode each focused on mental health, drugs and violence. It won both the Grierson and Royal Television Society awards for Best Documentary Series.

Now Paddy has turned his attention to women prisoners, filming for months in HMP Foston Hall in Derbyshire. I caught up with him over the telephone to find out more about Prison: Series 2. 

Carol Nahra: Can you tell me about the approach to this series? 

Paddy Wivell: It felt like a natural progression after the Durham series to then look at the women’s estate. There are 80,000 male prisoners (in England and Wales) and something like 4,000 female. So I knew I would be encountering something quite different. I wanted to take a sort of present tense approach – looking at the culture within the environment. But actually what I did find was the women’s backgrounds became seemingly more relevant as I started to pick up on some of the main themes. You just couldn’t look away from the effects of trauma played out in the lives of the women in terms of sexual and domestic abuse.  It felt really important to then spend some of the time with the women looking back at what brought them into prison.

Each film again has a theme. The first film is really looking at short sentences. Something like 75% of women in prison spend less than 12 months in prison. And within that to be able to look at issues like drugs, relationships, trauma within a setting where women are coming in and out routinely. And ultimately sort of questioning the validity of a system that doesn’t seem to rehabilitate or help women with the kind of difficulties that they come into prison with. Because the prison has a very short window, you’re not doing anything to rectify or help with the problems. So that’s one of the films. 

Paddy Wivell, holding his Grierson, and a beer

Another of the films looks at the issues of family.  Something like 95% of children when the mother goes to prison has to leave the family home. So I was really interested in how do you continue to parent from within the prison and what sort of dilemmas does that bring up? How important is it that family ties are maintained in order to help with reoffending?

And then another film looks at the issue of trauma in more detail through a prisoner led therapeutic course called Healing Trauma. So that’s a map of the three films. Although the approach was similar to the first series, the content feels very very different.

CN: So much of the series is dependent on your interactions with your contributors. I’m wondering if your interactions were different than with the men and how you were received?

PW: To be honest with you it was much more gratifying. Women handle incarceration very differently to men and the fact is that they do it through relationships with each other. So in terms of filmmaking in many ways it was far richer than the first series. Because women want to communicate.

That’s not to say that it wasn’t quite difficult at first just gaining the trust of the prison as a whole. Obviously a lot of women in there have had very difficult experiences with men. So when somebody like me comes in it takes a long time to build a sense of trust, and a feeling that they’re going to be safe with us wandering around. So that took some time. But once I found the contributors who could speak to these wider themes it was immensely gratifying because the conversations were richer and more detailed. So I think what it might lack in the sense of a system in crisis it absolutely points to a sort of richness of humanity.

CN: Did you get a sense that there was a way that the men could be learning from the women?

PW: Definitely. I think there is a certain sort of narrative that is applied to women in prison that isn’t necessarily applied around men. There is a public recognition that for most of the women in prison that they’ve had worse crimes visited upon them than they have actually perpetrated. And trauma has a huge effect and there is a sense that a lot of women are going to prison and being punished when they’ve already been punished throughout their lives. Because these narratives aren’t as prevalent with a male population it doesn’t mean to say that it doesn’t exist. I would say obviously huge numbers of men have had the same issues. 

But one of the other really shocking things is what happens when women are released. There are only six hostels nationally with 100 places a huge amount of women are being released homeless. So there is a real problem in sending people back outside without proper accommodation or support. There is a big push that hasn’t really materialised as much as it should do where women carry out their sentences in the community instead. And get support for issues that are common to them, like substance misuse debt or homelessness

CN: I know that it was tricky in the first series getting your third episode to broadcast because of people getting caught up in the legal system. Have you had any issues with this series?

PW: Anybody that’s released can pick up a charge at any time so it’s always quite anxiety inducing. We have to do a check a week before the TX, and the first program can go out. We will keep our fingers crossed for the next two!

The first episode of the second series of Prison goes out on Channel 4, 9pm Monday, 17 February.