Adventures in the Lives of Others: Ethical Dilemmas in Factual Filmmaking 9780755695201, 9781784533946

Citation preview

For my son, Dash.

9781784533946.indd 5

09/09/2015 15:15

L i st o f I m ag es

  1. Kevin Macdonald on location. BFI Film Fund / Cowboy Films / Film4 / The Kobal Collection xv   2. James Quinn. Photograph by Patrick Smith 1   3. Professor John Ellis. Photograph courtesy of the author 5   4. Alex Gibney. Photograph by Andrew Brucker, courtesy of Jigsaw Productions 17   5. James Marsh on location. Content Film / Film4 / The Kobal Collection 23   6. Herbert Terrace, the professor who led Project Nim, and the subject of the study, the chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky. Red Box Films / Passion Pictures / BBC Films / The Kobal Collection 25   7. André Singer. Photograph by Filip Beusan, courtesy of the Festival of Tolerance, Zagreb 29   8. Kieran Smith. Photograph by Matt Frost, courtesy of Love Productions 35   9. Two of the residents of Benefits Street. Photograph by and courtesy of Richard Ansett 39 10. Eric Steel. Photo by Morgan McGivern, courtesy of the East Hampton Star 45 11. Eric Steel in San Francisco during the making of The Bridge. Photograph by Peter McCandless, courtesy of Easy There Tiger, Inc. 47 12. James Quinn, far right, directing on location. Photograph by Tom Green. 55 13. Ralph Lee. Photograph courtesy of Channel 4 61 14. The aftermath of The Plane Crash. Photograph by and courtesy of Vance Jacobs 63 15. A moment during the making of Mummifying Alan. Photograph by Callum Bulmer, courtesy of Blink Films 66 16. Brian Woods. Photograph by Jezza Neumann 71 17. Mei Ming. Photograph by Kate Blewett, courtesy of True Vision 74 18. Sue Bourne. Photo by Dewald Aukema, courtesy of Wellpark Productions 81

9781784533946.indd 11

09/09/2015 15:15

xii

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

19. Sue Bourne, left, her daughter Holly, right, and her mother Ethel. Photo by Brian Sweeney, courtesy of Wellpark Productions 84 20. Albert Maysles. Photograph courtesy of Maysles Films 91 21. Big Edie and Little Edie at home in Grey Gardens. Portrait Films / The Kobal Collection 93 22. Asif Kapadia. Photograph by Leslie Hassler 95 23. Leo Maguire. Photograph by Alex Webster 101 24. Dogging in action. Photograph by Leo Maguire, taken using a custom-made infra-red light source and a digital camera converted to read infra-red light 104 25. Charlie Russell, left, with Terry Pratchett, during the making of Choosing to Die. Photograph by Rob Wilkins 111 26. Marshall Curry. Photograph by Dan Koehler 121 27. Cory Booker on the campaign trail. Photograph from the Star Ledger, used with permission 124 28. Simon Ford. Photograph by Phil Rudge 129 29. Penny Woolcock. Photograph by Sarah Ainslie 135 30. Still photograph from Going to the Dogs, courtesy of Latimer Group 138 31. Liz Garbus. Photograph by Rommel Demano, courtesy of Moxie Firecracker Films 147 32. Anthony Wonke, left, on location. Photograph by Ariel Grandoli 153 33. Stills from The Tower, courtesy of Anthony Wonke 159 34. Dave Nath. Photograph courtesy of the author 161 35. Barbara Kopple. Photograph by Andrew H. Walker 173 36. Still from Harlan County, USA. Photograph courtesy of Cabin Creek Films 175 37. Still from Harlan County, USA. Photograph courtesy of Barbara Kopple / Cabin Creek Films 176 38. Director Dan Reed on location. Photograph by Tom Pursey, courtesy of AMOS Pictures 181 39. Dan Reed on location in South Africa in 1993. Photograph courtesy of Dan Reed 183 40. Dan Reed on location in Kosovo in 1998. Photograph courtesy of Dan Reed 191 41. David Clews. Photograph courtesy of Twofour Group 193 42. Inside the gallery, during the making of Educating Essex. Photograph by Philip Hollis, courtesy of Channel 4 195 43. A fixed-rig camera, during the making of Educating Essex. Photograph by Philip Hollis, courtesy of Channel 4 197

9781784533946.indd 12

09/09/2015 15:15

xiii

List of Images

44. Alex Graham. Photograph courtesy of the author 45. Steve James, standing, at work on location. Photograph courtesy of Kartemquin Films 46. Steve James with Stevie Fielding, the subject of his film Stevie. Photograph courtesy of Kartemquin Films 47. Amy Flanagan. Photograph courtesy of Channel 4 48. Morgan Spurlock, during the making of Super Size Me. Roadside / Goldwyn / The Kobal Collection 49. Morgan Spurlock during the making of Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? Non-Linear Films / The Kobal Collection 50. Rupert Houseman 51. James, from the series Bedlam. Photograph by and courtesy of Richard Ansett 52. Nick Fraser. Photograph courtesy of the author 53. Still from India’s Daughter, courtesy of BBC Storyville and director Leslee Udwin 54. Nick Broomfield. Photograph by Richard Jopson, courtesy of Nick Broomfield 55. Aileen Wuornos. Photograph courtesy of Nick Broomfield / nickbroomfield.com

201 209 215 219 229

231 233 235 243 245 251 254

Cover Images Top left: Still from Harlan County, USA. Photograph courtesy of Barbara Kopple / Cabin Creek Films Top right: Director Dan Reed on location. Photograph by Tom Pursey, courtesy of AMOS Pictures Second row down, left: Still image from Steve James’ film Stevie, courtesy of Kartemquin Films Second row down, middle: The aftermath of The Plane Crash. Photograph by and courtesy of Vance Jacobs Second row down, right: Photograph by and courtesy of Leo Maguire Third row down: Photograph by Alex Piatti, taken during the making of Penny Woolcock’s film On the Streets, and courtesy of Penny Woolcock Bottom left: Still image from Steve James’ film Hoop Dreams, courtesy of Kartemquin Films Bottom right: Morgan Spurlock, during the making of Super Size Me. Roadside / Goldwyn / The Kobal Collection

9781784533946.indd 13

09/09/2015 15:15

F o r ew o r d Kevin Macdonald

1. Kevin Macdonald on location. BFI Film Fund / Cowboy Films / Film4 / The Kobal Collection

Kevin Macdonald is the director of One Day in September, about the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. The film won the best documentary feature Oscar in 2000, and received an Emmy for best historical documentary the following year. His other documentaries include: Life in a Day, a snapshot of the planet on a single day in 2010, compiled from videos shot by ordinary people; Marley, a biography of the Jamaican musician Bob Marley; and Touching the Void, the story of a disastrous attempt to climb a mountain in the Peruvian Andes, which won a Bafta for best British film in 2004. Macdonald is also known for his feature films The Last King of Scotland, State of Play, The Eagle and Black Sea.

9781784533946.indd 15

09/09/2015 15:15

xvi

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Why make documentaries? Because they are a way of making sense of the world around us. Because you don’t need a movie star. Because you can change the world. Because you can make one on your mobile phone. Because reality is usually stranger and more interesting than fiction. Because there are no rules – except don’t (entirely) make it a work of fiction. Because you learn something new every time – about the world, about filmmaking, and about yourself. Every filmmaker who has contributed to this book has taken their own approach to the ‘creative use of actuality’. No two of them would approach the same story in the same way, or even the same rushes in the same way. I often wonder what Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line (a personal favourite) would look like if directed by Frederick Wiseman or Albert Maysles. Or Bowling for Columbine directed by Alex Gibney. That sense of individuality – personal style and idiosyncrasy – is the opposite of objectivity, the kind of dry ‘truth-telling’ that those who don’t know associate with documentaries. I hope this book will inspire readers who are prospective filmmakers to be more yourself when you make your own films – to find your own unique way of making sense of the world in moving pictures and sound, and your own ways of dealing with the problems and dilemmas you’ll face. That would make it a book worth reading.

9781784533946.indd 16

09/09/2015 15:15

Ack no w l ed g em en t s

I am grateful to everyone who gave up their time to contribute to this book, to the many photographers who kindly allowed us to use their images, and to all who read and commented upon versions of the book as it evolved. I would also like to thank my daughter Roxie for her invaluable help with the manuscript. Above all, I am indebted to Philippa Brewster, Senior Editor at IB Tauris, for her wisdom, enthusiasm and unfailing support.

9781784533946.indd 17

09/09/2015 15:15

I n tr o d u c t i o n James Quinn

2. James Quinn. Photograph by Patrick Smith

James Quinn is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and executive producer. He has occupied senior positions at several industry-leading independent production companies, including Head of Special Projects at Oxford Film and Television and Head of Factual Television at October Films. He is also Honorary Research Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London, and has a PhD in philosophy. His other books include This Much is True, a landmark volume on the art of directing documentaries.

9781784533946.indd 1

09/09/2015 15:15

2

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

A

few years ago now, I set off in pursuit of a story that had caught my attention in the tabloid press. The man at the centre of the story was being hounded by journalists, and he’d gone to ground. It took me several weeks to find him, and several more to earn his trust. He’d been painted as a monster. I thought there might be more to it than that. Eventually, he agreed to be in a film. A commision quickly followed. We started preproduction and the man began to open up. He made a series of confessions: to having a violent past; to having criminal associates; to having taken an overdose when the story about him hit the headlines. I dutifully reported back to the broadcaster, and they cancelled the commission; the film would be too much of a risk. I let the man know, and headed home. That’s just the way it goes sometimes. Life goes on. Only for two people, it didn’t. Not long afterwards, the man stabbed another man to death, and was sent to prison for life. I don’t think anyone had ever tried to understand him before. Or listened to what he had to say. He made himself vulnerable to us (myself and my team), and then we disappeared. I couldn’t get the question out of my head – would the murder have happened if we’d gone ahead and made the film? Or if we’d never showed up in the first place? Sitting in a bar with friends some months later, I told the story. It felt good to give an airing to my private thoughts and fears. What should I have done? Kept the man’s confessions to myself? Battled with the broadcaster to make the film, regardless of concerns about his state of mind? Dropped the commission, but carried on with the film, as a personal project on the side? There were as many opinions are there were people at the table. One person said that I’d used the man and then dropped him when the going got tough. Another that I’d made the right choice and been lucky – it might have been me, lying dead in the street. We argued and debated. And that’s where I got the idea for this book. What’s the right thing to do when the subject of your film starts telling you long-buried – and potentially explosive – family secrets? As a filmmaker, how do you choose between the life of a little girl and your own safety and freedom? How do you do justice

9781784533946.indd 2

09/09/2015 15:15

Introduction

3

to the moral and ethical ambiguities of modern warfare? How do you go about accessing closed worlds and breaking taboos, without landing yourself in hot water? Or documenting behaviour that is shameful or illegal? How do you turn real-life drama into primetime entertainment? When do filmmaking relationships start to become exploitative? And what do you do when lines are crossed? Is it ever okay to take sides? Or to tell a lie to uncover the truth? Your subject is poised to take a life on camera, because he thinks that’s what you want; with no time to think, how should you respond? These and other questions will be answered in the specially commissioned chapters that follow. Each is a candid, intimate and revealing account of how ethical problems and dilemmas were encountered and resolved on high-profile documentaries and television programmes. The authors of these chapters are some of the most talented and eminent documentary filmmakers, producers and executives working today. Collectively they have received 33 Baftas, 17 Emmys, 13 Royal Television Society Awards, 13 Sundance Awards, 11 Grierson Awards and 9 Oscars, for work that is both influential and well-loved. Writing from personal experience at the frontline of filmmaking, in these pages they share their insights and the lessons they have learned. The films and programmes under discussion range widely across different genres and approaches, from landmarks in the history of documentary making (such as Grey Gardens and Harlan County, USA) to shows that utilise the latest technological innovations (like the groundbreaking ‘fixed-rig’ documentaries The Family and 24 Hours in A&E). Sometimes the same film or programme is discussed from multiple perspectives, as in the case of Benefits Street, a British television series that was every bit as controversial as it was popular. The executive producer responsible for Benefits Street (Kieran Smith), a senior commissioner at the channel that broadcast it (Ralph Lee), and an expert in the history of documentary-making (John Ellis) all have pertinent things to say about the series. An open, honest discussion of ethical dilemmas and challenges of documentary filmmaking is timely. As TV channels proliferate and

9781784533946.indd 3

09/09/2015 15:15

4

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

programmes are made under ever-increasing pressure, on shorter and shorter schedules, mistakes and misjudgements are becoming harder to avoid. At the same time, new technologies have introduced entirely new levels of intimacy to TV production; cameras can go places they’ve never been before, presenting new ethical challenges and complexities almost by the month. There is also now, in a crowded media market-place, an increasingly pressing need for programmes to stand out and grab attention, which is leading commissioners towards ever more provocative and controversial subject matter, raising delicate and difficult questions at all stages of the production process. And as the supremely controversial Benefits Street shows – having prompted questions in parliament, almost 2,000 complaints from members of the public, and countless articles in newspapers and magazines – documentaries and factual programmes now function more than ever as lightning rods for strongly-held opinions. For a period of time, the series set the agenda for public debate. How and why such programmes are made really does matter. But the essays in this volume are not dry analyses of the state of modern media. They are vivid, surprising and compelling stories of risks taken, problems encountered and obstacles overcome. The style is informal and the emotions often raw. The overwhelming impression that emerges is of an industry full of curious, courageous and thoughtful people striving to shed light on the world we live in, and what it means to be human. I hope that in reading these essays, you will be inspired to take up the challenges of documentary filmmaking yourself.

9781784533946.indd 4

09/09/2015 15:15

1 E t hi cs a nd D o c u m en tar i es: a S h o r t H i sto ry John Ellis

3. Professor John Ellis. Photograph courtesy of the author

John Ellis is Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London, with a particular interest in television, and was previously a successful TV producer for many years. He is author of the books Documentary: Witness and Self-Revelation, Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty and Visible Fictions: Cinema, Television, Video.

9781784533946.indd 5

09/09/2015 15:15

6

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

R

obert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922) is often cited as the first real documentary. Flaherty brought to the screen an original vision of Inuit life in the far north of Canada, a vivid contrast to the feature-length fictions and timid travelogues that dominated the cinemas of the 1920s. He spent several years filming, developing his negatives on site, dealing with all manner of technical and physical difficulties. Nanook was a tour-de-force, and even in 2014 came seventh in a Sight and Sound magazine poll of filmmakers asked to name the best ever documentaries. But in making Nanook of the North, Flaherty violated almost all the ethical standards that guide today’s filmmakers. He made up a story and got his Inuit subjects to act it out. He ignored their current situation in favour of a romanticised idea of their past, asking them to reconstruct the hunting techniques of their grandfathers. He made them appear to be ignorant of the modern world for comic effect. He fathered a child with one of the women he was working with. He took all the acclaim and abandoned the community (and his son) to their fate, which, according to Melanie McGrath’s excellent book The Long Exile, was a particularly unpleasant tale of forced relocation and deprivation. Today’s documentary filmmakers are concerned with showing the truth of a situation, however they conceive it. Many certainly do use reconstructions, but within tightly controlled limits. They are held to account for the methods they use to obtain their footage and the permission to include it into a film. They have to be concerned about the public reaction to their subjects and often offer some kind of ‘after-sales service’ in the form of continued support. So how, in less than a century, have the ethics of documentary changed so fundamentally? Flaherty was doing something new; there were no standards to guide him. He had found it difficult to find finance, and at one stage he accidentally destroyed almost all his footage. He wanted to tell a tale of human endurance in the face of hostile nature to audiences who regarded the Inuit as scarcely human, if they even knew who Inuits were. He was working in a commercial cinema environment, before television and public service broadcasting, before public outcries about documentary ethics, before digital technologies, before even sync sound recording. After Nanook,

9781784533946.indd 6

09/09/2015 15:15

Ethics and Documentaries: a Short History

7

documentary existed; but Nanook was scarcely a model that anyone could follow. The immediate future for documentary lay in the hands of filmmakers whose motives were more socially enlightened and reformist. The British documentary movement, the American filmmakers working for the New Deal administration, even the Soviet documentarians like Esfir Shub, were all concerned with portraying the problems of ordinary people. They were all paid directly by the state or by large corporations to do so. Many were acutely aware of the ethical problems that this involved, which they solved by appealing to a sense of personal honesty. To be a true documentary filmmaker was to be truthful about their subjects and what they saw, and then to communicate this as powerfully as possible. So they used a poetic treatment of reality underpinned by an ethic of personal responsibility. The documentary filmmakers of the 1930s also made extensive use of reconstructions. Unlike Flaherty’s reconstructions of a past that existed only in hearsay, these reconstructions were underpinned by personal observation and extensive research. Their cameras and sound equipment were limited in what they could do in the everyday world, but these documentarians overcame these limitations by meticulous note-taking so that they could prove the truthfulness of their reconstructions. Everything in their films had to be based on concrete evidence. So Humphrey Jennings’ groundbreaking Fires Were Started (aka I Was a Fireman) from 1943 used real firemen to play fictional firemen in a story fashioned from incidents which had happened in the previous two years. At points, the film is far less clear than contemporary fiction films, simply because the film respects researched facts rather than the demands of smooth storytelling. Flaherty’s inheritors took documentary in the direction that we recognise today: filmmaking from reality whose fundamental ethics are based on the honesty of the filmmaker as the broker in the process of putting reality on the screen. At the same time, many of these filmmakers had a social purpose. By showing and interpreting the world in an honest way, they aimed to change it. Jennings’ film is explicitly wartime propaganda, emphasising the business-like heroism of firemen during the London Blitz. There is an obvious potential for conflict between

9781784533946.indd 7

09/09/2015 15:15

8

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

the two aims of honesty and promoting social change, and the history of documentary since the 1930s is in many ways the history of successive attempts to reconcile them. Television has been a crucial broker in this process, especially in Europe. Documentaries found their natural home on TV, whereas in cinema they had long been marginalised by feature length fiction films. In some countries, particularly the Netherlands and Scandinavia, documentary maintained a steady presence in cinemas in the second half of the twentieth century. There were even isolated examples of socially critical feature film documentaries in US cinemas, particularly Barbara Kopple’s Academy Award-winning Harlan County, USA in 1976. But from the 1950s until comparatively recently, it was television documentaries that were the main focus of arguments about the ethics of filming, and the battles over who had the power to show what. By the end of the 1950s, television documentaries had settled into a public service television mode. Public service documentaries aimed to enlighten and educate their viewers, showing and explaining as they went. Until the recent proliferation of TV channels, they were also required to be balanced rather than opinionated, much to the frustration of those filmmakers who wanted to change the world rather than explain it. Even then, scrupulous balance occasionally caused problems for broadcasters. Paul Hamann’s 1985 BBC film Real Lives: At the Edge of the Union was made at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, soon after a wave of bombings on the UK mainland. It gave exactly equal airtime to two members of the Northern Irish Assembly: the republican Martin McGuinness (widely suspected of being a member of the Irish Republican Army, or IRA) and the staunch unionist Gregory Campbell. Both were allowed to express their views unchallenged. The Thatcher government wanted to ban the film, causing an internal crisis as the BBC is not meant to be censored by the British government. The film was delayed for two months but eventually shown, and just 30 people complained that it lacked the required balance. However, the damage was done within the BBC, and 30 years on, Real Lives is still seen as the moment when the BBC began to avoid political controversies in its documentary output. In its observational approach to the two contrasting politicians,

9781784533946.indd 8

09/09/2015 15:15

Ethics and Documentaries: a Short History

9

Real Lives also shows how much documentary filmmaking had changed since the 1940s. Meticulously researched reconstruction was no longer the dominant form: lightweight equipment meant that filmmakers could follow action as it happened. Early in the 1960s several companies developed lightweight 16mm cameras which could be used with crystal sync tape sound recording. This equipment answered the desire of documentarians to use their cameras rather than their notebooks to observe the world, playing into the common belief that ‘the camera cannot lie’. Half a century later, this belief has proved simplistic for all kinds of reasons. But lightweight equipment revolutionised what documentary could do, the places it could go to, and the intimacy of portrayal that it could provide. Observational documentary was born. A number of unintended consequences quickly became apparent. In the early 1970s, two series were made in the US and UK which showed the everyday lives of a family. They both aimed to observe an interesting and relatively typical family for several weeks of their lives, by following them with minimally invasive crews. Unlike earlier TV documentaries, there was no agenda, and no social purpose beyond that of observing everyday life. Both series demonstrated the new ethical problems that were emerging as a result of the observational technique. The Loud family in the US An American Family (1973) and the Wilkins in the UK The Family (1974) became celebrities. Paul Watson’s UK series intensified the problems by showing events just a week or so after they had happened, so by the middle of the series the family were using the programmes to respond to press and public comments about them. Mrs Wilkins briefly had a newspaper column to express her trenchant views. Their daughter moved forward the date of her wedding so it could feature in the last episode. The Wilkins and the Louds performed for the camera (some family members being more willing than others). They spontaneously altered their lives to accommodate the demands of television viewers as they saw them. Documentary had overcome the problems of reconstruction only to encounter a new set of difficulties: ‘performance for the camera’, of course, but also that of exploitation of ordinary people. The subsequent lives of both the Louds and the Wilkins seem to bear this out, with the families breaking up under the strain of public scrutiny. Indeed,

9781784533946.indd 9

09/09/2015 15:15

10

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Pat Loud asked her husband for a divorce on screen during the series. Both series were enormously popular; the technique was too important to abandon. So filmmakers now had a new responsibility in relation to their subjects, to minimise the level of exploitation involved in filming by being as straight as possible in their dealings with their subjects. This is endlessly difficult in practice as the subjects of the most engaging documentaries are often those whose lives are complicated. They often come from a different social background to that of filmmakers and find it difficult to engage with the mechanisms of power, which include broadcasting. As Brian Winston once brutally put it, documentary filmmaking ‘concentrates on the victims of society’. Documentaries regularly face the challenge that they are exploitative. In the decades since The Family, Paul Watson has continued to court this accusation, filming people declining into Alzheimer’s disease (Malcolm and Barbara), alcoholics in the advanced stages of addiction (Rain in My Heart), bigoted middle-class people discussing politics and social issues in The Dinner Party, and even upper-class men on an anarchic Fishing Party. In each case, however, Watson has proved to have been scrupulous in his dealings. The exaggerated characters of The Fishing Party had, amazingly, offered themselves as a suitable subject for the BBC to film. The four people featured in Rain in My Heart are all too aware that they are being filmed as a warning to others. Watson appears occasionally in that film debating with himself, and with the viewer, about the key ethical issues raised by his film. Is he exploiting his subjects? Does his sympathetic presence and the promise of TV exposure encourage them to exaggerate their behaviour? Should his duty as a human being outweigh that of the observational filmmaker? Should he intervene to stop the self-harm that his camera is witnessing? We see him plead with his subjects, accuse them of showing off, and at one moment he ‘accidentally’ knocks over a bottle that one of them is about to consume. Watson’s engagement with the families of his subjects did not end with the transmission of the documentary. He continued to offer his help as they coped with their subsequent lives. In Rain in My Heart, Watson also has some sour comments about reality TV, then in its early stages, as he finds it more and

9781784533946.indd 10

09/09/2015 15:15

Ethics and Documentaries: a Short History

11

more difficult to get cooperation from hospital administrators in his valuable project. The late 1990s saw a growing suspicion of documentary because of the ethical decisions made in both reality TV and TV documentaries. The most outrageous was the ITV documentary The Connection for the prestigious Network First series. Filmmaker Marc de Beaufort claimed to have filmed the entire journey of a Columbian drugs ‘mule’ as he ingested packets of heroin and travelled to London. A striking interview in a secret location with one of the key members of the Cali drugs cartel rounded off this dramatic film. And dramatic it certainly was. De Beaufort had staged most of the key sequences (supposed drug-runners in fact considered themselves actors, and were paid for their efforts, handling mints rather than heroin; the secret interview location that the crew purportedly had to be blindfolded to be taken to was in reality Beaufort’s own hotel room). Once exposed by the Guardian newspaper, several executives were disgraced, and the broadcaster fined £2 million. It was a low point for TV documentary: de Beaufort had systematically broken the bond of trust between filmmaker and the TV audience. At the same time, reconstruction was making something of a comeback. The dramatic demands of reality TV (merging observational documentary techniques with entertainment storytelling) required greater use of reconstruction and even improvisation by its characters. The amateur dramatics of Made in Chelsea or The Only Way is Essex were still some way off, but one character in the docusoap Driving School was shown waking her husband in the middle of the night with her anxieties about her forthcoming ordeal. It was utterly implausible that the crew should have been waiting quietly in the couple’s bedroom in case they had a middle-of-thenight conversation. Rather, it appeared to be a reconstruction of an event the couple had reported. Viewers protested. The Daily Mail newspaper protested. The incident vividly shows the expectations of truthfulness that then prevailed. Then a further case emerged: a Channel 4 documentary entitled Daddy’s Girl was extensively trailed in the week before broadcast. The subject was fascinating: a young woman whose father was vehemently opposed to her proposed marriage. And all parties had seemingly consented to appear (father, daughter and intended husband), expressing their opinions in a forthright manner. Then

9781784533946.indd 11

09/09/2015 15:15

12

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

the real father contacted Channel 4, demanding to know why someone was impersonating him. The impersonator was not just anyone, it emerged, but his daughter’s intended husband. The entire production team had been hoodwinked by Stuart Smith and Victoria Greetham, with Smith getting a mate to pretend to be Greetham’s fiancé while he impersonated her father. The couple became celebrities briefly, accused by Angela Rippon on a TV chat show of lies and deception. They seemed somewhat taken aback by this accusation, as they saw the whole thing as ‘being creative’ or ‘being economical with the truth’. For them perhaps it was; but for anyone concerned about the ethics of documentary, it was another instance of untrustworthiness. Around the year 2000 it seemed an ethical shift was taking place. The values that had underpinned the observational documentary were crumbling: people were no longer content with ‘being themselves and ignoring the camera’, and filmmakers were under all kinds of pressure to justify themselves and their methods: ‘trust me’ was no longer enough of a guarantee. In the same period in the US, filmmakers were using the new freedom of the premium subscription TV channel HBO to make films that addressed exactly these issues. Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line (1989) forensically examined the naive belief in the ‘eye witness’ to demonstrate the multitude of small inconsistencies that lead to a wrongful conviction for murder. Some witnesses misremembered; some saw events through a veil of prejudice; others simply lied. The pace of Morris’s film is utterly unlike that of a TV documentary, and it requires concentration from its viewers. He reconstructs the incident of a shooting several times over, using big close-ups of details, a technique widely used since for reconstructions in documentaries. But each of his sequences is subtly different, bringing out the inconsistencies of the eye-witness accounts. It is still a shock for viewers when they realise that no two reconstruction sequences are the same. By the beginning of this century, traditional documentary approaches were consistently under fire as a result of both these various television scandals and the thoroughgoing interrogation of its fundamental beliefs in documentaries like Morris’s. At the same time, the viewers themselves began ‘self-documenting’, using newly available cheap video technology, video-enabled mobile devices and social media. Documentary suddenly seemed to be

9781784533946.indd 12

09/09/2015 15:15

Ethics and Documentaries: a Short History

13

everywhere, used and abused, questioned and taken for granted. So the current situation is complicated. The genre is diverging into two distinctive genres. On the one side are documentary films, often feature length, which invent styles that are appropriate to their particular subject and the precise circumstances of production. On the other side are the popular documentary forms which have taken a different direction, towards various genre hybrids and reality TV formats. On an ethical level, they face the same kinds of problems, made more acute by the fact that those problems are now subjects of general interest. In the past, ethical problems were arcane issues that filmmakers discussed between themselves. Now that virtually everyone watching documentary has themselves wielded a camera or had ambivalent feelings about being filmed, documentary ethics have become something that everyone worries about. TV documentary viewers now criticise the ethical decisions made by filmmakers using the evidence that they find in the films. There have been several responses to this new situation. Generally, documentaries became more personal. Filmmakers have put themselves into their films to show their own fallibility, to reveal the relationships they have with their subjects. Nick Broomfield puts a comedy version of himself into his films (as a hapless sound recordist), making the circumstances of filming take centre stage. A Broomfield documentary is usually the story of a plucky film crew trying – and often failing – to get their story. The screen character Nick Broomfield is puzzled and inept, and his subjects reveal themselves essentially because they can’t really believe that this is anything other than a student film. The Broomfield persona is very different from that of Michael Moore. Moore is the indignant seeker of truth, utterly sure of himself and the righteousness of his cause: he’s the noisy new version of the now discredited line ‘trust me, I’m a documentary filmmaker’. His immensely popular feature films have been extensively criticised by, among others, David T. Hardy and Jason Clarke, who have spent long hours picking holes in his films. Every elision of time or events for narrative convenience has been ruthlessly pressed into service to prove that Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man (HarperCollins, 2005). But while Moore is all over his films, as both voice and physical presence, often inciting action, his films are not really presented as subjective pieces of work. He continues to insist that he offers an objective investigation of the truth rather than a personal reflection on a social problem.

9781784533946.indd 13

09/09/2015 15:15

14

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Most documentary filmmakers have now developed a more conversational style, even when they remain behind the camera. This has been helped by recording equipment that enables the filmer to maintain eye contact with their subject even while filming. Even as committed an observational filmmaker as Kim Longinotto allows the warmth of her relationship with her subjects to shine through clearly in a film like Rough Aunties (2008). In documentaries like this, it is clear why the participants have agreed to be filmed. Some want publicity for their cause or their beliefs; others want to be heard; still others are willing, if not eager, to use the process of filmmaking as a kind of therapy. These documentaries have recast the form as one that shows the truth of a particular interaction, that of filming. The films show the reality of a relationship that the filmmaker and his or her subjects embark upon together. In those circumstances, there are many who will agree to take part. But not all documentary is like this, by any means. One development has eliminated the traditional filmmaker almost entirely. Series like Educating Essex and 24 Hours in A&E use a ‘fixed-rig’: a large number of remote-controlled cameras installed within a building (a school, a hospital) where something interesting is bound to happen. The people know they are being filmed, they can withhold their permission if they like (hence the blurred-out faces), but there is little interaction between the filmers and the filmed. Instead of a camera crew, there is a truck or portakabin somewhere nearby where the editorial crew are waiting to record the output from the relevant cameras when it looks as though an interesting incident or story is about to develop. On the face of it, this might seem like the reassertion of old-fashioned observation. It is highly effective TV, though in some cases we are limited to watching fragments of an event, the significance of which has to be explained in voice-over rather than observed for ourselves. Documentary has now become as complex and multifaceted as the people it films. There are some who, a bit like Victoria Greetham and Stuart Smith, regard the whole thing as the opportunity to have a laugh. That is one of the key characteristics of reality TV. The most extreme end of that genre is indeed people having a laugh: whether celebrities like The Osbournes and Keeping Up With The Kardashians or the engaging am dram of The Only Way is Essex, in which most of the action is improvised on the basis of a pre-arranged and agreed script. Most reality TV series, however,

9781784533946.indd 14

09/09/2015 15:15

Ethics and Documentaries: a Short History

15

are formulaic rather than scripted. They sweep up a public that regards itself as street-wise about filmmaking into projects where all sides acknowledge that the performed selves bear only a passing relationship with the private selves. Often, these are formats in which real people are offered a challenge of some kind, and are expected to respond with outsized versions of their usual behaviours. The arch, teasing voice-over of a series like Come Dine With Me makes this abundantly clear. Yet even in this reality TV end of the documentary business, the fundamental ethical considerations refuse to go away. If anything, they are intensified by the squeeze on programming costs and industrial production line processes under which these series are now made. It is still possible for documentaries to address big social issues, of course. But here, too, the ethical problems seem to have become more rather than less difficult. In early 2014, Channel 4 offered an insight into a street where, it was claimed, most of the inhabitants lived on benefits. They called it Benefits Street in the end, though allegedly this was not the working title under which the subjects knew it. The series became the focus for a public debate, and the participants appeared to be unprepared for the intensity of the media blizzard that followed. Benefits Street was accused of ‘poverty porn’, and in a public meeting, residents of James Turner Street in Birmingham (the programme made no attempt at anonymity) said that they felt they had been ‘misrepresented’. They were offered a live hour-long debate after the final show. An executive from the production company defended the ways in which the participants were recruited by the filmers. He stressed that the series dealt with themes other than benefits, and emphasised solidarity in the face of hardship. But were they prepared for what might happen when they appeared on TV, any more than the Wilkins family were back in 1974? Benefits Street featured people who experienced difficulties in thinking through the consequences of their actions even within the space of their own lives. So how could they think through the consequences of their own media exposure, even if they were avid consumers of such TV shows themselves? Many of the participants seemed to be excluded from the digital revolution that has enabled the widespread public scepticism about the making of documentaries. If they had known what would happen, would they have agreed to participate? Those that made it through the experience were the exhibitionists and the media-savvy, with ‘White Dee’ becoming, like Mrs Wilkins 30

9781784533946.indd 15

09/09/2015 15:15

16

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

years before her, a minor media celebrity and commentator on the waywardness of the socially marginalised. There is another question that lingers around Benefits Street. What was offered back to the community? Everyone else was happy: Channel 4 had a success with an exceptional audience of over 5 million viewers. Journalists filled columns. Politicians justified policies. But the street itself was offered no help, no initiatives to improve its environment, no training in creating a better life, no reward for being pilloried. No resources were available, apparently, and none were asked for. In the end, there remains one simple question that participants can and should ask. It is difficult for a filmmaker to answer because it is weighed down with many ethical uncertainties that lie at the heart of documentary making. It is also the question that can establish whether the two sides of the documentary process, the filmers and the filmed, can trust each other. The question is: ‘what’s in it for me?’

9781784533946.indd 16

09/09/2015 15:15

2 U ncov e r i n g t h e T r u th Alex Gibney

4. Alex Gibney. Photograph by Andrew Brucker, courtesy of Jigsaw Productions

Alex Gibney is the director of the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side and the Oscar-nominated Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. His 2013 film Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, won three Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award. His other work includes We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer and The Armstrong Lie.

9781784533946.indd 17

09/09/2015 15:15

18

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

I

’ve always been drawn to projects that represent a search for the truth, or a reckoning with the lies people tell others and sometimes themselves. My films are often about events or things that happen in the news; things that are well-covered and well-known to people, but for which the real meaning or truth might be obscured or hidden. It sounds very simple to say you’re searching for the truth, but it’s a path that’s often littered with storytelling dead-ends, forensic obstacles and ethical trapdoors. In the age of 24-hour news, events get picked over very quickly, people decide on a narrative with a simple meaning, and then everyone moves on. But very often the most interesting stuff gets left behind, and that’s where I come in, digging a little bit deeper, exploring conflicts and contradictions and unravelling psychological and political mysteries that might have been overlooked in the snap judgements of reporters and instant opinion givers. The facts and the meaning of a situation can take time to determine. My method is to come back to a story just a little while after the events concerned, uncover new evidence and insights, and ponder them and ask questions. It can be a struggle, but it’s worth it, because the truths I’m pursuing in films like Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron, The Armstrong Lie and Mea Maxima Culpa are often about abuses of power. Part of the motivation behind my work is a strong sense of injustice, and that old journalists’ maxim: ‘Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.’ Abuses of power do stir me, and they motivate me to find out how they happened. I’m interested not just in the pain of the victims – though that’s very important – but also in the MO of the perpetrator, and sometimes the motivation of the perpetrator, because it seems to me that you can’t reckon with crime, or abuses, unless you understand the criminals and the abusers. My films, in their structure, tend to resemble fiction films, and in particular genre films. I think of Enron as a heist film. I think of Taxi to the Dark Side as a murder mystery. I think of We Steal Secrets as an international thriller. I’m a big admirer of the detective story. And the detective stories I like the best are the ones in which there’s a dogged pursuit of a multifaceted truth. Detective stories have a simple structure but they often end up going down a lot of byways and pathways that you didn’t expect

9781784533946.indd 18

09/09/2015 15:15

Uncovering the Truth

19

at the beginning, which is part of the pleasure of the story, and it leads you to a more complex place than simply saying ‘this is the answer to the question that motivated the story’. The truth of something is generally a complicated thing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that simple truths are often meant to be deceptive. The events and personalities I find myself drawn towards are often hugely complicated and difficult to grapple with. There’s often a tremendous amount of information to take into account, but in terms of their ability to convey information, films are extremely limited. If you were to transcribe my films they would be long articles, or very short books. A simple structure helps you find a way through all the masses of information. The other thing that helps is an eye for the telling detail. And telling details can come in unexpected forms. I remember making a film called Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, and coming back from a key interview with Spitzer, looking at the transcript and thinking, ‘I’ve failed – there’s nothing there.’ And then I looked at the footage and I realised that it was the expression on his face that we’d captured that was the really telling thing. It revealed something far more than words on paper. It was poetic to watch. That is what films can do – give you a vivid moment that will be tattooed onto you mind, which you will carry with you and remember. Uncovering moments like this, whether it’s a killer piece of archive or cornering a lie – a lot of people in interviews will lie to me, and I have to talk to other people to determine whether or not they were telling the truth – is hard, painstaking work. Uncovering and telling the truth can also come at a cost. But many others have paid a higher price than me. I am free. I haven’t gone to prison. I haven’t been wounded. I am still alive. I live a relatively comfortable life. I have put myself in some danger from time to time, and I have certainly criticised some rather powerful people and institutions, but I’m usually careful about how I go about it. On a very mundane level, I was audited twice after Taxi to the Dark Side. That could have been a coincidence, or maybe not. Generally, I think that telling stories in a public way is a good defence against harm. But there’s a different sort of danger with films that set out in pursuit of the truth, which concerns me more. And that is the danger of collateral damage – the sort of fate that befell Chelsea

9781784533946.indd 19

09/09/2015 15:15

20

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Manning, the former US soldier sentenced to 35 years’ imprisonment for violations of the Espionage Act, who never wanted to disclose her identity. You can have all the noble intentions in the world, but it doesn’t protect you from the law of unforeseen consequences. When you make a film, it is a self-contained thing. But then you put it out into the world and it takes on a life of its own, and people can be damaged entirely unintentionally. You have to be very responsible about what it is that you say and what you include in your film, because it can have a huge impact on other people. When we premiered Enron for example, a woman walked down to the front of the theatre where we were doing a Q&A. She announced that she was the widow of a man who had committed suicide in the sequence at the beginning of the film. I’d included that sequence because it was an impactful way of starting off the movie, but she was furious and accused us of trying to make a buck out of her pain and suffering. It was a pretty sobering exchange. It didn’t make me think that what I did was wrong. But it made me reflect a lot about my responsibilities as a filmmaker, and the consequences of putting something in a film. A few years later, there was a great deal of discussion in the cutting room for Taxi to the Dark Side about how we treated the soldiers. For a while we were very fixed on implicating the higherups, and we realised that we had not really reckoned properly with the soldiers’ own personal responsibility for the death of Dilawar, the central character in the film, whom US soldiers had beaten to death. The soldiers were helping us with the film, but we had let them off too lightly, and, in our eagerness to be sympathetic to these young men, we had omitted some evidence we’d discovered of their brutal treatment of Dilawar. We realised that this was a mistake, and that this information had to go into the film, but we’d have to reckon with the impact on the individuals concerned, and one individual in particular, who would be shown in a harsh light. That is often the way of things in films like Taxi to the Dark Side; we could see the way ahead to the truth, but it was clear that getting there would involve some difficult choices and dilemmas. Once you start asking questions in pursuit of the truth, you don’t always know where they will lead. You get into some very uncomfortable territory, particularly in your dealings with contributors. There’s a degree to which you want to gain their trust, but your agenda is different from theirs. To those who agree to appear in my films, I

9781784533946.indd 20

09/09/2015 15:15

Uncovering the Truth

21

must be honest that my ultimate responsibility is to my audience. I am in the business of trying to tell a story to my viewers and to get at some essential truths. You can never lie to your contributors, but sometimes you can’t be entirely upfront and honest. No filmmaker is going to get access to anyone if you start off by saying ‘If push comes to shove, I will throw you under the bus.’ But if people start to lie to you, like Lance Armstrong did, you can’t afford to protect them just because they have given you access, because you have an obligation to the public, and to the truth. Negotiating a route through these problems is tough, and criticism is hard to avoid. On the Wikileaks film, We Steal Secrets, I was criticised for being unnecessarily truthful, for not uncritically endorsing Julian Assange as purely noble and heroic, and for not protecting him more. But avoiding the truth in the service of a higher ideal is a variant of what police call ‘noble cause corruption’. All you can do is think hard, question yourself, consider your choices carefully, and trust yourself to figure it all out in the end. It helps that, unlike journalists working to tight deadlines, I have time on my side – usually between one and two years. I can weigh the implications of my choices and decisions. And generally speaking, by the time I have finished a film, I feel like I have done what I set out to do. The other thing I’ve learned is to put the dilemmas you encounter into the films you make. There’s so much media noise around these days. People want to know the truth, but it’s hard to come by, because it’s often so complicated and multi-faceted. Very often, when I am pushed in the direction of a simple truth, I am suspicious that it is a cover-up for a lie. I think perhaps the most honest thing you can do is to weigh the evidence, show your workings, and give the audience a sense of the complexities and the issues you’ve been wrestling with, so they can make their own minds up. The search for the truth never stops. It’s not something you can simply nail. But you can make people think, and send them away with the idea that the truth is full of dilemmas and difficulties and challenges – with the idea that the search for the truth is a process they have to participate in and continue for themselves.

9781784533946.indd 21

09/09/2015 15:15

3 T el l i n g St o r i es James Marsh

5. James Marsh on location. Content Film / Film4 / The Kobal Collection

James Marsh is the Oscar- and Bafta-winning director of Man on Wire, the story of Philippe Petit’s wire-walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York in 1974. His other work includes: Wisconsin Death Trip, a dramatised account of the disasters that befell one small town in Wisconsin during the last years of the nineteenth century; the Bafta-winning documentary Project Nim, about an experiment in the 1970s to see if a chimpanzee raised among humans might master human communication; and the multi award-winning feature film The Theory of Everything, a biopic of the celebrated physicist Stephen Hawking.

9781784533946.indd 23

09/09/2015 15:15

24

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

T

he documentary films I make tend not to involve do-or-die moments of ethical uncertainty, because they’re not observational in nature. I generally have the luxury of time to consider my choices; Man on Wire and Project Nim both took two years to make. But on such films ethical problems and challenges are no less present, and often every bit as thorny. My way of making documentaries is to construct stories. They are based on personal testimonies and therefore personal relationships, and personal relationships always have the potential to throw up complexities and dilemmas. You’re saying to someone ‘I want you to tell me your story’, which sounds simple, but very often isn’t. You’ve agreed that you will tell someone’s story, but not that you’ll be telling their version of the story. You’re telling your own version, in my case usually made up of a collage of different voices, out of which I try and construct what I think is essentially the truth, in dramatic form. You have to be careful not to mislead people as to what you’re actually up to. They have some ownership of the story, both morally speaking and in practice. It’s their memories and recollections. But in some films – like Project Nim, which deals with some very complicated issues about responsibility and abuse, and strong emotions like guilt and regret – you find there’s an enormous conflict between the different recollections. You have to navigate that conflict in people’s recollections and find a route to what you think is the truth. The conflicting recollections at play on Project Nim produced something of a crisis when the film was finished and we showed it to the people who took part. The professor in the film strongly objected to the way in which I told the story and wanted it changed. But I felt very comfortable with the way the film stood, and I felt that he was trying to invoke the same authority and privileged status that he had at the time of the experiment. I felt that 30-odd years later, he shouldn’t be allowed to dictate any more. It seemed to me that his authority in the experiment had caused many people to have issues and personal complications. Now, in my film, there should be a level playing field, as there should be in any film that I make. No one contributor should be given any special status or authority. If they saw things and witnessed things and have a version of the story to tell, then you have to give them the same status as everyone else when you put the story together.

9781784533946.indd 24

09/09/2015 15:15

Telling Stories

25

6. Herbert Terrace, the professor who led Project Nim, and the subject of the study, the chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky. Red Box Films / Passion Pictures / BBC Films / The Kobal Collection

On Man on Wire, I tussled and wrestled over many months with Philippe Petit over whether he would be comfortable with other people being involved in the film. He objected to two people in particular, who he felt betrayed him while he was in the towers, executing the final part of the adventure and getting up there on the wire. I felt as a filmmaker that I had to hear those people’s views, not least because Philippe felt they’d betrayed him; that was the very reason why I wanted to hear their version of the story. Philippe wanted the film to be a one-man show, featuring him and only him, and we argued quite passionately about that. Everyone assumes that they will be the centrepiece of the story, but the stories I’ve told have always featured multiple voices. There is generally a protagonist, and in Man on Wire it was Philippe Petit. But other voices and versions of the truth are essential. When I’m researching and preparing for films like Man on Wire and Project Nim, I start by spending quite a lot of time with the people I’m going to interview, and building a personal relationship with those people, based on trust. Most people do want to tell you their story, so you don’t necessarily have to convince people. But some people do have strong reservations, and persuading them to take part brings with it certain responsibilities; you need to

9781784533946.indd 25

09/09/2015 15:15

26

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

be especially careful and honourable in the way you treat their testimony. On Project Nim there was a man who had spent part of his career in animal testing, and conducting experiments on animals was and is generally rather cruel, I think. But I had a lot of sympathy for this man, who I saw as a good man in a bad world, and I was able to persuade him, against his better judgement, to go on camera and talk about his role in testing and experimenting on chimpanzees. I gave him a promise; I said, ‘I can see you have a great deal of moral agony about this. My promise to you is that I will include that moral agony in the story.’ And I kept that promise. Firstly it was true to his character, and true to what he was telling me. And secondly, that was the context in which he felt comfortable being in the film. I wouldn’t normally say to someone: ‘Look, I will make sure that your own moral deliberations are part of my story.’ But in that case it felt important. It wasn’t a contractual promise; it was just a verbal understanding. It was part of the relationship I had built with the contributor. That character came across very sympathetically in the film, because that’s the way I regarded him. Generally, I try never to make judgements or take sides. In Project Nim you are invited to take sides against the professor. But my feeling was that by telling the story as I found it, it would be up to the audience to make that judgement, rather than me. Certainly, I left things out of the film – evidence from other people – that would have put the professor in a very bad light indeed, had I included them. But I didn’t want to do that. That wasn’t the story; the story was about the chimpanzee Nim, and Nim’s life. It wasn’t supposed to be an attack on this particular man. I wanted to allow the audience to make their own judgement. Of course it’s true that as a director you are always making choices and decisions about your story. The act of constructing a story is to leave things out and put things in. Even in observational films, the camera is excluding many things, outside of the frame, and in the edit you are constantly selecting shots and making active choices. But I try and take myself out of the filmmaking process as best I can, and try not to make judgements and not to have other characters making judgements on each other. Rather, I try to lay it out. This is what people did. These are the choices they made.

9781784533946.indd 26

09/09/2015 15:15

Telling Stories

27

Some filmmakers actually go out with an objective to right a wrong, or to advocate for a cause. That is perfectly legitimate, and those sorts of films tend to announce themselves that way. But I don’t do that, and I don’t feel comfortable doing that. I just want to tell a story accurately. That involves lots of judgements and choices, but not moral ones. I focus in on what people did and what choices they made. These are the raw materials and building blocks for any story that I try to tell, based on characters’ testimonies. I don’t really want to know about their opinions on things, or their judgements about things; I want to know what they did, and my interviews are based on trying to find out. ‘What did you do? What were your actions and reactions?’ Such things are the basis of drama. Assembling these factual building blocks involves a huge amount of work. I do lots and lots of research and preparation, and spend months reading and understanding and talking to people before I even start my interviews. I feel like a combination of an historian and an archaeologist, trying to find out the true story of what happened, how things went down, and to uncover material evidence for how it was – artefacts and bits of archive, and so on. You need to know what questions to ask. Then I embark on gathering the testimony, in long and intensive interviews that last hours and sometimes even days. I try to put people back in the moment, which means that the interviews can sometimes be very emotional. I want them to reconnect. ‘Put me there; what do you see? What do you feel?’ And then I take all that material and wade through it again in the cutting room. What I’m after is the story as it presents itself to me from all this work and thought, and then I construct that story for the screen as I found it, as accurately as possible, and in the most multi-layered and cinematic way I can. The process of discovering, excavating and constructing a story that feels like it really needs to be told is hugely absorbing. It sustains you through all the ups and downs of the filmmaking process, which are many. The same is true of the relationships you have with your contributors, and the relationship you have with your subject matter: the more complex it is, and the more full of challenges and ethical questions and problems to be solved, the more it sustains your curiosity. Difficulties are fuel for creativity and inventive storytelling. They are something to be welcomed and embraced. They make you make better, richer, more interesting films.

9781784533946.indd 27

09/09/2015 15:15

4 Ac t s o f Ev i l André Singer

7. André Singer. Photograph by Filip Beusan, courtesy of the Festival of Tolerance, Zagreb

André Singer is a documentary producer and director, and a respected anthropologist. He has worked with Werner Herzog as executive producer on a number of films, including Little Dieter Needs to Fly and Into the Abyss, and was an executive producer on both The Act of Killing, a Bafta-winning film about the Indonesian death squads of the 1960s, and Dreams of a Life, in which a filmmaker sets out to piece together the life story of a woman whose body lay undiscovered in her flat for three years. He is also the director of the powerful Holocaust documentary Night Will Fall.

9781784533946.indd 29

09/09/2015 15:15

30

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

A

lengthy documentary career inevitably brings with it a host of ethical dilemmas. Documentary makers strive to present issues, ideas and events truthfully and honestly. In doing so they have to respect their audience, their participants and the wider community, while at the same time producing arresting and involving films. The conflicts are many and varied, and I have encountered them as much in travel and history programmes as the perhaps more obvious areas of anthropological filmmaking and television journalism. For the past five years however, preoccupying me have been the themes of war, genocide, death and the nature of evil. Conscious choices as the years slip by, or a reflection of the age and industry we inhabit? In 2010/11, I worked with Werner Herzog – with whom I have had a 12-film, 20-year collaboration as his executive producer or producer – on a project to interview condemned killers in the US. These interviews led to the harrowing film Into the Inferno (2011) and the television series On Death Row (2012/13). Based on intimate conversations conducted by Herzog himself, this project delved into the psyche of the murderers, not in order to investigate questions of guilt or innocence, but rather to humanise the central characters. Humanity and evil also came under scrutiny in Joshua Oppenheimer’s brilliant film The Act of Killing (2013), on which Werner and I, alongside Errol Morris, acted as executive producers. In this film, perpetrators of genocide in 1960s Indonesia boastfully exhibit pride in their chilling actions even to the extent of acting out their deeds for the camera. Was it wrong to give publicity to such barbaric acts? On the contrary, the whole purpose of the film was to shock the audience into realising that the monsters in our midst are human beings who could easily be our neighbours. Nothing in the film exonerated their crimes, and the impact of the film in Indonesia has been remarkable, creating an open debate about the sins of the past for the first time in 40 years. At the heart of this sadly depressing raft of films, which also includes Carol Morley’s Dreams of a Life and Mike Grigsby’s We Went to War, is one that has given me more ethical headaches than anything before or since – the film Night Will Fall. The premise of the film was straightforward. In April of 1945, confronted with the atrocities revealed by the liberation of the Nazi

9781784533946.indd 30

09/09/2015 15:15

Acts of Evil

31

concentration and extermination camps, particularly in Germany and Poland, the Allies decided to make a documentary film record to be used both as evidence for subsequent war crimes tribunals and as propaganda to assist in the effective de-Nazification of the German people. An extraordinary team was assembled to help make this film. It would show to ordinary Germans the incontrovertible and unvarnished truth of what had been done in their name during the Third Reich. The team consisted of Sidney Bernstein, who later went on to found Granada Television; Richard Crossman, who later became a Labour Party government minister; and Hollywood director Alfred Hitchcock. The idea was to collect the film shot by the Allied armies as they entered the camps and present it as a factual survey. The project was overtaken by the end of the war and the political convulsions that heralded the new challenges of peace. Over the following few months, the originally clear mandate for the film became clouded. What was an obvious course of action in the heat of the final struggles against Germany began to look less certain as the realities of rebuilding a devastated Europe became apparent. The complexities of clearing the aftermath took priority; sights were set firmly on the future. The film, unfinished, was quietly shelved and archived at the Imperial War Museum (IWM). Although available to scholars, it was never seen or used as its makers intended. That film, labelled in government documents as ‘German Concentration Camps Factual Survey’, was regarded by some as a forgotten masterpiece of documentary film. As Tony Haggith, who led the restoration of the film at the IWM, put it to me: ‘I think it’s a remarkable film [...] the grandfather of holocaust documentaries. If Alan Resnais was here today, I’d show him the film [...] I think many people would realise that it’s brilliant.’ In 2014, historians and archivists completed the detailed task of restoring and completing the 70-year-old film, using the original notes, camera shot-lists and Crossman’s script to recreate as closely as possible what Bernstein and his team had expected to deliver to the Allied governments in the summer of 1945. For the IWM the project heralded a dilemma: to what use might the restored and completed film be put? It is difficult to see a cinema-going audience flocking to a 70-year-old, 75-minute long

9781784533946.indd 31

09/09/2015 15:15

32

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

black-and-white documentary,  and the intended audience – a defeated German public in post-war occupied Germany – no longer exists. The ambition for Night Will Fall was different. It was conceived as a film about a film, specifically aimed at a contemporary public for whom the events of 1945 were already hazy, forgotten or unclear. There were several threads to be woven together. Firstly, the film was a recognition of the largely forgotten role of the youthful film crews who found themselves, without warning, recording extreme brutality on an almost inconceivable scale. At the very beginning of the systematic use of moving images in wartime, they were pitched into situations of unprecedented horror. Their work resulted in a record with the power to bring the reality of the concentration camps home to an unsuspecting public. Held within the images they shot are others who were also there: fellow young soldiers, already battle-scarred and now propelled into this new nightmare, as well as survivors who had lived through the depths of suffering and fear. Seventy years later, those fleeting faces re-appear in Night Will Fall, now in their eighties and nineties, confronting through the modern lens events about which many have only recently, decades later, felt able to talk. Finally, the film looks at a turbulent, often overlooked period of history: the summer of 1945, when, as the reality of the post-war world unfolded, attitudes, political alliances and governments all changed sharply. How did these changes impact on Bernstein’s original project? Was the film shelved through some dark conspiracy? Or did it simply become the victim of changed priorities and political expediency? The making and subsequent burying of an important film made with an outstanding creative team gave us a clear narrative structure through which to weave the various other themes we wanted to explore. At the heart of this new project, however, was a dilemma. How much of the available 1945 atrocity footage should be shown, and how? Having recently been involved with Joshua Oppenheimer’s diptych of films, The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, both about genocide in 1960s Indonesia, I was acutely aware of how effectively the nightmare of mass killing could be portrayed without showing a single dead body, either on

9781784533946.indd 32

09/09/2015 15:15

Acts of Evil

33

film or in photographs. Oppenheimer managed to convey the horror of genocide in two dramatically contrasting ways. In The Act of Killing, the story was told through the outrageous performances of perpetrators who were still able, after 40 years, to portray themselves in reconstructions as following a justifiable policy of garroting or otherwise killing people deemed to be either ethnic ‘undesirables’ (largely Chinese) or communists, and thus a threat to the regime. In The Look of Silence, we see the atrocities through the eyes of the victims as one man investigates how and why his brother had been brutally killed. Perpetrators are confronted with their crimes, and the futility and senselessness of this era of violence and barbarity becomes obvious to both sides of the story. There was no need to look for archive or visual evidence to ‘prove’ a situation that was denied by no one. Night Will Fall however was faced with a different set of circumstances. The impact of testimonial interviews with those who were there would be emotionally powerful. But actual evidence of the atrocity they witnessed was key to the whole enterprise, portrayed in the film footage gathered by the film crews back in 1945. There was no escaping the fact that some of that footage must form part of the film. Yet we had also to face the fact that these were images of humans in extremity if they were alive, and robbed of all dignity and respect if they were dead. Some indeed might well be recognisable to surviving family members. On the other hand, it would be impossible to include excerpts of Bernstein’s original film without including these images, as they were the very subject of his film. And it seemed dishonest to lessen the magnitude of the sheer horror of those camps by withholding the impact of images that so many had suffered to record. Any filmmaker reading this will know how objectivity erodes in the editing suite. Confronted with many hours of virtually unwatchable material in the various archives (mainly the IWM in London, The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem), it became progressively harder to evaluate how much of the overtly tragic footage should end up on screen – a process made even harder by the fact that the once grainy 1940s film footage has now been digitised, meaning that imagery once somewhat distant is now crystal clear, and even more horrific. My editors and I brought observers into the edit and the reaction of all was the same: initial shock, stunned silence and an insistence that the public needs to be made aware in the strongest possible terms.

9781784533946.indd 33

09/09/2015 15:15

34

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Also weighing in the decision was our awareness, as parents of young adults, that their generation, although having some knowledge of these events through school history lessons, lacked visceral awareness of their reality. That side of the debate rages on, with a strong lobby saying that children should not be exposed to images of dead and debased human bodies. This depends of course on the age of the children, and to me it depends wholly on the context, and how such imagery is presented. The final decider about the selection, extent and use of images was the reaction of survivors, to whom we talked and showed material. It was traumatic for them, and all were visibly shaken and moved by the experience. Yet all were in agreement that the images must be shown, partly out of respect to those millions who had died and suffered in the camps, and partly also because these images leave no room for denial. They are the remaining incontrovertible evidence of one of the darkest events in human history. There was much debate about ways to avoid sensationalising the images while still representing truth, and a concern that overuse could even lessen their impact. The balance was a difficult one. In the end, while Night Will Fall is selective in the use of the images and avoids repetition as far as possible, it does include some of the most difficult viewing an audience can be asked to experience. Ultimately, I believe the only thing that really mattered in putting this film together and wrestling with the balance between shock, horror and sensitivity is whether it fulfilled the ambitions of Richard Crossman, as written in his brilliant script for the original film 70 years ago: This was the end of the journey they [the Nazis] had so confidently begun in 1933. Twelve years? No – in terms of barbarity and brutality they had travelled backwards for twelve thousand years. Unless the world learns the lesson these pictures teach, night will fall. But by God’s grace we who live will learn. ‘These pictures’ showing the atrocities and acts of evil that had been perpetrated during the Third Reich, despite every misgiving, had to be used and seen, or we surely will never learn.

9781784533946.indd 34

09/09/2015 15:15

5 I ncen d i ary I ssu es Kieran Smith

8. Kieran Smith. Photograph by Matt Frost, courtesy of Love Productions

Kieran Smith is the Creative Director for Factual at Love Productions, one of the UK’s leading production companies. His credits include: Young Mum’s Mansion; the Grierson-nominated documentary The Cruel Cut, about female genital mutilation; the Bafta-nominated series Make Bradford British; and the RTS-nominated five-part documentary series Benefits Street, which attracted both huge audiences and enormous controversy on transmission in 2014.

9781784533946.indd 35

09/09/2015 15:15

36

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

I

t’s April 2014 and I’m feeling nervous. Channel 4 are about to announce to the press that they have commissioned the company I work for, Love Productions, to make a new six-part series on immigration. Ordinarily a good feeling surrounds such occasions, but of late the landscape has changed and now these announcements, while not overwhelmingly bad, have started to feel like someone has just handed you a ticking time bomb. Why am I feeling this way? What has changed? For the last 18 months I have been involved in making a series set in Birmingham. Loosely speaking it was a series that followed the residents of one street. Most of the people on that street were benefit claimants – some worked, some didn’t. Back when we were developing the idea, we thought that finding a street where the majority of residents were claiming benefits would be a good way to explore how government changes to the welfare system affected those who most relied on it. The series didn’t feel particularly incendiary or dangerous as we were developing it. Nor did it feel that way when we were filming it. Yes, we knew we had managed to get tremendous access into the lives of some very engaging people, some of whom lived lives that were certainly chaotic and difficult. However a lot of what we filmed was the stuff of everyday life: parenting, relationships, people looking for work and having aspirations to improve their lives. That series was Benefits Street, which on transmission in the early part of 2014 sparked moral outrage, accusations of ‘poverty porn’ and viewing figures of which Channel 4 had not seen the like for several years.

Over 1000 people officially complained to Ofcom, the official communications regulator, about Benefits Street. The Unite Union organised a protest outside Love Productions’ offices, while in the press Love and Channel 4 were pilloried by the left for demonising the poor and scapegoating benefit claimants by filming with people viewed as feckless, unrepentant workshy layabouts who were said to be completely unrepresentative of the majority of people who receive benefits. The initial outcome wasn’t any better for the contributors, either. I vividly remember following the broadcast of the first episode on Twitter – something I do from time to time. I had seen the programme so often by the point of transmission that I couldn’t bear to watch it again, but I do enjoy getting a sense of the Twitter audience reaction. Initially I was excited. We seemed to be getting a lot of tweets, we were even

9781784533946.indd 36

09/09/2015 15:15

Incendiary Issues

37

trending. I knew we had a good series but I wasn’t confident that people would come to it. Back in January 2014, 9pm on Channel 4 was a potentially difficult place to be. The slot came with a lot of pressure to rate. There were two new big dramas on BBC1 and ITV1 and no one was feeling that hopeful. But on Twitter, there they were. No matter how quickly I refreshed my page there were 20 new tweets to be read. The trouble was none of them were saying anything positive. In fact a lot of it was downright nasty. The majority were people saying how disgusting it was that they were working and yet there were people receiving benefits who had a better standard of living. How dare people on benefits spend their money on such non-essential items as cigarettes and beer? But there were also calls for the residents of the streets to be gassed and murdered. As the weeks went on and we got further into the rest of the series there wasn’t any let up. Some commentators had begun to grasp that this was a five-part series, and that to judge how representative we had been about benefit claimants you had to view it as such. But they were still very much in the minority. What I learned from the experience is that when you make a series that has a life outside of itself, whether it is about welfare or immigration or any other hot topic, then the attacks will come thick and fast and from all quarters. Commentators on the Left felt we had done all benefit claimants a disservice by not adequately showing that the majority of benefit claimants in the UK are actually in work. Others attacked us for making trashy reality television. One of the pitfalls of making a documentary series that rates well is that people don’t think that ‘proper documentary’ can get such huge audiences. Had Benefits Street pulled in 700,000 viewers rather than 7 million, people would have had no problem describing it as a gritty observational documentary. Once it gets into the millions, people start to see it as a reality show, a piece of entertainment. So we were accused of staging scenes, of scripting people’s lives, of planting rubbish on the street to make it look more untidy and more befitting our sense of what a street of people on benefits should look like. These kinds of rumours almost become fact in the popular consciousness, because they were printed and reprinted ad nauseam in the tabloid press. Sure, we could issue a denial. But generally people were more than ready to believe that the dark arts of documentary-making had been

9781784533946.indd 37

09/09/2015 15:15

38

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

deployed. In principle, who would you be more likely to believe, a concerned local person, or a television producer? Hanging on to contributors in that kind of environment is tough. When the people participating in a programme are criticised in the press or on social media for being benefit scroungers or layabouts, then they start to look at a series they were happy with in a very different light. We had prepared the contributors of Benefits Street for broadcast as thoroughly as is possible. All of them had a dedicated press officer from Channel 4 whom they could contact if they had any press enquiries. They had all been warned to up the privacy settings of Facebook and Twitter. Contributors who had children were asked to get in touch with their schools so that teachers and staff could keep a close eye on the pupils who were connected to the series. Likewise, all contributors were told that during or after broadcast, should they feel it necessary, they could talk in confidence to the clinical psychologist attached to the series. About two weeks before broadcast we had started to show the residents of James Turner Street the programmes. It’s a promise that we make all the contributors of our factual output. Going on television is a very brave decision, and I wouldn’t expect anyone to do it without being able to see a programme before it goes out, and have the peace of mind that it’s a fair and accurate reflection of their lives and what we filmed with them. It’s a nervous time showing contributors themselves on screen for the first time. How would they react to seeing themselves? But also what would they make of the lives of the people they are sharing the series with? The viewings for Benefits Street went remarkably well. There were small factual inaccuracies to correct, but broadly speaking people were very happy. We also made changes that weren’t factual errors. One contributor wanted some parts of an argument about her daughter taken out in case she was embarrassed by it. Generally people liked how we had put the series together. The title was an issue for a few of them. We had settled on it late and it came as a surprise to some of the contributors. But others were happy with it, and another one of our contributors, Funghi, even claimed he came up with it. Once the first episode was broadcast, the job of looking after contributors got a lot harder. For a few weeks James Turner Street

9781784533946.indd 38

09/09/2015 15:15

Incendiary Issues

39

9. Two of the residents of Benefits Street. Photograph by and courtesy of Richard Ansett

must have been the most filmed street in the world. The UK’s press and then their international colleagues descended on the area. Most of the foreign press dealt with our contributors in a respectful manner, but the UK tabloid press was looking for any kind of division or dissent, and where possible they wanted to dish the dirt on anyone who had featured in the series. Dee Kelly’s relationship history was raked over, and then they discovered that she had stolen £13,000 from Birmingham City Council when she had been an employee of theirs. This was news to us. We had asked all contributors to sign a self-declaration form and be honest about any previous convictions. Dee hadn’t told us and for a few days her conviction played into the hands of those who believed that we had only filmed with unrepentant scroungers stealing from the state. It was galling, but out of our control. We had all worked really hard during the making of the series to be balanced and sensitive, and despite the sometimes difficult things we were filming, what shone through was a genuine feeling of warmth and community. Unfortunately that was in danger of being missed because of the hysteria in the news and on social media, about whether or not people deserved the benefits they received. There is a popular notion amongst the public, I think, that when television producers make a series they are only interested in the

9781784533946.indd 39

09/09/2015 15:15

40

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

most dramatic, shouty, argumentative actuality. A feeling that the ‘best’ programmes are little more than a collection of the most compelling scenes that are simply stuck together. Of course it doesn’t work like that. A good story needs quieter moments, dare I say boring scenes of slow introduction – scenes that move the story on but aren’t in themselves particularly action-packed or exciting. On Benefits Street we had a lot of material that was incredibly compelling, but we had already made the decision, even before the contributor viewings, not to include whole swathes of it. Our rationale was that we had filmed with our contributors for the best part of a year, during the course of which they had said and done things that hadn’t done them any favours (hadn’t we all?) and weren’t necessarily representative of who they really were. To broadcast some of those moments would have been negligent and irresponsible. This issue became particularly pressing in the final episode of the series. We had been following the relationship of Hannah and Simba, a couple who had been together for a couple of years. Now their relationship was hitting hard times, primarily because of Simba’s relationship with alcohol. The programme that was broadcast shows the deterioration of the couple’s relationship, and the viewer gets a glimpse of how Simba could behave when he had been drinking. In the rushes, however, we had the material to show a more searingly honest account of how alcohol can impact on someone’s self-respect and dignity, and how it can ruin most of the good things in someone’s life. We had been filming with the couple for several weeks, and in that time Simba had shown himself to be funny and charming. But whenever he had been drinking he was a changed man. I was fascinated and excited by the material we had. I felt we had the rushes to show the most vivid account I had ever seen of how drink can affect someone’s life. We put cuts together that ostensibly made a much more powerful programme than the one we eventually broadcast. But when we watched the cut we couldn’t help but worry that we were exposing too much detail of a man’s life. When we met Simba he was already drinking excessively. We had glimpses of the charismatic person he could be, but the majority of our material showed him at best as someone selfish and neglectful and at worst, plain destructive. We were also worried about the question of consent. Yes he had welcomed us into his home and encouraged us to film him, but how drunk was he when he had done so? We worried again

9781784533946.indd 40

09/09/2015 15:15

Incendiary Issues

41

and again about whether he had given informed consent and then started to worry that the material we had was too raw for him to bear seeing, and would tarnish any hope he might have of turning things around personally and professionally in the future. So we toned the episode down and removed a lot of the most compelling material. Had it been a single documentary we were making about the couple, then I suspect we would have kept a lot of that material in. But context is everything, and by this stage we were in the edit for the final episode of what was already proving to be the most controversial series of recent years. By the time the series had aired, I had learned another important lesson. When you are making a series with an incendiary subject matter and a name like Benefits Street, the subtleties, nuances and contradictions of a contributor’s personality are extremely hard to convey. You are broadcasting to an audience who for the main part will not respond to complexity. The hardest thing was maintaining the authenticity of what people said and did – their real life personalities and experiences – without alienating them from an audience that was ready to turn on them at any moment. We worked hard to find a balance. This and other lessons learned during the making of Benefits Street, and the storm that followed it, meant we were at least in a good position should another series be commissioned. A re-commission did indeed follow, and we are filming it as I write this chapter. We are also making a companion series called Immigration Street. The inspiration for the series came from the second episode of Benefits Street. In that episode we documented the lives of the residents of number 151 James Turner Street. When we first arrived in Birmingham the people living in that house were a Roma family trying to make a living running an illegal scrap business. Life soon became too difficult for them to earn enough money and they were evicted. The next inhabitants were fourteen Romanian men, all living together in this tiny two-up two-down house. They had been tricked with the promise of good wages into coming to work as part of a chain gang in the UK. Once they’d arrived they were working 14-hour shifts, for the equivalent of a few quid a day. The house had no gas or hot water. When it was broadcast, the episode helped turn the tide of negative press against the series. It was acclaimed as an important piece of television about immigrants, and was praised for its sensitive handling of a difficult and divisive subject.

9781784533946.indd 41

09/09/2015 15:15

42

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

At the time of writing, Immigration Street is proving an even thornier and more difficult series to make than Benefits Street. With Benefits Street the flak came with broadcast – while we were filming the series, we were, by and large, under the radar. With Immigration Street the opposition happened as soon as Channel 4 announced the series. The same has been true on the second series of Benefits Street. We are filming in Stockton-on-Tees, after extensive research to find a suitable street. In many ways, finding the right street and negotiating access to it has been made quite simple. We have been completely candid that this is Benefits Street 2, and residents on the streets we have researched have been free to accept that and allow us to film them, or not. Potential contributors know exactly what they’d be getting into. But the legacy of the first series looms large on this second series. We warned our contributors that the press would eventually come and sniff around their lives, looking for any dirt they could dish. We warned that politicians might show up and try to dissuade them from taking part. We let them know that the local council and local people would very likely be up in arms at the prospect of Benefits Street being filmed in their town, and that petitions might be set up and signed by thousands in a bid to halt the series. All this has happened and the residents have made up their own minds. I have met and talked with opponents of the series, only for it to become apparent that they had not watched the first series, and that their opposition to it was drawn largely from how the series had been reported, rather than any strong thoughts or feelings about what we had broadcast. People have eagerly fed on the countless misreported articles that reflect badly on standards of journalism in some British newspapers. I’m sure that a lot of the people who oppose these series are well meaning, but their overzealous attempts to stop other people from taking part in a television series does reek of censorship. When an MP or local councillor comes out so vociferously against your series from a position of ignorance, and relies on the same old lines about reality television exploiting people and staging events, it’s difficult not to query their real motives. More often than not these are the same people who only want to present an air-brushed, overwhelmingly positive spin on their town. They’ll tell you about the investment in the city centre and the initiatives they are backing. But query that vision, or suggest that the people we have been filming haven’t ever seen or benefited from any of that investment,

9781784533946.indd 42

09/09/2015 15:15

Incendiary Issues

43

or don’t completely agree with the official line on immigration, community or welfare, and you are met with accusations of trying to divide a community or stigmatise a neighbourhood. Ideological blindness and fear is at the heart of most of the opposition against series such as Immigration Street or Benefits Street, and as programme-makers it is just something you have to try and overcome. In Southampton, where we are making Immigration Street, we have been accused of pandering to far right groups, of inciting racial hatred, and of specifically targeting vulnerable people in our search for contributors. The truth is much more benign. We want to make a series about the residents of one street that is very diverse, and which over the years has been transformed by immigration. We have met many people in Southampton who understand this and have been happy to be filmed, but it’s hard to be heard by the opposition, and the opposition is getting more organised. In Southampton alone, the MP, councillors, representatives from the National Health Service (NHS), the police, the universities, the chamber of commerce and others have joined forces in a bid to try and halt the series. They say they fear we will portray the area in a negative light, and of course they have the power and organisational abilities to persuade local people of that too. In these situations they often say that they value and support the media’s freedom of expression in an open society. But if they fear what you’ll do with that freedom, or they disagree with what you have to say, that support evaporates and they’ll try to shut you down. In the end, maybe it all boils down to titles. If we hadn’t called our series Benefits Street but simply The Street, maybe we wouldn’t be where we are now? Perhaps if Immigration Street was called Community Street, everything would be ok, even with the same set of rushes? I have never completely understood the opposition to the titles. Most people on James Turner Street were on benefits. I for one have never felt a visceral hatred towards people on benefits. Nor did I feel stigmatised or second class when I claimed benefits myself. Likewise, there seems to be an underlying assumption that the word ‘immigrant’ is as a negative or pejorative term, and that the process which has brought countless families to this country over the generations is something from which people might wish to dissociate themselves. This is not an assumption I share and it seems to me that the best service we can provide for viewers is to

9781784533946.indd 43

09/09/2015 15:15

44

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

use the description openly, confidently and respectfully. I do think it is incredibly important that documentary makers are mindful of how their programmes are received and do everything in their power to support and look after their contributors during filming, broadcast and beyond. But surely we also have a responsibility not to shy away from subjects like welfare or immigration simply because a lot of people have ignorant and entrenched positions on them. When people rail against ‘poverty porn’ in the media or criticise broadcasters for demonising the working class or benefit claimants, I have a lot of sympathy for their opinion. There are too many badly made programmes that focus on deprived communities. There are too many lazy producers and commissioners who let themselves and everyone else down when it comes to choosing contributors for these programmes. Too often television settles for the unrepresentative and extreme rather than worrying about the truth. For a lot of people, Benefits Street is simply the most high-profile of these types of programmes. I can try and persuade them that it isn’t, pointing to the storytelling, and the obvious love and care for the people we filmed. But in the end that’s perhaps the biggest lesson of making programmes about contentious subjects: most people have already made up their minds.

9781784533946.indd 44

09/09/2015 15:15

6 Tab o o Su b j ec ts Eric Steel

10. Eric Steel. Photo by Morgan McGivern, courtesy of the East Hampton Star.

Eric Steel is director of the controversial documentary The Bridge, which focuses on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, a venue often used for suicides. Steel filmed the bridge throughout 2004, obtaining footage of several suicides. His other work includes Kiss the Water, a lyrical documentary about fly-fishing.

9781784533946.indd 45

09/09/2015 15:15

46

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

I

would not have called myself a filmmaker in the fall of 2003 when I read Tad Friend’s article ‘Jumpers’ in The New Yorker, about the staggering regularity of suicides at the Golden Gate Bridge. I’d worked in the movie business pretty much from the day I graduated college, and had steadily ascended to an impressive executive suite. I had produced some pretty big films. My name appeared prominently enough in the credits and on the posters. It must have seemed that I had a lot of experience, and thus knew what I was doing, but I’d spent most of my 20-year career behind a desk. I suppose I had the proper life experiences, the raw threads, that shape moral fibre. I had been in the hospital room when my brother died of cancer, and I had been in the courtroom when the drunk driver who had killed my sister and left her on the side of the road was brought to trial. From my desk, I had seen the planes hit the World Trade Center. And with my bare eyes and then with binoculars I had seen the people leaping from the inferno.

I wanted to make a movie that glimpsed into the darkest corner of the human experience to understand the fine line between despair and beyond. I was also naive enough to believe that if I simply trained cameras on the Golden Gate Bridge for an entire year (as 25 people end their lives there each year, and many more try to), I was going to have the footage to make a documentary. As if it were just a matter of coverage and statistics. A part of me imagined – or hoped – I would be able to affix cameras to the rooftops of buildings, press record, and keep changing and collecting tapes. All of that changed instantly when I made my first reconnaissance trip to San Francisco. As I approached the Golden Gate Bridge, I was struck by how much the scene reminded me, both visually and spiritually, of a painting by Pieter Breughel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, that I had studied as an art history major in college, and the poem about the painting by W.H. Auden, called ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’. Auden writes about the scene very movingly, describing how ‘everything turns away quite leisurely from the disaster’ – the ploughman who might have heard the splash of the falling boy, but who carries on with his work regardless, and the ship that must have seen the

9781784533946.indd 46

09/09/2015 15:15

Taboo Subjects

47

astonishing sight of Icarus plummeting into the sea, but which ‘had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on’. The first ethical decision was whether I wanted to be one of those people who turn away, or the person who never takes his eyes (or camera) off the subject. And though I wouldn’t have used the terminology then that I do now, I knew on some unspeakable level that I was being called to this place, to tell this story. I decided that there had to be both a fixed wide-angle shot of the bridge and a manned, manually operated, moveable, telephoto shot. This was about looking, really looking closely, rather than surveillance. This meant that the cameras and the camera operators had to be close enough to actually see what was going on; that we would be engaged in the act of filming. Which meant I had to locate semi-permanent locations (we set up our cameras each morning before sunrise and took them down after nightfall) on both the south and north sides of the bridge. These spots were on lands administered by the National Park Service, and I needed to fill out an application in order to obtain permission to place cameras there. The form asked for a description of the project, and I stated something to the effect that I was creating ‘a year in the life’ of one of our most iconic structures. I explained quite clearly that the cameras would be running every daylight minute of every day for an entire year. But I very deliberately did not fully and accurately state my intentions.

11. Eric Steel in San Francisco during the making of The Bridge. Photograph by Peter McCandless, courtesy of Easy There Tiger, Inc

9781784533946.indd 47

09/09/2015 15:15

48

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

In Tad Friend’s article, there was an anecdote about a local radio disc jockey who, when the bridge was about to record its one thousandth suicide, spoke of it almost as some sort of contest, as if there would be confetti and prizes. As a result, there was a sudden intense surge of jumpers, all trying to be number 1,000. The National Parks Service would have had a hard time, given the First Amendment, denying my application even if I had been completely up front. The graver risk – the only life and death risk – was if word got out to the local newspapers, TV and radio stations, and the general population knew what we were focused on: someone who was not thinking clearly might see my project as an opportunity to be immortalised on film. When I was interviewing potential camera operators, I could not even say what the film was about. These were interesting, and I’m sure somewhat puzzling meetings (all held in local Starbucks, to protect the location of the office). In my hiring decisions, I put more emphasis on sensitivity and character than on camera skills. I never looked at anyone’s reel, only at their eyes and body language. After all, I was taking on the bulk of the shifts, and I had never used a camera before! I had no agenda, no position to prove, only a taboo to probe, so I appreciated the willingness of the crew to join on the journey. Of course everyone was anxious, with real fears and concerns. But before anyone turned on a camera, I underlined one important rule: we were human beings first, filmmakers second. We were human beings who were going to see things – terrifying things that would require split-second decision-making. Saving a life was more important than getting a shot. If we saw someone make a move to climb up or over the rail, or give the impression he or she was about to, like removing shoes or taking out a wallet, we knew we had to make a call for help. We worked in pairs. There was constant communication back and forth over secure walkie talkies. The phone numbers of the Highway Patrol and the Golden Gate Security Office were on everyone’s cell phone speed dial. Some people took to taping their cell phones to the Canon cameras. We watched and filmed thousands of people on the Golden Gate Bridge over the course of the year. Profiling didn’t work: we saw

9781784533946.indd 48

09/09/2015 15:15

Taboo Subjects

49

hundreds of people crying, or mumbling to themselves, hoods pulled up or pulling at their hair. None of them jumped. I urged the camera operators to let themselves follow their instincts and their intuitions. They captured weddings, nuns on roller skates, and scores of Korean students in Hello Kitty outfits. It was all part of the tapestry. The first person I saw jump had been jogging a few seconds before, then he answered his cell phone, and seemed to be laughing. And then he put his phone down on the railing, climbed up into a sitting position on the rail, crossed himself, and was gone. I didn’t come close to filming him falling. I was fumbling for the speed dial button. Perhaps the most compelling footage in the film is of Gene Sprague. I saw him walk onto the bridge from the south side. It was a bright sunny day and he had on a shiny leather jacket, and had very dramatic long dark hair. And for his striking appearance alone I decided to film him as opposed to any of the other hundreds of people on the bridge at the same time. He stopped often to look out over the bay, just as almost every other tourist would. Then he walked off the north side of the bridge. There’s a viewing station some way further up, where one can put a few quarters into a low tech binocular-like machine and get a great view of the San Francisco skyline. I assume he went there, as he was out of my sight for a while. Shortly though he made his way back from north to south, walking a little more briskly. I noted all this in the log, but my heart rate hadn’t registered anything to be concerned about. But then he came back onto the bridge. And I started to film him again and alerted my co-worker, who found him through his lens as well, but soon went back to filming another person on the bridge in a trench coat (who curiously appears in many of my shots of Gene). Gene didn’t make many stops this time, until he got to one of the little balcony-like spots just past the half-way point. I’d been filming Gene for more than 90 minutes. I had filmed people for very long stretches in the past, some for more than two hours, so this still wasn’t all that unsettling. At 92 minutes and 30 seconds, he tilted his head towards the sun. At 92 minutes and 45 seconds, he ran his hands through his hair. At 92 minutes and 54 seconds, he climbed up to the rail. As Gene stood up on the rail, I stood up too, almost as if my heartbeat had synched with this stranger’s on the bridge. I radioed to the other camera

9781784533946.indd 49

09/09/2015 15:15

50

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

operator with my left hand and called the highway patrol with my right. They picked up the call just as Gene leaned back and fell, perfectly gracefully, arms extended. I explained to the policeman that it was too late. I know the timings so well because I watched the tapes over and over, searching to see if there was a moment I should have done something. Of the 93 minutes of footage I shot of Gene, all but the last six seconds seemed – and still seem – so completely unexceptional. A man walking on the bridge on a sunny day. Even now, a decade later, images of people walking on bridges find their way into my dreams, as if testing my ability to see into someone else’s soul, testing my willingness to walk in someone else’s shoes. The dramatic footage of Gene’s fall was shot by the other camera operator. One of the very few people I entrusted with the full details of the project was the coroner of Marin County. Of course he could have exposed me. Marin is a sleepy commuter community, yet with an abnormally high statistical number of suicides, due almost solely to the fact that the coast guard station responsible for fishing the bodies out of the bay beneath the bridge is based on the Marin side, and I had to believe that the coroner would be sympathetic. Before I could muster up the courage to ask if he would be willing to make introductions to the families of the deceased when he thought the situation was appropriate, he offered it on his own. I had never done an interview before, but I understood what it would mean to cross over the threshold into the home of a grieving parent, sibling or friend. I remember how anxious I was before I entered the house of the Manikows in Midlothian, Virginia. Their son Philip had flown all the way across the country to end his life at the bridge. Really my only strategy was to be open about my own losses, my own sadness and moments of despair, and to hope that this would create enough trust for them to open up to me. They spoke, as did so many of the subsequent interviewees, for hours and hours. And I listened. Afterwards, the Manikows invited me and the director of photography to stay for dinner. They lived in a small community around an intimate cul-de-sac, and as we were waiting for the lasagna to heat up, one of their neighbours across the way waved and said a very cheery hello. I asked Mrs Manikow if their neighbours had been comforting in the days and weeks

9781784533946.indd 50

09/09/2015 15:15

Taboo Subjects

51

since Philip’s death, and she replied that they didn’t know. She hadn’t told them. Again and again I came to understand how the camera often unlocked what was held most secret, perhaps even shameful. The stories I gleaned are in many instances more difficult to hear than the images are to watch. As the film began to take rough shape in my head, and then real shape later in the editing room, Gene’s story became the central spine. I had filmed Gene for 93 minutes, and the film is 93 minutes long. In a very real sense, I was trying to create a way for the audience to witness what we had witnessed, the everyday and the traumatic, never quite sure what would happen. If Breughel and Auden are correct, and the instinct is to turn away, I wanted to override it. This too was an ethical choice, an imposition of the director. That’s the thing about movies, especially on the screen: they are harder to turn away from than real life. I interviewed many experts, but ended up not using any of the footage. There was something so raw in the voices of the families and friends, and the witnesses – how they were or weren’t able to turn away from what was happening in front of them – that the experts seemed distant and abstract. In January 2005, after we finished our year of filming at the bridge, our cameras all packed away, I reached out to the Golden Gate Bridge District authorities to ask them to participate, as many of their employees and the agencies they work with, like the Coast Guard and Highway Patrol, were intimately affected. Sometimes they were the all-important rescuers and often times up-close eyewitnesses to tragic leaps. The bridge press office had made no secret of their desire to keep the suicides under the radar. They’d even persuaded the San Francisco Chronicle not to report them, out of a supposed fear of inciting copycats. I expected official blow-back. But I wasn’t prepared for the ferocity of their attack. My parents, semiinsomniacs who rely on the monotone of CNN to fall asleep, read one early morning on the scrolling headlines on the bottom of the screen that one of the Bridge District supervisors had accused me of making a ‘snuff’ film (before he had seen even a single frame of

9781784533946.indd 51

09/09/2015 15:15

52

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

our footage), of lying to the Parks Service, perhaps even working for terrorists, and hoping to profit from human tragedies. We had been the best set of eyes they had. We were the first alerters on almost every incident. It’s all in their incident reports. There are more than a handful of people who owe their lives to the fact that we intervened on their behalf, violating a taboo in documentary filmmaking that suggests you don’t become a player in the events that transpire in front of the camera. Not everyone on the crew saw someone jump during the year, but everyone participated in a rescue situation. Few filmmakers, and not all that many human beings, can make this claim. In retrospect, my feeling is that the footage illuminated two dark corners of the human psyche: one regarding the conjoined taboos of suicide and mental illness, and the other perhaps a more subtle question, about compassion. The Bridge District had the entire structure under video surveillance, and banks and banks of cameras. The supervisors read every single incident report. And yet it seemed that they were choosing not to see, to turn away. I can’t know this with any certainty, but perhaps they were so concerned with the architectural and symbolic majesty of their bridge that they were afraid to face and even willing to suppress the images of people stepping off to their deaths. In the same way, images were censored, or self-censored, of the people who leapt from the World Trade Center inferno, as if their choice somehow tarnished the tragedy of those who stayed put, or couldn’t move, or tried to escape by the stairwells. The Bridge District had until then been able to handle the occasional stories about the suicides in the printed press rather easily. Words alone, apparently, were just a public relations problem. Wait a while and people forget, and move on. But the marriage of the imagery and the stories was somehow irrefutable, and the reaction was very different. To me the most disturbing elements of the film epitomise Breughel’s painting and Auden’s words, when joggers appear to see a man climb into a perilous position on the rail, turn back to make sure they know what they have seen, and then keep running.

9781784533946.indd 52

09/09/2015 15:15

Taboo Subjects

53

For a long time, I harbored a great deal of resentment towards the officials at the Golden Gate Bridge. Even now, if you google my name, ‘snuff film’ comes up rather quickly and all too often. But the supervisor who made that statement eventually became the leading proponent of the suicide deterrent nets that were in June 2014 approved, budgeted and appropriated by unanimous vote of the bridge’s Board of Directors: After considerable thought, reflection and soul-searching, and attentive consideration to the range of views expressed by members of the public, many of whom have testified as to the impact and consequences of suicide on their lives, and in consideration of the fact that 46 people died in 2013 by jumping off of the Bridge, it is staff’s opinion that construction of the suicide deterrent simply is the right thing to do at this time. While not exactly Auden, these words are poetry to my ears.

9781784533946.indd 53

09/09/2015 15:15

7 D ev el o p m en t James Quinn

12. James Quinn, far right, directing on location. Photograph by Tom Green

James Quinn is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and executive producer. He has occupied senior positions at several industry-leading independent production companies, including Head of Special Projects at Oxford Film and Television and Head of Factual Television at October Films. He is also Honorary Research Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London, and has a PhD in philosophy. His other books include This Much is True, a landmark volume on the art of directing documentaries.

9781784533946.indd 55

09/09/2015 15:15

56

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

T

he message was only two letters long, but I was delighted. It represented first contact with someone I’d been trying to trace for over two years. A missing genius, surrounded by unanswered questions. It simply said: ‘Ok’. Ok, I still exist. Ok, you’ve found me. Ok, I might be willing to speak. At just six years of age, the sender of the message had achieved the highest IQ ever recorded. A score of 160 makes you exceptionally gifted. His score was 298. The psychologist who conducted the test proclaimed him ‘the greatest genius ever to grace the Earth’. His mother had him at the age of 20, and raised him alone. After a while, she returned to her education, sometimes taking him along to classes. One day, to keep him amused, she claimed to have handed him a copy of the test the class were taking, expecting him to do nothing more than colour it in with his crayons. Instead, he steadily worked his way through the questions and handed in his paper when the test was over. It came back with a score that put him close to the top of the class. He was just two-and-a-half years old. It wasn’t long before he could read aloud and play the violin. Home schooled by his mother, he was playing competitive chess by the age of three. At just five he began taking high school classes. His high school principal would later report that teachers struggled to keep pace with the boy’s thirst for knowledge. Everyone agreed he was dazzling. Then, at the age of six, he began to study at the University of Rochester, New York, attending lectures with classmates three times his own age. Now the world began paying attention, newspapers from a dozen countries reporting on the arrival of a prodigy to rival Pascal, Mozart and Picasso. But then, suddenly, the hype fell away. The story of the world’s cleverest boy began to unravel. Accompanied by his mother, he had toured the US, standing on a box to lecture audiences of philosophers, teachers and the parents of other gifted children on the unfairness of age discrimination in education. But while his presentations were extraordinary, observers noticed that he didn’t seem able to answer any of the

9781784533946.indd 56

09/09/2015 15:15

Development

57

questions he was asked. And then the boy started to regress. His photographic memory disappeared, and he began sucking his thumb, throwing tantrums, and playing with toys designed for toddlers. He was almost eight years old now, but seemed to be living out the infancy that he’d skipped the first time round. He was enrolled in a school for gifted children, but refused to study. And then an empty bottle of painkillers was reportedly found on his bedroom floor. A professional assessment found the boy to be suffering from severe psychological problems. It concluded that he was ‘a danger to himself’. A new IQ test revealed his intelligence to be ‘approximately average’. But it seemed that he spent much of that test hiding under furniture. He said that the questions were stupid. He was taken away from his mother, placed into foster care, and sent to an ordinary school. His mother was charged with neglect, and accused of using him to satisfy her own need for attention. His grandparents expressed concerns about their daughter’s mental health, and doubts that the boy was ever gifted. A local newspaper began to investigate, and reported that most of the claims about his extraordinary abilities could not be verified. Some who knew the boy continued to believe in his genius. But then came a startling admission from his mother – she had manipulated and falsified the results of the boy’s exams, including his world record-breaking IQ test. It emerged that most of his high school and university coursework had been completed at home, his dealings with teachers conducted largely by email. At the same time, she admitted charges of neglect. But she continued to maintain that the boy was a bona fide genius; she only cheated, she said, to open doors for him. After several years in foster care, the boy was returned to his mother. And then the two of them disappeared. A private investigator hired by the boy’s grandparents failed to locate them. My first job in TV was developing ideas for an eminent director. He was demanding and difficult, but I liked him. It gave me a love of development that has never left me – a sense that the world is full of extraordinary people and captivating stories, if you only know

9781784533946.indd 57

09/09/2015 15:15

58

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

where and how to look. I went on to develop my own ideas, as a short cut to directing. More recently, as an executive producer, it’s been part of my job to oversee multiple development slates. I’ve considered, developed and pitched hundreds and hundreds of ideas. But up to that point, nothing had gripped or excited me as much as the story of the vanishing genius. Was the boy really gifted? Or the victim of someone else’s fantasy? Or even of a scam, designed to make money from sponsorship and advertising? What does his story tell us about ‘the gifted community’? Have the boy and his gifts simply been misunderstood? What sort of life might he be leading now? What will be his place in the world? I spoke to him very early one morning, and I was gripped by the story he told. It seemed that he still believed in his own superhuman powers. His grandparents meanwhile were fearful for his future. So the story was live and unfolding, the ending still hard to predict. I imagined a feature-length film, constantly shifting the audience’s sympathies back and forth, wrong-footing viewers at every turn; is and was the boy a genius or not? And I had a great story to tell in my pitch – tracking him down was a tale of persistence, luck, and a final leap of imagination. Often such pursuits go cold with letters and emails unanswered, or end with a polite but firm ‘no’. On this occasion the timing had been perfect – the boy really wanted his voice to be heard. But as we got to know each other, and he became more frank and relaxed, one thing became clear to me, and it bothered me more with every conversation. After years of struggle and uncertainty and unwanted attention, he’d finally brought a little hard-won normality into his life. He was studying for a degree. He had a girlfriend. He liked music. Maybe for the very first time, he was doing ok. I didn’t know if he was, or had ever been, a genius. But I did know that I liked him. It struck me as heroic that he was still standing, and seemed to bear no grudges. What would be the cost to this young man of making a film about the story of his life? As these doubts nagged away, my daughter – my first child – arrived into the world. And almost overnight my attitude to the

9781784533946.indd 58

09/09/2015 15:15

Development

59

whole process of looking for ideas and making films changed. I think it’s fair to say that beforehand, finding and telling stories was what mattered to me most. Now, quite suddenly, I felt finely tuned into the emotional frequency of everything. I felt hyper-aware of how the people around me might be feeling. I felt responsible. I spoke to the boy one more time, and by the end of the call I’d decided to let the project go, for the moment at least, despite an offer of money from a broadcaster. I didn’t want to risk ruining his future by dragging up his past, and all of the controversies that marked his troubled childhood. Perhaps further down the line things would be different. For now, he deserved a chance to make his own way in life, free from the attentions of anyone with their own agenda to push. Development is a process that is almost always done under pressure. You can never have too much work, especially as an exec; it’s your responsibility to win business, to keep the company that employs you ticking over. With other people’s livelihoods at stake, it’s easy to slip into a purely pragmatic way of thinking – let’s land the commission now, the logic goes, and deal with the problems later. But moral considerations and ethical dilemmas aren’t solely the concern of those working in production; sometimes the biggest ethical question is whether to go ahead with a film at all. Once an idea is green-lit and funded, it takes on a momentum and a life of its own. It becomes very hard to un-do. A couple of days after that final phone call, a big project I’d been developing for several months was commissioned. I took it as a form of cosmic compensation. I hope that the boy genius is happy and settled, and that one day we’ll finish what we started.

9781784533946.indd 59

09/09/2015 15:15

8 P u s hi n g B o u n dar i es Ralph Lee

13. Ralph Lee. Photograph courtesy of Channel 4

Ralph Lee is Deputy Chief Creative Officer and Head of Factual at Channel 4, the UK’s leading broadcaster of factual programmes. Commissions by Ralph and his team include documentaries such as Benefits Street and specialist factual shows ranging from Race and Intelligence: Science’s Last Taboo to The Plane Crash.

9781784533946.indd 61

09/09/2015 15:15

62

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

I

t’s April 2012 and I’m at Glasgow airport about to board a flight to London. As I shuffle towards the gate my mind is elsewhere. My colleague David Glover is in Mexico, somewhere in the hot, dry desert in Baja. I’m trying to get him on the phone but the reception out there is patchy. For the last three years, together with a creative team at an independent production company called Dragonfly Film and Television, we’ve been trying to pull off a ludicrously difficult stunt and we all know that if it doesn’t happen today it never will. Finally, just before I enter the gangway, I get through to David. ‘It’s on,’ he tells me. ‘We’re going to go for it. The wind has died down and the safety guys say it’s okay.’ This is it. I experience a sensation that is a strange mixture of relief, apprehension and terror. We’re about to perform the world’s first ever full-scale crash test on a passenger jet. It’s the centre-piece of a documentary about flight safety, called The Plane Crash. I could never have guessed that at the very moment when this happened I would be forced to sit on a plane on my way home from briefing producers in Scotland. At the climactic moment I’ll be at 30,000 feet, out of touch and totally unable to influence what’s happening. I board the flight buzzing with excitement. This is what it feels like to push boundaries. I sit down and try to force my mind elsewhere, anywhere other than the horrible uncertainty of what is about to happen. I try to remind myself that a lack of certainty is a good thing, an essential part of the creative process. As Bertrand Russell put it: ‘The demand for certainty is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.’ It’s not the first time I’ve had to remind myself that uncertainty is to be embraced. As a TV commissioner, particularly at Channel 4, I’d say the rollercoaster of getting ambitious programmes to air is all about riding through the many layers of uncertainty you face. I look around the inside of the plane and imagine in Mexico a similar assembly of steel and moulded plastic and polyester seat covers, nosing its way towards the ground at high speed. We’ve been planning this shoot for as long as I can remember. About three years ago we bought a Boeing 727, and ever since it’s been parked on a runway, while we worked our way through a thicket of issues of accreditation, permissions and practicalities. Even our colleagues at Channel 4 had largely lost faith that this project would ever deliver. But Big Bertha, as the pilot named her, is now in the air, on her final flight. The pilot has been trained to set the plane on

9781784533946.indd 62

09/09/2015 15:15

Pushing Boundaries

63

its course, and will then parachute out of the back followed by a cameraman. This is going to be a science documentary like you’ve never seen before … daring, bold, original and un-missable. The language of risk, originality and innovation is so common in the TV industry, it’s easy to forget that it’s not the norm for most professions. If you were a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher, these wouldn’t necessarily be your mantras. But people don’t get into TV because they want to copy what’s been done before, or just because they want to do good work. Pushing boundaries is a kind of industry standard. For Channel 4 all the more so, because it’s part of the day-to-day practice of delivering the innovation that’s written into the channel’s remit. As I look out of the window of my grey afternoon flight to Heathrow it feels like The Plane Crash is right at the edge of what we can and should do. In reality though, it may be a massive logistical challenge but it doesn’t present any challenging philosophical or ethical issues. It may not feel it right now, but in terms of troubling one’s conscience, this is at the easy end of the uncertainty spectrum. The level of physical risk to the air crew and camera teams has been assessed and reassessed. They are incredibly experienced and well-rehearsed, and in terms of real danger, this is well within their comfort zone. The environmental impact of the crash can be easily managed and the plane was at the end of its useful life. What could go wrong?

14. The aftermath of The Plane Crash. Photograph by Vance Jacobs

9781784533946.indd 63

09/09/2015 15:15

64

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

This kind of risk falls into the first and I think the easiest category of risk that a commissioner has to deal with. It’s principally a financial risk, a question of straightforward return on investment. On that day, we would either shoot an amazing documentary, or we would get nothing. That’s the kind of gamble you have to make if you want, occasionally, to do something truly challenging. It’s the kind of gamble that paid off when we found the remains of King Richard III in a car park in Leicester (no king in that case would almost certainly have meant writing off that production) and didn’t pay off when we backed a man who planned to parachute back to earth from a balloon at the edge of space. In that instance, we backed the wrong guy, Frenchman Michel Fournier, who never jumped and was beaten to the record by Felix Baumgartner, successfully covered by the BBC and Discovery. When you look harder at the uncertainty inherent in the creative process, you discover other layers of risk which get progressively trickier to deal with. The second category of risky programmes involves risk of the ‘how dare you’ kind. These are programmes defined by propositions that are almost certain to arouse anger in at least part of the audience. The main risk here is that if the programme doesn’t justify itself you risk looking deeply cynical, like you’re deliberately manipulating the material and the angered parties to get publicity. In this category I would put Mummifying Alan, Race and Intelligence: Science’s Last Taboo, Sex Box and to a degree, Benefits Street. The first of these, originally called Mummify Me, was a classic ‘how dare you’ proposition. Working with scientist Stephen Buckley we set out to find a volunteer, someone who was terminally ill and happy to donate his or her body to science to help unlock the ancient secrets of mummification. At worst this sounds like a tasteless exercise or a shallow attempt to create shock value. But when we worked it through, it was clear we had a chance to make a programme that was not only illuminating about ancient Egypt but could also have a unique power to ask an audience to engage with the idea of death and man’s imagining of an afterlife. This prospect was made more enticing by the fact that we as a culture generally turn away from death, and the fact that our secular practices and rituals around death have little charm or mysticism to them. Ancient Egypt could not have been more different in this respect. Death was revered, and for those with wealth and power, their physical remains could be

9781784533946.indd 64

09/09/2015 15:15

Pushing Boundaries

65

preserved for all time. So we embarked on Mummify Me aiming to make a programme that would overcome the obvious issues of taste that lay ahead. This was always going to be a difficult thing to execute, but we had no idea how difficult at the start. A few people volunteered, but finding people who wanted to engage fully with this as an idea, while already dealing with their own terminal illness, was hard. Many fell away when they thought through the impact on their family. Meanwhile we had to work out the practicalities of where we could find a facility that would allow us to do this, an institution that would recognise the underlying scientific and socio-cultural purposes of the idea and be robust in the face of inevitable tabloid shock. Finally we found a suitable volunteer, an American man living in Washington State, and we made an agreement with The Body Farm, a highly renowned forensic outfit in Texas, to conduct the mummification. Our volunteer had terminal cancer and was expected to live a year at best. So we waited. As time wore on, our volunteer quite understandably became more engrossed in the ups and downs of his own illness and less engaged with our programme or experiment. We respectfully backed off, and some time before he died, we realised his desire to see this through was not as strong as it had been. We had spent more than two years on the project and had to go back to square one. Frustratingly, the news from the scientist was that his processes were getting better and better, and he really felt ready to go ahead. So rather than give up, we thought we would try to reach more people with a call-out for volunteers. This time we placed an advert in plain sight and it was, as we hoped, picked up by the tabloids. With ‘Channel 4 seeks terminally-ill volunteer to be mummified in TV documentary’ as a headline, we got lucky. The headline was spotted by Alan Billis, a retired taxi driver from Torquay. Alan was a lifelong joker, and now facing terminal lung cancer, saw this as one last laugh. Fortunately his wife Jan and the rest of his family respected his wishes. Three years into the project we were finally ready to go ahead. Now the producers had to deal with all kinds of delicate questions. Who would take responsibility for Alan’s remains when he died? How would they be transported, stored and preserved? You can’t just show up at the hospital with a van. Gillian Mosely and Justine Kershaw, the executive producers

9781784533946.indd 65

09/09/2015 15:15

66

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

on the film, did a brilliant job of building a relationship with senior pathologist Maxine Coe at the Sheffield Medico-Legal Centre. Once in the right professional hands, the whole thing became possible.

15. A moment during the making of Mummifying Alan. Photograph by Callum Bulmer, courtesy of Blink Films

Three months later, we finally have a rough cut to view. But it was a real shock. The first draft of the programme spent far too much time on the evisceration of the body, and far too little time getting to know the subject and laying out the purpose of the programme. One colleague described it as ‘like visiting a serial killer’s basement’. That’s not what we intended for Alan. By the next cut, director Kenny Scott had performed a miracle. In place of the unwatchable gore fest emerged a thoughtful and emotionally powerful study of death and of grief. Alan’s voice was used over images of his body sinking in a salt bath, reminding us of his spirited character as well as his complicity in the experiment. We see his wife visiting his bandaged body and tenderly touching his hand. She’s given an experience that few of us have: a chance to revisit a loved one and be in their presence, after a period of living with grief and wearing it for a while. There’s something in this scene that touches on the universality of death and importance of our ongoing relationship with those who have passed. The programme solved a mystery about the ancient process of mummification but I suspect it wasn’t

9781784533946.indd 66

09/09/2015 15:15

Pushing Boundaries

67

that that most audiences remember it for, or that eventually won it a BAFTA. Kenny turned it into a study of separation, which asked deep questions about our impoverished and inadequate approach to death. The other consequence of the power of the finished programme was that, although the announcement of the idea generated a degree of ‘how dare you’ reaction, the programme itself didn’t. It argued its own case in terms of purpose. But, to return to Bertrand Russell, there was little about it at any point that offered certainty. As we descend towards Heathrow, the nerves are welling up in me. Before the wheels touch the tarmac I’m calling my colleague David. I can’t get through. I try five or six times. Then I try Mark Lambert, the Channel 4 lawyer who is out there with David. He doesn’t pick up either. Then I try Simon Dickson and Sanjay Singhal, the producers. They don’t pick up. What has happened? For 20 minutes I call each number in turn. No one picks up. For the duration of my own flight, I’ve been fretting about the thing not happening, about years of work and a lot of investment and coming home with nothing. Now I’ve got bigger worries. Into my head floods every worst-case scenario possible. A local farmer has driven a tractor onto the crash site and we couldn’t pull the plane off its course. The plane has gone out of control and crashed into the entire production outfit, leaving my friends and colleagues in a desert fireball. I head out of the airport barely aware of my surroundings and get in a taxi. At this stage I’m torturing myself with uncertainty. I know that if they’ve shot the crash at least we’ve got a programme. But that’s not always the case. The next circle of risk and uncertainty that lies after ‘all or nothing’ and ‘how dare you’ is a common but underappreciated one in the creative industries. Pushing boundaries is often about taking risks with untried ideas or production techniques, or finding new and hybrid ways of making programmes. The risk here is that it just won’t work and you’ll be left with something flat, uninteresting, un-engaging, even embarrassing. But if you don’t try … When we first set out to make a major documentary series in an A&E department using fixed-rig cameras, we couldn’t really know how the programmes would come together in the edit. It wasn’t really

9781784533946.indd 67

09/09/2015 15:15

68

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

possible to predict that 24 Hours in A&E would become much more about examining society and the relationships that hold it together than it is about medics overcoming medical emergencies. When a pitch begins with ‘let’s put cameras in people’s homes and watch them watching TV’ (Gogglebox) or ‘let’s set up cameras in a high street takeaway and watch the comings and goings’ (Fried Chicken Shop), it takes a huge leap of faith to nurture that idea to screen. This is where uncertainty can be a huge pleasure, with all the rewards of seeing original things emerge as clever people apply themselves to achieve a break from the norm. But as I sit in the taxi home, sweating over what has happened in Mexico, I feel no such pleasure. Finally, my phone rings. It’s David and he tells me he is looking at a cloud of dust rising from the desert where the plane has just crashed. The pilot and crew are all safe. But it’s not all good news. The plane came down short of the planned site, and that’s where all the cameras were. Before anyone answered my calls, they wanted to make sure they had actually shot it. In fact they had come perilously close to creating the world’s first controlled crash test of a passenger jet, without actually filming it. To everyone’s intense relief, the helicopter and follow plane both got good shots and the scientists got amazing reads from all the data monitors on board. For the first time ever, they can plot how the force of a crash is absorbed by the airframe and how different passengers in different parts of the plane are impacted. For all the intensity of the experience, making The Plane Crash sits at the easier end of the spectrum of pushing boundaries. In fact the most troubling uncertainty in programme-making is not really about innovation or creativity, but about the human impact of transmitting a programme. At any point, Channel 4’s documentary output is, by its nature, likely to be covering stories of people on the edge in one way or another, whether that’s trying to capture the story of mental health in Britain, the realities of people living in poverty or reliant on benefits, or stories of drug dependence, crime, or vulnerable families and children. Documentary makers are naturally drawn to these subjects, and as a broadcaster that wants to make purposeful, thought-provoking programming, so are we. To make good work on these themes, you have to open up the lives of (often vulnerable) people to the public eye. What is most uncertain here is not the contributors’ reaction to the programmes, but their exposure to the public reaction.

9781784533946.indd 68

09/09/2015 15:15

Pushing Boundaries

69

In my experience the reaction of viewers and critics is only partly to do with what we put on screen. Much of the reaction is a result of the framing. It seems to me that it’s one thing to present vulnerable contributors through the eyes of mental health professionals, emergency services, schools, hospitals or police and parole work. It’s quite another thing to come to it raw – to find social issues as they really exist in societies, families and communities. This was the case with Skint and Benefits Street, programmes which soon came to be referred to carelessly as ‘poverty porn’. There was little on show in either documentary series in terms of personal distress or social problems that viewers of Bedlam, 999: What’s Your Emergency or 24 Hours in A&E hadn’t already seen in the previous year on Channel 4 alone. But something about straightforwardly capturing life on a council estate and on a street where the majority of residents depend on benefits caused a far stronger reaction. ‘Poverty porn’ suggests that the protagonists are being exploited and that the viewer is motivated by gratification of base instincts, both of which I’ve spent some time denying. First of all, you can’t deny people the right to tell their own stories in documentaries. If they’re not paid (which they’re not), and if they have made an informed choice to take part, comparing documentary subjects to those who are paid to make pornography is surely entirely wrong? Secondly, to suggest that the only reaction to viewing a series like Benefits Street was gratification of existing prejudices is an accusation that could only be made by someone who hasn’t actually watched it. Alongside a few characters who proclaimed their ‘right’ to live off the state or who exploited the system, Benefits Street showed those who worked, who sought work and who were clearly forced into their circumstances, rather than revelling in them. For every critic who claimed the series played into the hands of a benefits-cutting government, there were those who credited the series with challenging welfare cuts and questioning the system in a deeper way. For these reasons, the decision to broadcast Benefits Street in the form we did was not a difficult one. But it was difficult to predict the impact the transmission would have on those who took part, and this is where a whole new field of documentary ethics is opening up. It is increasingly hard to predict or measure the impact of taking part in programmes on people’s lives. Not

9781784533946.indd 69

09/09/2015 15:15

70

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

long ago, programmes were shown once and possibly repeated. Now, not only are the programmes available on video-on-demand platforms and repeated more often on digital channels, but the contributors come face-to-face with viewers’ comments, reactions and judgements on Twitter. In exceptional cases like Benefits Street, contributors also face the intense interest of newspapers and other news outlets, who come quickly when there’s a high level of public interest and are quick to turn any subject to suit their own agenda. In these circumstances, how do we fairly treat the people who open up their lives to documentaries, because the ‘ask’ now is surely greater than it ever was? I recently asked filmmaker Roger Graef, whose work straddles the arrival of digital channels, catch-up TV and social media, for his opinion. His response was, as ever, sage and helpful. ‘It’s the same as it always has been,’ Roger told me. ‘You have to make sure your contributors don’t get any surprises. You just have to be clear with them about what’s likely to happen next.’ Roger is right, but with the reaction to programmes hard to forecast, we may need to work on our contributors’ comfort with uncertainty as well as our own. Maybe release forms should carry one of Bertrand Russell’s many quotes on the subject: ‘To endure uncertainty is difficult, but so are all other virtues.’

9781784533946.indd 70

09/09/2015 15:15

9 T he G r eater G o o d Brian Woods

16. Brian Woods. Photograph by Jezza Neumann

Brian Woods is a director and executive producer, and the founder of True Vision, an independent production company specialising in observational documentaries on human rights and serious social issues. His films include: Chosen; Poor Kids; China’s Stolen Children; and The Dying Rooms, a documentary about Chinese state orphanages which won an Emmy, a Peabody and the Prix Italia. His films have received five Baftas, eight Emmys, seven RTS awards, and three Peabody awards, and have led to changes in the law and government policy in several countries around the world.

9781784533946.indd 71

09/09/2015 15:15

72

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

A

lmost 20 years ago I walked into an orphanage in China with a secret camera slung over my shoulder. I was about to film a dying child – a little girl whose name I would never know. We asked her name, but were told ‘Mei Ming’, which means ‘no name’. Kate Blewett, Peter Woolrich and I had been filming covertly in China for four weeks, looking for a child like Mei Ming. A year before Peter had written a piece in the South China Morning Post about what he called ‘dying rooms’, where babies – mostly girls – were deliberately left to die. The dying room he had visited and photographed was in Nanning in southern China, near Vietnam. Over the previous month we had retraced his steps and visited the same orphanage, as well as half a dozen others in various parts of China. At each orphanage our approach had been the same: we simply walked in, one of us carrying the ‘secret camera’ (a shoulder bag with a Hi8 camera – the precursor of digital video – hidden inside, together with a bundle of wires connecting the camera to a pinhole camera and tram mic on the outside of the bag) and another with a second Hi8 camera, carried in another bag. We’d split up once inside, with Kate and our translator looking for someone official to talk to, and Peter and I both sneaking around trying to find dying rooms, if they existed. Over the weeks we had found some truly terrible conditions, and plenty of circumstantial evidence pointing at dying rooms, but no ‘smoking gun’. We were on our way back to Hong Kong, and had flown to Guangzhou en route. As we had by now learned in every city we visited, the most effective approach was simply to hail a taxi and ask to be taken to the city’s orphanage. After numerous stops to seek directions, we arrived at a high-rise building and were told that the orphanage was on the fourth floor. As we walked up the stairs we could hear the sound of crying babies that had become a familiar signifier that we were in the right place. Two decades ago, most adults in China had experienced the Cultural Revolution, the Great Famine and other horrors of the Mao years. The authority of the party was absolute, and anyone who put

9781784533946.indd 72

09/09/2015 15:15

The Greater Good

73

their head above the parapet was likely to lose it. In many of the areas we had visited the locals had never before seen Westerners. That lunchtime in Guangzhou, the fear of authority and the unfamiliarity with outsiders (even there, just 50 miles from Hong Kong) meant that when we walked into the orphanage confidently, as though we had every right to be there, the staff were too intimidated to throw us out. Kate launched into our cover story, that we were from a charity trying to help improve conditions in Chinese orphanages (a story that retrospectively became true, when we set up COCOA, Care Of China’s Orphaned and Abandoned, which is still going today, and has channelled hundreds of thousands of pounds into China over the intervening years). Peter and I quickly looked round the four rooms on that floor. Three were filled with babies and toddlers in various states of distress, and one room at the back had a few empty cots covered in blankets. So far as we could see from a quick recce, there was nothing new here; babies with terrible skin conditions from not being kept clean, the usual levels of overcrowding. We filmed what we could, but part of my mind was already heading towards our border crossing back into Hong Kong, and the end of a long shoot. Then a little girl of about three years of age took Kate by the hand and led her into the back room. She took her over to one of the cots and drew back the blankets. Kate immediately called Peter and I into the room. A desperately emaciated baby, her eyes almost closed from accumulated mucus, lay gasping for breath on the bed. I filmed as Kate undid the swaddling so we could see what gender she was. The little girl whimpered weakly. She didn’t have the strength to cry. Peter and I were both completely focused on filming whatever we could. We had been seeing evidence of appalling neglect for several weeks, and all along we’d been aware that a moment like this might come – the clearest possible evidence of a policy of fatal neglect, but also a human life on the line. Kate, who had a daughter not much older back in Hong Kong whom she had been missing desperately, held the little girl’s hand, stroked her head, spoke softly to her and fought back the tears.

9781784533946.indd 73

09/09/2015 15:15

74

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

17. Mei Ming. Photograph by Kate Blewett, courtesy of True Vision

By now our translator had joined us, and knew how important, but also how dangerous, that little girl was. He was very anxious that we should leave the orphanage as quickly as possible. He knew the staff had cooperated with us so far, but also knew they had called a manager who was on his way. We wrapped the child up in her swaddling and went back into the main room to ask the staff about her. We asked our translator what she was called. ‘They say Mei Ming. It means she has no name.’ Then Kate asked why they had not told us about her when she was asking about how many children there were on this floor of the orphanage. The nurse replied that Mei Ming didn’t count. She was destined to die.

9781784533946.indd 74

09/09/2015 15:15

The Greater Good

75

We knew that a manager was on the way, and that he might not be as easily convinced as the staff, especially when they told him how interested we had been in the dying child. So before our translator’s anxiety reached fever pitch, we walked down the stairs and climbed into a waiting minibus. It was then that I faced one of the hardest decisions of my life. The immediate danger of being caught and potentially arrested had passed, and Kate felt a huge responsibility to Mei Ming. She argued that we couldn’t possibly just drive away and leave her to certain death. I felt that responsibility too, but in practice I couldn’t see any viable options. If we walked back into the orphanage and picked up Mei Ming to take her to a local hospital, there was a real danger that she would die on the way. We could probably be charged with kidnap, and potentially manslaughter. Mei Ming would be no better off, and we would be facing long sentences in a Chinese prison. If she did survive the trip to hospital, and we did persuade the authorities there to care for her, they would do so only if we paid for that care. As soon as we left, she would be returned to the same orphanage and face the same fate. And we would still risk being charged with kidnap, as we clearly had no legal right to remove her. We went through the options for trying to persuade the orphanage to take better care of her, but every possibility involved at least one of us probably being arrested and charged, at worst with spying, at best with contravening our tourist visas. And our translator was adamant that whatever protests we made it would have no effect at all on Mei Ming’s fate. Then there was the bigger picture of the film – Mei Ming was the proof that babies were being deliberately left to die. We knew that girl babies and disabled or ‘imperfect’ babies were being abandoned in China in great numbers. Staff at other orphanages had confirmed this. This was largely due to the clash between the One Child Policy, introduced in 1979, and the traditional preference for sons. The son preference had a very practical basis because in Chinese society girls ‘marry out’, which is to say that when they get married they leave their parents’ family and become part of their husband’s family. So in a country where you are only

9781784533946.indd 75

09/09/2015 15:15

76

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

allowed one child, and there is no state pension, if you have a girl you risk being alone in your old age, whereas if you have a boy you will have not only him, but also his wife to look after you. What was revealed in the months after our film, The Dying Rooms, was broadcast was that the practice of deliberately allowing some babies to die, to deal with the over-crowding of state-run orphanages, was in fact an official government policy. Human Rights Watch exposed this policy, called Summary Resolution, in a report called ‘Death by Default’, which they published in January 1996. It compiled evidence from numerous sources to demonstrate that babies were being deliberately neglected to death in orphanages all over China. But back in the minibus in Guangzhou we were running out of options. Our translator was desperate for us to get out of the courtyard of the orphanage and carry on the ethical debate somewhere else. I was torn. On the one hand the self-preservation instinct was starting to kick in, and I desperately wanted to get on the train to Hong Kong and get our rushes (and us) safely out of China. But I also agreed with Kate, that surely we couldn’t just walk away from a dying child and do nothing. After a few more minutes we agreed that we should at the very least move the discussion somewhere a bit further away, and we returned to our hotel. In those days the travel books warned about hotel rooms potentially being bugged in China, and so we had always been careful what we said in the rooms. We knew we really needed to resolve our moral dilemma and come up with a plan we could all agree on before we left the minibus. We carried on trying to come up with something – anything – we could do that might help Mei Ming, without significantly risking our freedom or our chances of getting the rushes out of China. Kate had a baby daughter waiting for her in Hong Kong, so even though she felt the strongest about trying to help Mei Ming, it would not have been fair on her family to risk her freedom. We’d employed Peter to work on the film because of his original reporting in the South China Morning Post, but it was just a job to him, so we couldn’t ask him to take any more risks than he already had. So it was down to me. And the brutal truth was this I was not prepared to risk being arrested and locked in a Chinese jail in what would almost certainly be a vain attempt to save Mei Ming.

9781784533946.indd 76

09/09/2015 15:15

The Greater Good

77

At the time I justified that decision with an appeal to the greater good of getting the story out, of exposing what was happening in China’s state orphanages, and ensuring that Mei Ming’s death at least meant something – that she, unlike the tens of millions of other girl babies in China who have died since 1979, would at least be remembered. Her death would have meaning, and perhaps might even change things a little for those who came after her. Of course all that is true, but 20 years on I can look back on the young man I was then and say that though my sense of moral purpose was strong, it was not strong enough to mean I was prepared to risk my liberty for a little girl’s life. Did I do the right thing? Did I make an ethically sound choice? That’s for others to decide, but I think I would do the same again today. So Peter flew to Beijing that afternoon, taking the secret camera out with him. And Kate and I took the train to Hong Kong. In our suitcases were 40-odd Hi8 tapes that bore witness to the brutal regimes that existed in Chinese state orphanages at the time. As Westerners entering Hong Kong with British passports (it was still a British colony), the Chinese barely glanced at us as we left, and the Hong Kong border guards waved us through. The next day, from Kate’s office on Hong Kong island, we phoned that orphanage in Guangzhou to ask about the baby with no name. The orphanage denied she had ever existed. A few months later, in May 1995 when the film went out, our decision to walk away was again scrutinised. Kate and I went on the live Channel 4 programme Right To Reply, and a viewer called in to ask how we could possibly justify not just picking her up and taking her to the nearest hospital. We recounted a potted version of the debate I’ve outlined above, but accepted that it had been a very tough decision. The caller said the very least we should have done was to give her water. The next caller was a doctor, who said that in such an advanced state of starvation and thirst, she needed IV fluids, not oral rehydration, and if we had given her water we might well have killed her. In the months that followed the broadcast of the film, first in the UK, and then all over the world, Mei Ming’s story touched millions

9781784533946.indd 77

09/09/2015 15:15

78

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

of lives. One viewer wrote a beautiful and moving poem about her, which is on the wall of our office to this day: Who brought you here, Mei Ming ? Was it your mother, Mei Ming ? Would she have done so, Mei Ming ? If she could see you now: A thick blanket Hides your famished face. On top a duvet Then another: Double-decker sandwich Of jute and wool. Single-fisted blow To the human race. Eyes blistering, Two craters of pus: Rib-cage gaping, Pupils, dark, brown, Scared, pleading: ‘Don’t let me die. I am human too!’ Not long now, Mei Ming, Before you die. We love you, Mei Ming. Your pain was not for nothing. Mei Ming: No name, They say you didn’t exist. Mei Ming: Your name Is alive on our lips. The Chinese government first denounced the film as ‘full of vicious fabrications and contemptible lies’, and later produced their own

9781784533946.indd 78

09/09/2015 15:15

The Greater Good

79

version of the film, A Patchwork of Lies in which they went to all the orphanages we visited and miraculously found them full of healthy, smiling babies, and attentive neatly-uniformed staff. In Guangzhou orphanage, where we had filmed Mei Ming, they accused us of kidnapping a sick baby from a local hospital and smuggling it into the orphanage. They also claimed that Mei Ming was in fact a boy, not a girl, and said that by unwrapping her during cold weather Kate had endangered her life, and that probably led to her death. The ominous voice-over asked: ‘Would she do the same to her own daughter?’ That September the Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing, and Hillary Clinton, in her plenary address, talked about the dying rooms. The following January, in collaboration with Human Rights Watch, we made Return to the Dying Rooms, in which we presented the evidence Human Rights Watch had accumulated of the policy of summary resolution. The film was broadcast the same day as Human Rights Watch published ‘Death by Default’. Later that year Kate and I were invited to speak at a conference on human rights, and in the corridor I was introduced to the chair on the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. The Committee had brought forward the date China had to report on how it was implementing the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child, and had posed specific questions about the dying rooms. When he was told that I was one of the makers of the film, the chair asked me what I was working on now. ‘Because it would be good to know what will be dominating our agenda in a year’s time’, he said, with a smile. Over the years, the Chinese government’s initial anger and denial gave way as other voices, which supported improving conditions in orphanages and loosening the One Child Policy, started to be heard. Rural families who had a girl first were allowed a second child, the law was changed so that those who adopted or fostered no longer had those children counted as part of their One Child allowance, and conditions in orphanages improved across the board. Of course I’m not seeking to take credit for changing the One Child Policy. But I do think that the international outcry that the film

9781784533946.indd 79

09/09/2015 15:15

80

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

generated probably did play a role – maybe only a tiny one, but a role nevertheless – in the calculations of the Communist Party bosses. And that outcry was mainly down to Mei Ming, the little girl we found dying in a side room in an orphanage in Guangzhou, and whom, after filming her for 20 minutes or so, we abandoned to her fate. I still don’t know if that was the most ethical course of action. But I think I would do the same again today.

9781784533946.indd 80

09/09/2015 15:15

10 P e r s ona l F i l m m ak i n g Sue Bourne

18. Sue Bourne. Photo by Dewald Aukema, courtesy of Wellpark Productions

Sue Bourne is an award-winning documentary maker. Her work includes: Love, Life and Death in a Day, the story of the births, deaths and marriages taking place in one British city on a single day; Jig, a feature documentary about the 40th Irish Dancing World Championships; My Street, in which Bourne sets out to explore life behind the other front doors on her own street; and Mum & Me, about Bourne’s own mother, Ethel, a victim of Alzheimer’s Disease.

9781784533946.indd 81

09/09/2015 15:15

82

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

B

efore I sat down to write this chapter, I re-read some of the things people had written about my film Mum & Me. It was, to say the least, an uncomfortable experience. The film was well received by the newspapers. Critics called it an honest, moving film. It had even been nominated for – and indeed had won – a couple of awards. I felt it was a good thing to do, because we had something to say about living and dealing with Alzheimer’s. But immersing myself again in the vitriol and the personal attacks on me, my integrity and my motivation, and criticism of the ‘torture’ some thought I inflicted on my mother, made me wonder if I had been right. Some of my friends had said I was very brave to make the film, but I think possibly what they were trying to say was that I had been foolhardy. Or even mad. There are always moral questions and dilemmas involved in making documentary films, and I like to think of myself as a moral person who protects and looks after the interests of my contributors. But in the case of Mum & Me it was all the more acute because it was about my own family. And the question I was faced with was whether or not, as the filmmaker, I really was looking after the best interests of my contributors – my mother, my daughter and possibly even myself.

When someone takes part in one of my films, they usually do so because they have something they want to say. Or because I’ve managed to persuade them it would be a good idea to take part and be given a voice. It often takes me a long time to persuade people to take part, but taking time is no bad thing because at least it means they’ve given it a lot of thought, which hopefully in turn means they’re less likely to change their minds and pull out half way through. By the time they go in front of a camera, people know me pretty well. It’s a big commitment on both sides since I’m often asking people to give a lot of themselves to me and to the film. I hope my films are marked by the honesty and openness of the contributors. But that honesty sometimes comes at a high price, in terms of exposure to public scrutiny. These people have put their trust in me and I cannot – and will not – betray that trust. Mum & Me was different. My mother, Ethel, had Alzheimer’s. She was in her eighties and in a nursing home in Scotland. When my

9781784533946.indd 82

09/09/2015 15:15

Personal Filmmaking

83

daughter Holly and I started filming, I had no idea if it would ever become a film, not least because I had enormous reservations about exposing my mother, my daughter and myself to the scrutiny of the outside world. There was also the other (huge) question about whether or not my mother was able to give me, and the film, her ‘informed consent’. I didn’t really need to address those questions unless or until I got a commission, so I pushed them to one side and we just kept on filming. We filmed for over three years; whatever might happen in the long term, it would still be lovely to have this footage of my mum and our time together. That said, it would be disingenuous of me to say that when we were filming I did not also have my filmmaker’s hat on. I’d never filmed anything myself before, so the ‘filming’ – if it merits that term – was all very amateurish and pretty bad technically. What I did know was that for it to stand a chance of having a broadcast life, the sound had to be decent. So I invested in a good quality Sennheiser microphone, which we strapped to the top of the very cheap camera. This meant that even if the camerawork was rubbish, at least you could hear what we were saying. The other thing about filming was that it gave me something to do with Mum. There is a limit to the conversations you can have with someone once they have something like Alzheimer’s. So the afternoons of sitting chatting to Mum about things – our trips and meals out and holidays – all somehow had more of a ‘purpose’ because of the presence of this little camera, recording our lives together. I don’t think it changed how we behaved. Nothing was posed or redone. But in a weird and almost therapeutic way, the filming did help the three of us. It somehow allowed us to be more like ourselves – to laugh and cry more freely. It became part of our time together. All this footage could have stayed quietly and un-controversially in my bottom drawer. So why did I want to make a film that showed me and my family perhaps not in the best of lights? My much diminished mother. My own not-always-saintly behaviour. The bickering, the rows and the arguments between the three generations. The unpleasantness. Why on earth would you willingly show the world what your family is really like? The answer was simple: I thought we possibly had something important to say. Everything else I’d seen on television about

9781784533946.indd 83

09/09/2015 15:15

84

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

19. Sue Bourne, left, her daughter Holly, right, and her mother Ethel. Photo by Brian Sweeney, courtesy of Wellpark Productions

Alzheimer’s had been incredibly miserable and gloomy. And while what we were going through was not easy or fun by any stretch of the imagination, my mum, with her eternally optimistic outlook on life, her ability to laugh in the face of adversity and her rather wonderful comic timing, had shown Holly and I how to have a relationship with her in spite of her illness. Because of my mother’s attitude and humour, the three of us managed to rub along more or less happily over the three years we were filming. My mother and I had had a pretty fiery relationship over the years. Quite often mothers and daughters are like that, especially if they are both quite strong-willed. My father had died, and being an only child, I’d become responsible for my mother who still lived in the family home in Scotland. I tried to be a good daughter, and for several years I travelled up and down between London and Ayr once a month to see her. Her Alzheimer’s took hold gently at first, but by her eightieth birthday she could no longer live safely alone, so she was moved into a nursing home just round the corner from her home. Unlike many transitions into a home, my mother’s was relatively painless. A couple of weeks’ respite care went well, and a room came free. Mum moved in, and never went home again. She stayed there relatively happily for the remaining eight years of her life.

9781784533946.indd 84

09/09/2015 15:15

Personal Filmmaking

85

We began filming the first year Mum was in the nursing home, when we took her to a hotel in the Scottish Borders for a family Christmas. We discovered that filming was quite fun, and once we’d started we just kept going. It was a record of our time with Mum and every time I went up to Scotland for my monthly visit I took the camera and did some more filming. We sat on park benches and chatted about all sorts of things. We took the camera out on walks. Down to the beach. Into cafes and restaurants. We did a lot of filming in the car, strapping the camera to the dashboard with Sellotape and cushioning it with incontinence pads as I drove endlessly around Ayrshire with Mum by my side. Sometimes Holly was there too, but mainly it was just mum and me. Over those three years I filmed all sorts of conversations with Mum. We talked about her memory loss, and about whether or not I should remind her who was alive and who was dead. I asked her if she ever thought about death. It turned out she didn’t, and she didn’t want me to remind her about it either. I was curious to find out how aware she was of how Alzheimer’s was affecting her memory. I wanted to try and understand what she could and could not remember, and if there was any rhyme or reason to it all. I do think, looking back on it now, that having the camera there allowed me to have conversations with Mum and ask her questions I might not otherwise have done. When your relative gets this disease, you don’t get a handbook about how to behave or respond. You grope about in the dark and you follow your instincts. The way you behave reflects the type of relationship you have with your parent, and Mum and I had always had our ups and downs. We challenged each other all the time. We were both quite confrontational, so to the outside world I am sure it often appeared that we were rather brutal with each other. And maybe we were. Over the many months of filming I really had no idea if it might one day be turned into a ‘proper documentary’. Right from the start there were many reasons why I didn’t think a film should be broadcast. First and foremost was the issue of consent. Would my mother have wanted a film to be made about her? Would she have wanted the world to see her when she was in the clutches of Alzheimer’s? Because of the disease, was she able to give informed

9781784533946.indd 85

09/09/2015 15:15

86

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

consent to having a film made about her? And, as her next of kin, was there not a serious conflict of interest in filming her in this state? Since I began my production company, Wellpark, in 2001, Grant McKee has been my executive producer. He is a very wise and thoughtful counsel and one of the most experienced documentary execs in the country. From the word go he was concerned about me making the film. He worried that my mother would not have wanted the film to be made. That she wouldn’t want people to see her like this. He had not met my mother, but he thought it might not be in her best interests for the film to be made. He had seen other families rent asunder under the scrutiny of TV cameras, and he feared little good could come of the venture. We had endless discussions about the morality of making a film, usually in the pub! Added to Grant’s wariness, there was also the problem that Holly – then in her mid teens – was also very much against a film being made. She was probably being a bit ‘teenager-y’ about it, but she eloquently argued that she was a private person and did not want a film – and me – to invade her privacy. In fact the only person who seemed remotely okay about a film being made was my mum. When I explained to her about the camera and maybe making a film some day, Mum tended to smile and agree with whatever her rather bossy daughter was saying. Which probably meant she really didn’t have a clue what I was on about! Given this general negativity, it was all looking like a bit of a non-starter. I reckoned the best thing to do was just to keep filming my trips to mum, and then decide at some much later date whether or not to turn it into a ‘proper’ film. I filmed my visits to my mother for the next three years. Mum did deteriorate, but not hugely. In my head I had always promised that whatever happened I would not make a film that showed her decline and eventual death. So I slowed down the filming as she herself slowed down. I mentioned what I was doing to a number of my favourite commissioning editors, but while they were ‘showing interest’, no one was really gagging to commission me. Perhaps that was partly my own fault, because even while I told them about the filming, I continued to have huge reservations. And Grant’s concerns about the whole endeavour were undimmed.

9781784533946.indd 86

09/09/2015 15:15

Personal Filmmaking

87

To work out what to do, I decided to break the habit of a lifetime and make a ‘taster tape’. The taster wasn’t just to show to commissioning editors. I had to make it to see how putting something together about my own mother would feel. I wanted to see how she – and my relationship with her – would come across. Since Holly was still saying she did not want me to make a film, I did not include her in the taster. It was just Mum and me. It was funny and it was moving. It gave you a real sense of what Ethel was like, and how strongly she came over as a person in the footage I’d shot. You see her sense of self, and get a real taste of her rather wonderful sense of humour. I cut the taster with Nick Follows, a great editor I’d worked with before. We spent a day or so putting together a 12-minute tape. I then gave Holly a copy of it to see what she thought. Then Grant. And I waited with baited breath to see what they came back with. Their reaction would decide what happened next. Holly watched it with two of her best school friends. They laughed and they cried. And her friends, who knew her granny well, said she absolutely had to make the film because it would help everyone with a granny or a grandpa with dementia or Alzheimer’s. Next up was Grant’s reaction. He said that now he had actually seen what Ethel was like he understood much more why I wanted to make the film. She wasn’t some ‘little old lady’. She was a feisty and wonderfully funny character who, in spite of having Alzheimer’s, still came across incredibly well. He too could now see that the film had something to say; it would show, in a very raw and personal way, a different way of dealing with the ravages of confusion and memory loss. He still thought there were huge questions around consent, but he felt much more comfortable about the film now he’d seen what my mum was like. What we agreed was that Grant would become my mother’s advocate, that he would represent her, and he would ensure that her best interests were at the forefront at all times. I would put Mum’s interests to the fore too, of course. But this was a good arrangement just in case I became over-zealous as a filmmaker. Grant would always be there to protect my mum. And Holly. Those viewings and reactions meant we were now all comfortable about turning three years of footage into a documentary. Miraculously, I had also managed to get one of the country’s best editors to agree to edit the film. I had never worked with Joby Gee

9781784533946.indd 87

09/09/2015 15:15

88

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

before, but I’d seen his work and was desperate to work with him on this film. I thought it might be good not to work with someone I already knew; perhaps this would give me a bit more distance to help me through what I thought might be an emotionally difficult edit. Joby too was shown that 12-minute taster tape. He said later that he didn’t really want to make a film about Alzheimer’s. Then he saw the taster and loved Mum and the humour and the rawness and honesty of what we had shot. He agreed to take it on. Now all I had to do was get a commission. And guess what? Not a single commissioning person in the UK wanted the film. I touted poor old Mum round everyone I usually worked for and no one would take the film. In the end a friend in Scotland suggested I take the film to Ewan Angus of BBC Scotland. He saw the taster and commissioned it on the spot. Once it was finished it was offered to the network, and was then shown on BBC 1. I am eternally grateful to Ewan for taking the risk on the film. I had budgeted for quite a long time in the edit. I thought it was going to be a hard, emotional journey to put the film together. But I reckoned without Joby. I also imagined that I’d go and film lovely scenics of Scotland and interview Mum’s friends talking about what she used to be like. But Joby, once he’d seen all the material, said that what was unique about the footage was the intimacy. And the fact it was so, so badly shot. He said we should make a film that showed only my mum, me and Holly. And that was it. He said if we included a single ‘properly shot’ image, it would only serve to make the film like other documentaries. No longer unique. So that was what we did. 59 minutes of the most rough-and-ready footage you have ever seen. (Good sound though!) I think now that it is the rough-and-readiness of the film, and its inherent honesty, that made it so memorable. The hate mail began to arrive shortly after it was broadcast. There were some absolutely vile things written about me. And even about poor young Holly. But for every horrible thing that was written there were probably six letters from people who loved the film, who thanked us for giving them hope and for being so honest. In the cutting room I had chosen scenes that showed me being horrible to my poor old mum: scenes that showed me being a grumpy so-and-so; scenes that showed me losing my temper. Joby, Grant and I discussed whether or not it was a wise thing to include them

9781784533946.indd 88

09/09/2015 15:15

Personal Filmmaking

89

in the film, but deep down I knew there was no debate to be had. I was showing my mother with dementia. I was showing her incontinence. Her confusion. The repetition. The petulance. The fact she no longer really knew who I was. So if I was exposing my mother to the public view, then I had to expose myself too. And that meant I had to show everything, good and bad. The film went out quite a few years ago now. Mum, Holly and I had another couple of years together after the film was finished. They were, largely, good years and we still managed to laugh together. But of course it got harder and harder. I would not have wanted to film those last few years. They were for us alone. What the world did see was what a remarkable woman my mum was. I don’t think I had realised that until I started filming. The reason she was remarkable was because of her ability to be positive. That was her shining light. The film made a wee star of my mum. We spent a day with a photographer doing publicity stills, and Mum absolutely loved the attention. She really could not have been happier. And I think because I knew Mum always liked attention, that was one reason why I thought it would be okay to make this film. God knows if it was right or not. But on balance I think it was. A couple of months ago, Holly and I came across the film online and the two of us stood in the office watching Ethel laughing and joking with us. Watching that – both with tears in our eyes – made us pleased that we have a film to show to our family in years to come. They might not have met Ethel in person but I think they will still get a pretty good idea of what she was like from the film we made together.

9781784533946.indd 89

09/09/2015 15:15

11 Sec r et s Albert Maysles

20. Albert Maysles. Photograph courtesy of Maysles Films

Albert Maysles is a pioneer of ‘direct cinema’, in which the drama of life unfolds without scripts, sets, interviews or narration. Along with his brother David, he is responsible for films including Salesman, Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Peabody Awards, three Emmy Awards, six Lifetime Achievement Awards and the National Medal of Honor from President Barack Obama.

9781784533946.indd 91

09/09/2015 15:15

92

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

I

got a call one day from Lee Radziwill, Jacqueline Kennedy’s sister, saying that she’d like to make a film about her childhood in the Hamptons – would I be interested? And I said, ‘Yes, of course.’ We started filming, and soon after she got a call from Lee and Jacqueline’s cousin Edie Beale, saying that Edie and her mother were in trouble with the Board of Health because their house was in such bad shape and they were going to be evicted, so could Lee come over and help out? She said to me: ‘I’m going over there; you want to come along?’ And I said: ‘Sure.’ That’s how I met the two of them. ‘Divine accidents happen’, as Orson Welles once said to me. Three months later my brother and I started filming Grey Gardens. It turned out that Edie and her mother (known as ‘Little Edie’ and ‘Big Edie’) hadn’t left the house in 20 years, and they had about a cat for every year. But they were from the aristocracy, as part of the Bouvier family. How could this happen? What was going on? The story we discovered was one of a struggle on the part of young Edie trying to get away and have a life of her own, but being unable to escape because she felt she needed to be with her mother. Access wasn’t difficult at all, because they wanted to connect with the world, to be understood and accepted for who they were. My brother David and I both felt: ‘There’s a lot going on here: it will make a great documentary.’ We always had a yearning to defend outsiders, and get other people to understand and empathise with them. Documentaries are one of the very best ways of giving people experiences they wouldn’t otherwise have, allowing them to see the world through someone else’s eyes. So the match up between ourselves as documentary makers and the two ladies felt like a good one. They gave us total access to their lives. As we filmed, secrets began bubbling to the surface. In the mother–daughter exchanges, cooped up in their crumbling house, there are allusions to Little Edie ‘recuperating’, and references to a divorce and a married man and a marriage proposal. These are secrets from their rich personal histories being aired for the first time in a long time. Being there at the right time, as they shared their experience and their stories, we captured it all, filming in a strictly observational fashion. It felt like an unfolding mystery: how did their lives come to be like this? And I’ll be honest, it was exciting. We were up close with people who normally would be

9781784533946.indd 92

09/09/2015 15:15

Secrets

93

very secretive. I knew it would make for a gripping film. But it was always in our mind to do nothing that would be hurtful to them. And we never pressed for more information than they wanted to give, so most of the secrets are semi-secrets, really – hints and allusions. At the end of the film, much of the mystery remains, which I think is part of what makes the film so compelling.

21. Big Edie and Little Edie at home in Grey Gardens. Portrait Films / The Kobal Collection

In the evenings I’d go home and tell my wife about what we’d shot that day. She’s a family therapist, and she was fascinated by the revelations. I have a background in psychology myself – I even taught psychology for three years at Boston University and worked at a mental hospital as an assistant to a well-known researcher. And having that sort of background I guess helps when it comes to dealing with people and their secrets. It teaches you to look for the secret story – the story behind the story. And it teaches you to be respectful of those stories and people’s private lives. Big Edie and Little Edie knew that my brother and I would make the film with love and kindness, as well as curiosity. Some viewers have suggested we were exploiting the two Edies, which put us on the defensive. There’s a sizeable part of the population who have a fear of revealing things about themselves, and when they see someone doing that in a film or on TV, it

9781784533946.indd 93

09/09/2015 15:15

94

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

disturbs them, and they project their fears onto the people on the screen and worry that those people are going to get hurt or humiliated. A critic for the New York Times argued that by exposing the conditions the two women were living in and their inner lives, we had invaded their privacy. He thought the film was unfair. But they didn’t need defending. They knew what they were doing, and they knew full well that everything was being recorded – both pictures and sound. It’s what they wanted, to throw open the windows and let some air in, and we never had a sense that they were divulging more than they should. They were just being themselves without commentary or intervention. I think in some ways they’d just been waiting for someone to reveal their true life stories. When the film was finished, we showed it to Big Edie and Little Edie together, and they recognised themselves. They saw it as an authentic, truthful portrait, and were pleased they’d made the film. They’d trusted us, and they felt that we had repaid their trust. At the end of the screening, Little Edie stood up and announced: ‘The Maysles have created a classic!’ My brother and I were relieved. I just want my films to be a means for people to get to know and understand each other. That aim worked out well with Grey Gardens. The film made the two aristocratic women, who’d never felt accepted by their own kind, feel accepted by the public. In telling their secrets and making themselves vulnerable, they’d made themselves known, and that made them happy. Films should never hurt anyone. The act of filming someone’s life should always be an act of love. Some time later, when Mrs Beale was dying, Little Edie turned to her mother and asked her if there was anything she wanted people to know. She replied: ‘There’s nothing more to say. It’s all in the film.’

9781784533946.indd 94

09/09/2015 15:15

12 H er o es Asif Kapadia

22. Asif Kapadia. Photograph by Leslie Hassler

Asif Kapadia is director of the Bafta-winning documentary Senna, about Ayrton Senna, the Brazilian Grand Prix racing driver who won three Formula One world championships. His other films include feature film The Warrior, which won two Baftas in 2003, and Amy, a feature-length documentary about the singer Amy Winehouse.

9781784533946.indd 95

09/09/2015 15:15

96

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

W

hen I was approached to make a film about Ayrton Senna, it was conceived and budgeted by the producers as a conventional documentary; 40 minutes of archive, 40 minutes of talking-head interviews, 10 minutes of miscellaneous footage. I made a major aesthetic choice not to make it that way. It turned out to be a good decision, but at the time it seemed like a big risk. And that choice opened up a whole range of ethical choices and dilemmas to do with the presentation of the film’s two central characters, Ayrton Senna and his great rival Alain Prost. Every film has problems and complications. With Senna it took years to get all of the contractual agreements with Senna’s family and with the Formula One authorities. We were not going to be fully financed by the studio until all of the agreements were in place, but I’d already made a commitment to the film. In the end, this meant a nine-month (unpaid) period of prep. I started work  with the writer Manish Pandey, and together we began looking at archive material. I wanted to see every clip I could get my hands on to learn about the subject. That period of limbo essentially made the film, because it quickly struck me that the archive material was so extraordinarily rich and extensive that we could make the film entirely out of it, and that if we filmed any interviews at all, we should just use the sound and lay the audio under the pictures. That way, the film would feel like it was unfolding in the present tense, like a drama. I had no idea if anyone had ever made a documentary this way before. But to me, it made complete sense to avoid interviews, because I couldn’t interview Senna, the person the audience would most want to hear from, and I didn’t want to make a film that was just about everyone else’s opinion of him. Furthermore, Senna was amazingly eloquent and charismatic in the archive footage we found, and luckily he gave a lot of interviews. I felt that if we could tell the story in a present-tense, in-the-moment way, then all our viewers – including both those who knew nothing about the story and those who were familiar with every twist and turn (including the ending) – would hopefully be swept along by the narrative. So it seemed like a no-brainer, and the astonishing amount of archive material – everything is filmed in Formula One; often Ayrton had ten cameras on him at any given time, including point of view shots in the car, drivers’ meetings, helicopter shots and tracking shots – meant that we could cut scenes exactly as you would in a

9781784533946.indd 96

09/09/2015 15:15

Heroes

97

drama. The potential was there to make a much bigger, stronger, more immersive and more gripping film than a traditional talking heads sports documentary. It was initially a struggle getting producers and financiers to buy into the vision. A lot of people felt ‘This is just not how you make documentaries: you need to build it around interviews, and the audience need to see Alain Prost’s face when he talks [...]’. That’s how many of the most successful documentary films  of the last few years were put together. My gut feeling was ‘The longer I can delay shooting the interviews, and the more times we screen cuts of the film made solely out of archive, the more the producers will understand that this is a more original, dramatic and emotional way of making the film.’ The first assembly of Senna was about seven hours long, and the first cut screened at a viewing cinema was five hours long. We had a problem, but a good problem; too much great material! People kept saying, ‘If you just cut to a talking head interview here and there, you could easily save yourself time.’ Budget was also a big factor. Formula One footage is very expensive, and the film was budgeted to feature just 40 minutes of it. Anything over that would be charged at around $30,000 per minute. So the first cut was literally millions of dollars over budget. I kept thinking, ‘If I can prove that the film will work without talking heads interviews, they’ll find a way to pay for the extra footage.’ I’m a Hitchcock fan, he had said you should never shoot anything you don’t intend to use; don’t do anything you feel strongly averse to, because you risk painting yourself into a corner. There are things you compromise on as a director, and others that you have to fight for. So I never screened a cut with talking heads in it. Eventually, after two and a half years and two brilliant editors working round the clock, we arrived at a cut of the film that really sang, and everyone came on board. The producers found a way to renegotiate our deal with the Formula One authorities regarding the increased costs of using double the original amount of archive. The story of the last few years of Ayrton Senna’s life, and his relationship with Alain Prost, works wonderfully well as a drama, because his rivalry with Prost has a superb fire and ice clarity to it.

9781784533946.indd 97

09/09/2015 15:15

98

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Senna was passionate and emotional. Prost was cool, careful and political. They were opposites, but also teammates, crashing into one another at 200 miles per hour. You couldn’t have made it up. And I felt that by making the film out of archive material, we had the perfect way of doing justice to the story. But that aesthetic, directorial decision gave rise to a lot of ethical problems – in a tale that unfolds as the story of a tragic hero and brilliant, bitter rival, and in the absence of talking head interviews, how would we do justice to their complex characters? The film, if it was successful, might define the image of Senna for a whole generation; how would we meet that onerous responsibility? When the film came out, it was criticised in some quarters for being overly enamoured of Ayrton Senna. One leading film magazine described it as a piece of hero worship. It is true that there are elements of Senna’s personality and personal history that didn’t have a place in the unfolding, present-tense story we were telling. He certainly was no saint. And Alain Prost felt that the film was a little unfair, and didn’t do justice to the way his relationship with Senna thawed and became friendly in the final months of Senna’s life. In a traditional, talking-heads-heavy documentary about Senna, it would have been easy to broaden the scope and include more of Senna’s biography. But I wanted to remain rigorously true to the aesthetic and stylistic choices I’d made, without compromise. If we couldn’t show it in archive, it couldn’t go in the film. A lot of writers and journalists had already covered the other issues; this was a theatrical film, and our aim was to show the story through images. But it turned out that there were a great many things that we could show, or at least hint at, with a dab of archive footage here and there, like when you see Prost, who had retired and is now commentating, at the moment of Senna’s fatal crash. His response – his face, his expression – is so hugely telling and articulate. It says much more than a bit of interview recorded 20 years after the event. Later in the film you see that Prost was one of the coffin bearers at Senna’s funeral. It speaks volumes about their relationship, and the high regard in which Prost held Ayrton. Ultimately, I feel the portrayal of the two characters is textured and complex. There were many other such moments, and many more that we had to leave out to bring the film down to its 100-minute running time.

9781784533946.indd 98

09/09/2015 15:15

Heroes

99

We did huge amounts of research to find the archive, and to inform the hunt for it. We sifted through 15,000 hours of footage. We were very aware of our responsibilities to Ayrton Senna, the complex realities of his life, and his enduring legacy. It’s just that we didn’t discharge those responsibilities in the traditional way, through words spoken by witnesses whose faces you see on screen. Memories fade and hindsight changes things. I think the fact that I didn’t really have any track record as a documentary maker freed me up to think in that way – to put my trust in images, which have the potential to be so much more revealing, multi-layered and powerful than someone’s recollections. Looking back at the film, I’d say that the approach we took is a more subtle way of doing justice to the complexities of the story and the characters than conventional approaches. I hope the audience sees more in the film every time they watch it. You get to know the characters well because you’re spending time with them, and living through extraordinary events in their company, when they were at their peak. Certainly, it’s a more  visceral and emotional way of telling the story. But also, despite the fears and reservations of those who doubted the approach, one which allows both Senna and Prost to emerge as wonderful but imperfect, threedimensional people. When we showed the film to Senna’s family, it was a hugely emotional occasion. Senna’s sister said it struck just the right balance between her brother the sporting genius with rock star charisma, and her brother the human being. The real success, though, is the number of people around the world who have never heard of Senna – who have no interest in watching documentaries, who can’t stand the idea of watching Formula One or any other sport – who have seen the film and were moved by it, who fell in love with Ayrton Senna, and recommended the movie to their friends, partners and parents. For me, there could be no higher praise or justification of the choices we made than that.

9781784533946.indd 99

09/09/2015 15:15

13 Sex Leo Maguire

23. Leo Maguire. Photograph by Alex Webster

Leo Maguire is a British photographer and filmmaker. His films include Gypsy Blood, which began as a photography project and turned into a feature-length observational documentary, and the RTS- and Grierson-nominated Dogging Tales, about the secretive and peculiarly British practice of ‘dogging’, in which men and women meet and have sex with strangers in public areas under cover of night.

9781784533946.indd 101

09/09/2015 15:15

102

‘

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

L

eo, touch my breasts.’ The woman was naked, but for a pair of black knee-high boots. She sauntered over to me, from where I watched, transfixed, leaning on my car. She lit a cigarette and sidled up beside me, resting on the car bonnet, a little too close for comfort.

‘Leo, it’s just us here,’ she purred. ‘Play with me, my husband wants you to.’ Her husband walked up to join us, and without ceremony began to suck her breasts. ‘Leo, no one is here,’ she moaned. ‘It’s just us, no one will ever know about this.’ Paying little heed, her husband kissed her neck, before pushing her up against my car. Pulling up her legs on the bodywork, he started to make love with his wife, on – or more accurately, against – my car. The scene was framed by beautiful pine trees, hinting at some dark mystery within. The sweet smell of sap filled my nose, while the air was still warm from the sun of the day just past. I noticed their flesh, illuminated by moonlight, writhing in rhythm with their carnal breathing. I took a deep breath and looked up at the moon. ‘Dear God please be quick’, I thought. ‘I really don’t want you to scratch my car.’ Dogging Tales was my second film, my difficult second album. I had been making it for eight months, and I had so far found no one willing to participate. It was tough, both professionally and emotionally. Time was short; I was due to start the edit in a couple of months, yet I had nothing to show. The stress was unbearable, compounded by the dawning realisation that I was going to fail to capture what I had so confidently set out to do. I had come late to the world of filmmaking, having spent my early career as a photographer. I started to film things out of frustration with the inability of photography to convey my experience of my subjects. I wanted to show all the nuances and texture of a story. As it was only my second film, I was very inexperienced in handling the pressure when things didn’t work out or go my way.

9781784533946.indd 102

09/09/2015 15:15

Sex

103

My first film, Gypsy Blood, had been a critical success. I had spent several years making it, embedded in a community within which I had worked tirelessly to gain trust and access into people’s lives. That film was difficult to make in many ways, but there was no pressure on me professionally. I was young and naïve, without a care and with nothing to prove. I had no audience, but that first film had created one – both a blessing and a curse. Good films are touched by magic. You can have all the right ingredients, but without a bit of luck and a kind of alchemy, they will fail to come together. On this film, luck was in short supply. I was having sleepless nights, racked with anxiety and self-doubt. I was a nightmare to be around and to live with, totally obsessed with making it work and delivering an amazing film. As the months wore on, I became more tense and my demeanour more unpleasant. My relationship suffered tremendously, because I could never switch off and be present. My only focus was the film. I felt like a condemned man, counting down the days to a very public and humiliating execution. The crescendo of the couple’s lovemaking awoke me from my daze. My concerns about my future as a filmmaker retreated from the forefront of my mind, as I turned to see this respectable pair convulsing on my car bonnet. Trying not to draw attention to myself, I peeked over the woman’s heaving breasts to see if they had left any marks on the paintwork. After they had finished they wanted to sit and talk. The woman was surprised by my apparent indifference to their performance. ‘You’re the first man who has not had sex with me when I asked him to. Is there something wrong with me?’, she asked. I brushed aside her question. Yet somehow, that seemed to please her. ‘Why can’t more men be like you?’ she continued. ‘If they were, you wouldn’t be a very satisfied woman’, I retorted. We talked for some time. It turned out they had been married for over 20 years and had two teenage daughters. They were

9781784533946.indd 103

09/09/2015 15:15

104

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

passionate doggers, but because of their kids, they couldn’t get out as often as they would like.

24. Dogging in action. Photograph by Leo Maguire, taken using a custom made infra-red light source and a digital camera converted to read infra-red light

When we first met, perhaps they assumed I was no more than an average dogger out to fulfil his prurient fantasies. But after my feigned indifference, and the revelation that I was different to any other man they had met dogging thus far, they trusted me, eventually allowing me to film everything. Ultimately, it was my professionalism that impressed them. They began to communicate with me, telling me when they were planning on going out, and where they would be. I never had to chase them, nor did they ever let me down. Perhaps most importantly, they were totally open with me. We began to work together, and suddenly, for the first time, I had access to some full-on dogging action. When working on a film for television, one is assigned a lawyer, and some are better than others. By this, I mean some are mercilessly officious and stringent, others less so. I always pray for the more relaxed type. The lawyer I was given by Channel 4 laid down some strict

9781784533946.indd 104

09/09/2015 15:15

Sex

105

guidelines for me to work within. One of the most stringent conditions was that I must, upon arriving at a dogging area where sexual acts were taking place, announce my presence and verbally inform everyone that I was from Channel 4, making a documentary on dogging, and ‘If anyone does not wish to be filmed, could they please let me know.’ I tried this method once, with the result that almost everyone fucked off immediately. I felt like a policeman must feel at a drugs bust, with people literally jumping out of car windows. Those who didn’t flee reacted with anger and aggression, making very credible threats towards me. By working within the channel’s legal boundaries, I felt I would jeopardise any chance of good relations with the community. At the same time, aside from causing problems with my work, announcing my presence like that vexed my subject, Suzy. As everyone left, she couldn’t get as much action as she would have liked. I was disrupting her precious dogging time. When I started making my first film, Gypsy Blood, it was for myself, funded by me, with no clear outlet to show it. Eventually Channel 4 got involved and helped me finish the film. What was so interesting and difficult about Gypsy Blood, for me as a filmmaker, was the change over time in the attitudes and manner of my subjects. When the project became real – it would be on television, for all the country to behold – it changed everything. The interviews were less forthright. The interviewees were more wary, and constantly guessing how they would be judged by a TV audience. It was a daily battle to get the results I wanted, which was simply to document how these people lived. But it was no longer just me, my camera and them. I now had to cope with the constant spectre of the future public audience hanging over my project. I went from filmmaker to counsellor. My contributors needed constant reassurance, guidance and help. On a weekly basis they would pull out of the film, saying they had had enough, and didn’t care about it anymore. They were scared, and I couldn’t blame them. Before Gypsy Blood went out, screening copies were sent to the press for review. They had a field day. They ripped my characters apart and took everything that had been said out of context. It

9781784533946.indd 105

09/09/2015 15:15

106

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

looked bad. Angry phone calls ensued. My subjects told me that they had never said the words they saw printed in the papers. I told them they had, but they were taken out of context to make them sound bad. They listened, and I thought I had calmed them down. But as the week wore on, more vitriolic reviews appeared in the papers. By the end of the week I was receiving death threats. My project had suddenly got very serious indeed. I was upset, but not about the death threats. My characters, whom I had worked with and known for so many years, felt betrayed by me. I knew I hadn’t betrayed them. I knew they loved the film, as I had shown it to them already. But I started to question if I had done the right thing. I had exposed some difficult parts of their lives, and in so doing, perhaps I had put them at risk. Maybe their children might be taken by social services, as some in the press were calling for. I felt terrible, as if I had conned them for the sake of the film. When the film finally went out on television I received phone calls from my two contributors. They were both in tears. They reassured me that I had shown their lives as they really were, that I hadn’t twisted anything, and said that they now saw how manipulative the press had been. They thanked me for giving them a voice and said they didn’t give a fuck what anyone else thought. It was a brutal thing to go through, but a valuable lesson in the importance of protecting your contributors, yourself, and your film. When Dogging Tales was due to go out I put a blanket ban on any preview copies being sent to the press. Channel 4 were very unhappy about this, as were the production company. They were terrified that no one would watch the film. In television, all people really care about is viewing figures, and rightly so. But sometimes it’s just better to let a film go out and have a life. Why risk it being pulled because your contributors start worrying about what’s being said about them in the press, before they have even been on television? I believe that I am a good judge of character, that my moral compass is fairly accurate. It is my responsibility to portray my characters as fairly and kindly as possible. I have a duty of care towards them and I would not put something out there which I feel would be damaging. Having your life documented is an amazing experience. As the subject of a film, you are scrutinised

9781784533946.indd 106

09/09/2015 15:15

Sex

107

in a way that you will probably never have experienced before. It’s an amazing experience for the filmmaker also. For me, exploring characters and scenarios is as much an exploration of myself, a process of trying to figure out who I am, where I am in my life, and how I fit into this world. Back on the trail of the doggers, it was clear that announcing myself as a Channel 4 filmmaker was not going to work. For the people I wanted to film, the fear of being scrutinised and judged by the public was just too great. So, I decided to go against the lawyer’s stipulations and work how I felt best. Often, it simply isn’t possible to abide by the rules. As long as you are not endangering yourself, or anyone else, then I see no reason to stick to protocol. Whenever I’m told what to do, with the caveats, ‘this is how it’s done,’ or, ‘that’s the way it is,’ I feel like vomiting. I developed a way of filming in the dark that did not interrupt the dogging. People could see I was doing something – filming them – but had no idea of the level of detail that I could capture. Now I could go out with Suzy and John, with relative freedom to film. When people saw me, they generally assumed I was filming a home movie for the couple, and I was left alone. Should I have told everyone, ethically speaking, that I was filming? I didn’t think so. We were all of us out in a public place. That’s the whole point of dogging. For the people who take part, that’s the thrill of it. I didn’t want to expose or shame them. Just to capture and explore what they were doing. Often, I couldn’t film. Sometimes there were over 20 men at the sites, either having sex or waiting their turn. Such an environment was far too hostile to even attempt to get my camera out. However, when I turned up at such gatherings, Suzy’s partner was always pleased to see me, as if I was an old friend who had turned up amid their party of strangers. Every time, Suzy would eventually make her way through all the men in the queue. She demolished them. Once they were relieved, they slipped back to where they had come from. She was always a little disappointed when there were none left, though I think she was secretly proud of how she’d dispatched them all. In the end, it was always the three of us left, sat there smoking and talking in the darkness. I was surprised at how Suzy felt let down by the men, and their attitude towards her. On occasion, someone would say something

9781784533946.indd 107

09/09/2015 15:15

108

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

she wouldn’t like, or the men would all stand around without actually engaging with her sexually. She would take great offence at being disregarded in this way. She would ask if there was something wrong with her, saying things like, ‘I’m pissed off now, you can all go home’, before getting dressed and telling me and her husband it was time to go. From there, we would go to a roadside café for a cup of tea and she would be visibly upset. She would question John continuously, asking if there was something wrong with her; whether she was pretty enough, whether she turned him on. She would tell me that she wouldn’t come out again for a while. She was hurt, angry, feeling ugly. She probably wouldn’t eat properly for a while. I felt sorry for her. Such a burden, for one’s happiness and well-being to depend so much on being a desirable object for men. I couldn’t see how such a life was sustainable. At some point in her life she would cease to be attractive. What then? By now the filming period was coming to an end, and I had run into another problem. Suzy possessed bounteous long blond hair, reminiscent of Pamela Anderson in her heyday; bold, striking and very unique. With the film about to go into the edit, she asked that I leave out her hair, or just colour it differently. She worried that her children would recognise her by her hair, and as such, wanted it out of the film. This was a major obstacle. I did not have the budget to re-colour all the footage frame-by-frame. It would have been impossible to edit her hair out of the film, so I decided I had to re-shoot some of the scenes, and the master interviews. Other things would need to be blurred, blacked-out or masked in postproduction. Other scenes still – some of the best ones – would have to be cut entirely. Fact and truth are very different things. Too many filmmakers are caught up with the idea that fact is truth, believing that everything must be literal. I am constantly chasing and looking for the truth, whatever that might be. I know when I have found it. You can taste it. Good storytellers find creative ways of putting it on screen. Now I had a plan for dealing with the problem of Suzy’s hair. But I had only a few weeks left in the edit. Time was running out, and Suzy and John had been unable to meet me for various reasons. I began to panic. Winter was setting in, and I was afraid that Suzy would refuse to help me reshoot, simply because of the biting cold. Perfectly reasonable.

9781784533946.indd 108

09/09/2015 15:15

Sex

109

I sat in the car, where we had agreed to meet, wondering if they would bother to turn up. It was dark, and bloody cold. The car thermometer read minus 6 degrees centigrade. As I contemplated another night alone before driving home, there was a tap on the window. Dressed in a very skimpy outfit, there was Suzy, smiling. ‘The things you make me do Leo,’ she laughed. Systematically, we went about recreating each scene, shot-forshot. It took several hours. We laboured away in the cold until 1am. Even the interview scenes had to be reenacted. I would play them the clip of what they had said, and then I would re-ask the question. They would answer, even moving their heads in time with the original sound. When I felt we had finished, we sat and talked for a while. Suzy said. ‘You will come and show us the film won’t you, Leo?’ I was surprised that she even questioned if I would or not. Surely after everything I had seen and filmed she trusted me by now? I then realised that despite everything she couldn’t trust me fully, because I’m a man. It seemed to me that her own loving husband used her, that she was like a real life porn star who fulfilled his wildest fantasies. Of course, she enjoyed herself. But who was she really doing all this for? I never really knew if her husband really loved her, or the sexual fantasy manifest in her. As I drove home I questioned myself for reenacting what had been spontaneous moments of genuine sincerity. Ultimately I felt it more important to tell Suzy and John’s story to the truest extent and best of my ability, without damaging them or revealing who they were. If that meant using imagery from another time and place, so be it. Factually it was inaccurate, but it told the truth, and that is what we should all be looking for. Suzy was nervous when we met to watch the final film, as was I. What if she recognised herself? Would she veto the transmission? What if she hated what she had said? When the film finished playing she was stunned. She said it was really good, and true. And that her daughters would never recognise her if they saw it. When we hugged goodbye she cried a little. Even John welled up as he slapped my back, before engulfing me in a bear hug.

9781784533946.indd 109

09/09/2015 15:15

110

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

As I drove off on my long journey back to London, I also felt emotional. As a filmmaker you get close to people. You learn their secrets and desires, their strengths and shortcomings. It’s an intimate relationship, getting to the truth of something. At some point the journey ends, and the relationship is over. Sure, you can continue to stay in contact. But that thing you had together is dead. It will never exist again. You poke around in the darkness searching for the truth – in the story, in the person, in you. Then you find it, and hold onto it for as long as you can. And then you have to let it go. You must find your own way through a film. You can’t be told how you should navigate it, or be given a code of conduct to follow. Life doesn’t work in that way. There is no textbook to reality. It is bumpy and painful, full of surprises and dilemmas. If it wasn’t, how would we learn, grow, and evolve? As filmmakers what should we be doing? For me, it’s simple. Be true to ourselves and the story we’re telling, and find truth. That’s it.

9781784533946.indd 110

09/09/2015 15:15

14 D eath Charlie Russell

25. Charlie Russell, left, with Terry Pratchett, during the making of Choosing to Die. Photograph by Rob Wilkins

Charlie Russell is a BAFTA, Emmy, Grierson and Royal Television Society award-winning documentary filmmaker, whose films include Beryl’s Last Year, about his grandmother, the author Beryl Bainbridge; The Last Nazis, in which he interviewed the most wanted Nazi war criminals in the world; and the autobiographical Looking For Dad, about the death of his father. His film Choosing to Die, about assisted suicide and made with the author Terry Pratchett, was highly controversial but received a number of prestigious awards. Pratchett died at his home in March 2015, at the age of 66.

9781784533946.indd 111

09/09/2015 15:15

112

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

I

n December 2010 I filmed a British man, Peter Smedley, end his life. He turned to my small crew and thanked us for being there, said goodbye to his wife Christine, who sat quietly stroking his hand beside him, and drank a poison that stopped his heart from beating. It was a harrowing and upsetting and strange and profound moment, but also a bizarrely uplifting one. Peter was suffering from Motor Neurone Disease, and had chosen an assisted death over a terminal decline. The resulting documentary, Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die, was broadcast by the BBC on 13 June 2011, and received 898 complaints. It wasn’t the first programme to show a death – that dubious honour, at least in the UK, fell to a 2008 documentary entitled Right To Die?, following another Brit, Craig Ewert. Like Peter, he had travelled to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to choose an assisted death. Right To Die? was broadcast on a small digital channel (and later on PBS in the USA) and, perhaps as a result, was received with less outcry. In our case, that the BBC was broadcasting such a death was as much a part of the story, and many of the complaints were of bias, in an often fiercely contested debate between those who believe in the ‘right to die’ (still illegal in the UK) and those who fear that it sets a dangerous precedent. My own position was not straightforward. I had made an earlier two-part documentary following the popular fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett over the course of his first year living with a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s. Terry, just turned 60, started off angry and on the offensive, determined to find a cure for this incurable disease. By the end of the project he had come in part to accept his fate, and now wanted to take control of the one thing he could still hope to determine: the manner in which his life would end. I had recently experienced the death of my grandmother, the novelist Beryl Bainbridge, who slowly departed over two wretched weeks on the top-floor of an NHS hospital overlooking Camden Town, surrounded by her children and grandchildren. It was neither dignified nor poetic; it was at best a relief to let her go. So I knew that death wasn’t simple or easy or okay, and that any initial ideas to make a presenter-led polemic with Terry visiting people with opinions on assisted death, but keeping the death itself at arm’s length, were never going to be satisfactory or up to the job. Terry was himself effectively dying. My only thought was to bring him as close as possible to the experience he had begun advocating in the

9781784533946.indd 112

09/09/2015 15:15

Death

113

press, in order to bring death, in all its emotional complexities, as close to the audience as possible, so that they might make up their own minds on the issue. Of course at this stage we had no way of knowing that we would actually come to film a death. Executive producer Craig Hunter, who had produced my earlier Pratchett documentary, travelled to Switzerland to get the Dignitas organisation onboard for some filming in the most general of terms, and assistant producer Rosy Marshall began looking for ‘contributors’. The language we use in the production of factual programming is often inadequate to the task of describing the way we work with the people we film, which is as much built on personal relationships – and personal trust – as anything else. Our ‘casting’ process took several months and involved Craig and Rosy talking at length with numerous people from across the UK who were all planning a trip to Dignitas in the near future. Rosy was chosen for her role because of her compassion and her empathy, and it was not easy for her – many of these early days resulted, understandably, in tears. Gratifyingly, many of the terminally ill people she spoke to were happy to consider being involved in our project – they felt they wanted their death to mean something, wanted the law to change for generations to come – but most of them were discovering that they were either too ill to make the trip to Switzerland, or else were too well to commit to a date to end their life. We were not about to start encouraging them. Then we found Peter and Christine Smedley, a wealthy retired couple living in Guernsey who had lived more of a life than I ever will: flying across Africa in a single-engine aircraft, establishing a luxury hotel from their home in Somerset. They were the most lively, eloquent, welcoming and unexpected of contributors. Peter’s diagnosis of Motor Neurone Disease was terminal, and so he had decided, taking the British stiff upper-lip to a whole new level, that he would rather end his life now, while he still could, than end up dying in an undignified manner. In truth I suspect he was also trying to protect his wife from the law. The BBC’s legal team advised us that if we were to visit Switzerland with such a couple, at no point were we to do anything – drive them from one location to another, buy them lunch, even hold open a door – that could be interpreted as ‘assisting’ Peter’s death. We were briefed on the possibility of being arrested on our return to the UK.

9781784533946.indd 113

09/09/2015 15:15

114

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Making documentaries on subjects that are close to impossible to film is as much about holding your nerve and biding your time, stacking everything you can to weigh the odds in your favour, but ultimately relying on good luck to make your film. I decided to tell Terry nothing about the Smedleys – not even their names – before he met them, a fact that had him furious at me in the hotel the night before. I didn’t want the usual faked handshake on camera, where the presenter has already met someone, but pretends to meet them again. I wanted Terry in uncharted territory, uncertain of what he was going in to, because I wanted to watch his brain work out how he felt about Peter, a man who to all extents and purposes had only a limp to show for his terminal disease. I wanted Terry to be trying to unravel his feelings on camera in hopefully the same way the audience at home would be reacting to what they saw. This was part of an effort on my part to make the film feel as truthful as it could be, to belie some of the static conventions that factual programming has built up. So there is, I hope, an honesty to the awkward first moments of that scene, as Terry sits down, unsure how to begin. Later, there was some discussion in the cutting room about editing out comments between Terry and Christine that the Dignitas organisation – Swiss–German, as she pointed out – has something of a flavour of Nazism to it. It was a very British joke, the sort of black humour needed during a meeting of this kind, and despite suggestions that it might offend, we kept it in, reasoning that it spoke to the truth of their awkward encounter. The Smedleys gave Terry a tour of their house, then took him out to lunch – both scenes that were included in the final film. But the real aim of the day was for Terry to get to know Peter and Christine. I nervously watched, hoping that they would get on. If they didn’t, it would have been the end of our filming with the Smedleys. Terry won them over with a combination of humour and a shared understanding of their predicament. By the time we were finished that day, I felt more confident about tentatively asking them if we could join them in Switzerland, to track the progress of their journey. At this point coincidence – that member of the team that is always overlooked in the credits – played its hand. We met a man much younger than Peter, marine biologist Andrew Colgan, whose multiple sclerosis had him planning a trip to Dignitas in his early forties. By some strange twist of fate, he and Peter were both due to visit the Swiss clinic in the same week in December. At this

9781784533946.indd 114

09/09/2015 15:15

Death

115

point England was experiencing a cold and bleak white winter, with fogs enveloping the roads and frost on the hills behind Terry’s house. It felt very fitting to our subject matter. I’m not sure that filming during the summer months would have had the same impact. Terry wrapped himself in his black winter hat and coat, mimicking one of his most famous characters, Death himself, a grim-reaping stalker with a dry sense of humour. And so we set off for Switzerland, the weather so bad that Rosy’s flight from Glasgow almost didn’t get off the ground. Terry and Andrew, both sci-fi fans, got on famously. Rob, Terry’s long-serving assistant, was roughly the same age as Andrew, and so found himself haunted by the thought of Andrew’s impending death. I encouraged Rob to share his reservations – the fact that Andrew would end his life just a few weeks before Christmas was difficult for a father of two to understand. We only met Andrew’s wonderful mother Yvonne for the first time in their modest hotel in Switzerland. She agreed to film there and then, to share how it felt to be a mother saying goodbye to her son. We never raised the question of filming Andrew’s final moments. There are some things in documentary making that you allow yourself to miss, if only because you didn’t get to ask the question with enough time to get a proper answer. Instead we decided to mark Andrew’s death with a drink in Terry’s hotel room, listening to one of the tracks Andrew had said he would listen to in his final moments. It is my favourite scene in the film – poetic, perhaps even indulgent, but it said a lot to me at least, about friendship, about the British character, about respect, and about the unspoken relationship between Terry and Rob, two men wondering inwardly whether one day they’d be accompanying each other on this same trip once again. We filmed with Peter and Christine at their hotel, being assessed by a Dignitas nurse who needed to evaluate their states of mind. We quietly agreed to join them the next day at the Dignitas house on the understanding that at any point they could give me a look and I would know that it was time for us to leave. We still couldn’t quite believe that Peter would go through with it. It snowed the morning that Peter killed himself, as if the British weather had only just landed, determined to bring its poetry to our quiet drive through the city. The mood was tense, Terry and

9781784533946.indd 115

09/09/2015 15:16

116

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Rob occasionally snapping at each other, our soundman Mike Stephenson sitting in solemn contemplation of what we were about to do. We had discussed it before of course. I had worked with Mike on numerous jobs and learnt a huge deal about filmmaking from his warm, calm, steady disposition. I knew him well enough to know that he was absolutely up to the task, which was not so much a mental one as a psychological one. We had weighed up the rights and wrongs of what we were about to do, but pretty quickly the decision had come down to the fact that if Peter and Christine were prepared to let us record their final moments together, then we had better be prepared to film them, whatever the personal cost. I sometimes think that I had the easiest role that day – I could, after all, hide behind my camera, devote one portion of my brain at least to worrying about exposure and focus, shot size and choice of framing. Rosy had it the toughest, waiting around purposefully with nothing to do in the way that only documentary-makers are able. Mike concerned himself with recording flawless sound while absenting himself as much as possible from this deeply private moment, using a wireless link so that we were not embarrassed by cables or hampered in our movements. I made myself as small as possible, for though we were there with a purpose, and though Terry was sitting just across from them, I still wanted Peter and Christine to focus on each other, to have some memories of the day that didn’t feel like there was a documentary team with them. In truth I was awash with emotions, fighting to hold myself together. Adrenaline got me through the knowledge that this was the most important scene I would ever film. If my wrist gave in, if my camera wobbled at the crucial moment, there would be no second takes, no second chances. I hope that an affinity and deep affection for Peter and Christine meant that I made the right decisions that day, asked questions only when entirely appropriate. One of the first films I ever made was about my own father, and starts pretty much with a shot of him dead in his coffin. What follows is a charting of mine and my brother’s grief, and our attempts to understand a man we had never known. Peter and Christine were not so lucky – they had spent their whole lives together, and now had to say goodbye. How important was it to film those final minutes, to mark – voyeuristically, some might think, with an air of necrophilia – that exact moment at which Peter was no longer with us? Paul Watson’s documentary Malcolm and Barbara: Love’s Farewell had got him into trouble just a few years before for purporting to show the final

9781784533946.indd 116

09/09/2015 15:16

Death

117

moments of Malcolm Pointon, himself an Alzheimer’s sufferer, when in fact, it transpired, he had been filmed slipping into a coma, officially dying sometime after the camera stopped rolling. I’m not sure that Watson’s film needed that concrete accuracy or was diminished in any way by its absence. Documentary is not a purely truthful form, nor should it be. There is poetry in the decisions we make and in the decisions we don’t make. Sometimes the real truth is bigger than the precise truth of one moment of video. Except that in our case the truth of Peter’s death was of course hugely significant. In some ways it was the point of the entire film. Terry and the viewer are on a journey of discovery, to try to work out whether what might seem like a good idea in theory is in reality far too much to bear. Once filmed, we had to show Peter’s death in all its truth. Editor Gary Scott fought back tears in the cutting room but also spent a great deal of time finely balancing the need to treat Peter’s death with dignity and respect, while accurately displaying what happens to a man who drinks a poison intended to kill him. There were as many people who spoke to me after seeing the film that felt the death looked peaceful as there were people who said that it was horrific. I suppose you see what you want to see. None of us on that day felt anything less than huge admiration for the courage Peter had shown in going through with it; none of us could help but be moved by the wife he left behind, finally letting herself quietly sob for the man she fought to be so strong for. We put down our equipment as soon as he had gone, gathered around to hug Christine and to toast Peter’s life with a bottle of brandy Rob managed to find in a cupboard. I like to think that having familiar faces with her at that moment was of some comfort to Christine. We waited for the police to arrive, unsure of what might happen next. But at the end of that day we were all on a plane home to England. We needed to escape. I’m not sure any of us could have done what they did. ‘It was what Peter wanted,’ Terry reminded us, astonishing me time and again with the way he dealt with the experience. ‘Death is normal’, Terry said, ‘it’s a part of everyday life. We shouldn’t be afraid to show it.’ I had never seen Terry cry until that trip. He was beginning to realise that the great tragedy of his own disease meant that the moment he would wish to end his life – when the Alzheimer’s finally took hold – was the precise moment at which he would no longer be

9781784533946.indd 117

09/09/2015 15:16

118

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

capable of making that decision. That personal perspective, that framing of the experience through Terry’s eyes, was what made me want to make the film in the first place. Without it I was worried that what we filmed would simply be unwatchable – too upsetting, too relentlessly bleak, too difficult to stick with. By having Terry narrate the film from the black studio you see him in during the first few moments, we aimed to give the viewer just a little bit of distance, a safety blanket to return to, a break in the narrative to reflect, a hand to hold. Charlotte Moore, then head of documentaries at the BBC, held the view that we had a responsibility to our audience not to leave them too devastated by the end of the film, that there should at least be a few last moments for Terry to bring us back to a bigger moral question, and a personal one too. And so we returned to Terry in his blacked-out studio, lit impeccably by DOP Patrick Smith, Terry just a few inches from the lens. The truth is that by the time we returned to England, Terry’s Alzheimer’s had quietly developed to the point at which he could no longer read a script. We had no choice but to improvise his narration. We always knew we were in controversial territory. At one point Craig the exec and I feared that the BBC might not hold their nerve. We were told that a series of strategic viewings were taking place that went right up to the Director General Mark Thompson. When the film was shown, it was felt that it should be followed by a Newsnight special to debate more fully the arguments around assisted dying. The criticisms still came. One criticism was that Tim Goalen’s haunting score was too beautiful – should a subject of this magnitude be embellished at all? ‘BBC Films Man Dying’ ran the front page of the Daily Mail. Today, as I write, assisted dying is being debated once more in the House of Lords, this time with several members of the clergy having decided to back a change in the law. I like to think that we played our part, even if I suspect that the moral, ethical and emotional complexities of what you see in the film don’t easily allow for any simple answers. For my part, if I’m honest, there were personal consequences of making the film. After my father and grandmother’s death, the experience of filming Peter go, of getting to know him and his wife, and Andrew and his family, and of spending so much time with Terry, so stoical in the face of his own destruction, gave me panic attacks. Perhaps we are not meant to see the reality of death until our time has come. Or perhaps we have grown too used to safe and

9781784533946.indd 118

09/09/2015 15:16

Death

119

healthy lives and are no longer able to deal with the one truth of life – that we all die. I went to therapy. I started making films that tried to celebrate life – men flying rickety aeroplanes, babies being brought into the world. I dealt with the experience in my own way. Almost exactly a year to the day after our film on assisted dying was shown, my first child was born.

9781784533946.indd 119

09/09/2015 15:16

15 Politics Marshall Curry

26. Marshall Curry. Photograph by Dan Koehler

Marshall Curry is the twice Oscar-nominated director of Street Fight, about the 2002 electoral race for the office of Mayor of Newark, New Jersey. His other films include: Racing Dreams, which follows two boys and a girl who dream of one day becoming professional racing car drivers; If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, about a radical environmentalist; and Point And Shoot, the story of a young American who sets off for Libya to join the rebels fighting dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

9781784533946.indd 121

09/09/2015 15:16

122

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

O

ne evening in 2002, I found myself in a low-income public housing project in Newark, New Jersey, waiting for the police to arrive, and wondering if I was about to miss the dramatic scene that was unfolding. For weeks I had been filming a young, unknown, first-term city councilman named Cory Booker as he ran for mayor of Newark, a troubled city with poverty, unemployment and crime rates well above the national average. Cory’s opponent was the beautifully named Sharpe James, a wily and powerful incumbent who had run Newark’s political machine for 16 years. Cory and Sharpe were both African-American Democrats (elections in Newark are non-partisan), but their similarities ended there. Cory had been raised in the suburbs, played football at Stanford, and was a Rhodes Scholar and a graduate of Yale Law School. He was tall, handsome, smart and full of physical and intellectual energy. Sharpe, at 66, was twice Cory’s age and a product of Newark’s rough streets. He’d grown up poor, entered politics early, and built a following around his rascally charisma and humour. Cory was wonkish and earnest; Sharpe was clever and tough. It was my first feature-length documentary, and I had decided to make a film about an election partly because I thought it would be straightforward. Unlike films that survey broad issues, election documentaries have a built-in beginning, middle and end: two people announce that they are going to run, they fight against each other for a few months, and at the end one wins and one loses. I had planned to model my film after classic election docs like The War Room, Primary, and A Perfect Candidate. But I was discovering that in Newark, elections were a different kind of beast. Those films all had followed national elections, where campaigns are fought by media-savvy spin doctors who use TV ads and glitzy rallies as their weapons. But in Newark it was a local election, fought by an incumbent willing to use control of the city government to further his own political interests. City code enforcers were sent out to raid businesses that dared to support Cory Booker. Companies that had contracts with the city were expected to donate to the Mayor’s war chest. And the Newark police were often used to enforce the Mayor’s wishes and punish his challengers.

9781784533946.indd 122

09/09/2015 15:16

Politics

123

I had heard tales about these kinds of tactics, but that night in the public housing project, I was finally witnessing it firsthand. Cory had been knocking on doors with his campaign team when the head of security for the city’s housing authority suddenly appeared. ‘I’m not going to let you walk the hallways’, he announced and ordered Cory’s staff to leave. They asserted their right to campaign and pointed out that Sharpe James had campaigned there just days before. They accused the security guards of inventing rules and enforcing them selectively to help the Mayor. Finally, the head of security threatened to call the city police, and Cory told him to go ahead and do it. At that point, the battery on my camera died. I had been running a low-budget, run-and-gun production. On most days I was the only crew – the cinematographer, sound recorder, P.A., release-gatherer, and driver. My camera (an early generation mini-DV, that shot standard definition 4x3, but felt cutting edge at the time) was rigged with a home-made mount that held an oversized shotgun mic in place. I carried a camera bag over my shoulder, stuffed to overflowing with extra tapes and cables, batteries, extension cords, and street maps of Newark. I often shot from morning until night, never wanting to put the camera down for a break because I knew that breaks were when people let their guard down and the interesting stuff always seemed to happen. So at the end of a long day, having chased the campaign all over the city, I had burned through every one of my batteries. The police were on their way to confront Cory – by far the most dramatic thing that had happened in weeks of shooting. I fished a charger out of my bag and ran down the hall to find a plug. As I snapped in a battery, I tried to calculate how long I should leave it charging. If I charged for too long, I would be sitting there up on the third floor when the police arrived. If I didn’t charge long enough, my camera would die at the crucial moment of confrontation. I made a prayer to the documentary gods, promising that if they’d let me capture this shot, I’d never go on a shoot without a huge supply of charged batteries again. Ten minutes later, Cory and his team headed down to the lobby. I jerked the plug out of the wall and jumped into an elevator with

9781784533946.indd 123

09/09/2015 15:16

124

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

them. I got a tense shot as they rode down, and then, as the doors opened, Cory greeted the deputy chief of police who had come to arrest him. ‘They brought out the big brass!’ Cory said and laughed, reaching out his hand. They shook, awkwardly, and Cory turned to a resident of the crime-plagued building. ‘Is this the kind of security you get every night here?’ He walked past the deputy and out into the street and said: ‘It’s so amazing. This is a neighbourhood that never gets police protection, but I show up and they get the top brass!’ It was a scene that said volumes about politics in Newark, and would become the opening scene of Street Fight.

27. Cory Booker on the campaign trail. Photograph from the Star Ledger, used with permission

Over the course of shooting the five-month election, there would be many other conflicts with the Mayor and his minions. I met people who feared they would lose their subsidised housing if they hung a sign in the window for Cory Booker. I saw the Mayor order city police to detain a Cory Booker volunteer because ‘he looks like a terrorist’. Some of the conflicts even included me. On a number of occasions, the Mayor sent city police to try to stop me from filming him in public places, and in one scuffle that still makes my stomach flutter when I see it on screen, an officer violently broke the microphone off my camera.

9781784533946.indd 124

09/09/2015 15:16

Politics

125

This was clearly not a typical election, and months later, as I sat down to edit, I struggled to balance the strong feelings I had about the candidates against the desire to make a ‘fair’ film. But the more I thought about it, the more I began to doubt that the mainstream media’s notion of fairness was even the right goal. I noticed that in their attempt to appear fair – a noble, positive goal – the mainstream media sometimes made their reporting on things like elections less accurate. Here’s what I mean: too often the media covers elections with ‘he-said-she-said’ journalism, where reporters identify a controversy and then report each campaign’s response. There are cases where this might be a responsible approach, but much of the time it’s not. One candidate says that the earth is flat and the other says the earth is round, and the media reports: ‘There’s a controversy about the shape of the earth.’ In reality, of course, there is no controversy. The earth is round. And I think reporters do the public a disservice by allowing themselves to be turned into amplifiers for campaigns’ talking points rather than doing the harder work of fact-checking and telling it like it really is. Here’s another example: if you watch a presidential debate on network TV, the pundits will usually come on at the end and cite the three instances that each candidate stretched the truth. Whenever I see this, I marvel at the coincidence that both candidates happened to stretch the truth exactly three times. Broadcasters are afraid that if they pointed out five lies on one side and one on the other, audiences would accuse them of being biased. But the media – and I include documentary filmmakers – should be like a referee, and a good referee does not call the same number of fouls on both sides. A good referee calls fouls when he or she sees fouls. Not all candidates are the same, and trying to force a model of equivalency on things that are not equivalent in an attempt to be perceived as fair often makes for a less accurate story. In Newark, I remember reading an article that said, essentially: ‘The election for mayor is getting dirty. Someone threw a rock through a window of a Sharpe James campaign office, and someone broke into a Cory Booker office and stole voter data.’ Each campaign was quoted accusing the other of wrongdoing,

9781784533946.indd 125

09/09/2015 15:16

126

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

and readers of the article walked away believing that there was an equal amount of dirty tactics on both sides. Of course, throwing a rock through a window isn’t the same as breaking into an office and stealing voter data. One is an act of vandalism that anyone could have committed. The other is an act that could have a bearing on the outcome of the whole election. Treating them as equivalent gave readers a worse understanding of what was happening in Newark than if the writer had dispensed with the attempt at ‘fairness’. To be clear, I don’t think that by questioning the ‘he-said-she-said’ notion of fairness, we filmmakers should dispense with all notions of fairness. A good referee doesn’t call the same number of fouls on both sides, but does call fouls when he or she sees them – even when they are committed by his or her favourite team. I liked Cory Booker, and didn’t care for Sharpe James, but I didn’t try to airbrush Cory or demonise Sharpe. I didn’t edit their words out of context to make them look better or worse than they really were. And even Sharpe never claimed that anything in the film was inaccurate or untrue. For a film to be powerful or useful, it has to tell us about the world as it is. In Newark, some people loved Sharpe and hated Cory, and I needed to recognise that and ask why it was the case. So I acknowledged Sharpe’s achievements, his compelling life story, and charisma. And I included scenes that Cory’s campaign probably wished I had left on the cutting room floor. At one point an articulate Newark resident describes him a ‘Johnny-comelately’ who isn’t from Newark and doesn’t understand the city’s problems. In another scene, Cory, dressed in unflattering gym shorts, prepares for a debate with aides in his apartment. The conversation gets heated as he rejects their advice, and later in the hall they say: ‘He’s gonna boff it. He’s gonna try and do his thing, and he’s clearly gonna boff it.’ In a third scene, Cory’s chief of staff gets caught at a sex club, which sparks public questions about what kinds of people Cory has on his team. At that point, the campaign refused to let me film the meeting where they would try to figure out what to do. That infuriated me, because my agreement with Cory from the beginning

9781784533946.indd 126

09/09/2015 15:16

Politics

127

had been that I would have unfettered access unless they were meeting to discuss some non-political but sensitive personnel issue, such as someone’s salary. The scandal was turning into a major issue in the campaign, and I felt strongly that a strategy meeting about it should have been fair game. In the film I linger on a shot of the closed door as a sort of protest, and make it clear in voice-over that even their campaign’s transparency had its limits. It seems more and more common these days for some media outlets to side with one political ideology or another, denying any complexity, refusing to recognise any merit in their opponents’ views, and essentially becoming extensions of political campaigns. I worry that this movement – away from nuance and toward a simplistic one-sided approach – can be even more destructive than the false equivalencies of the old ‘he-said-she-said’ model. Every news story or documentary film reflects a point of view. We make decisions about whom to interview, which quotes to include, and how to structure the narrative. But I think there’s a difference between having a point of view and being a propagandist. It’s more a spectrum than a sharply defined line, and I have often wished there were a rulebook for documentary filmmaking that clearly laid out what is permissible and what is not. So much of this job, however, is balancing different, sometimes competing, desires. We want our films to be accurate and fair. We want to share an honestly held point of view. And we want to turn the chaos of life into a coherent compelling movie. At the end of Street Fight when Cory Booker loses, I play sad music rather than happy music – a reflection of my point of view. There are some filmmakers who feel that playing any emotional music is a violation of journalistic rules. But I think that part of the power and value of documentaries is that they are movies, and they should try to convey the emotions of an experience in addition to the facts. Finding the proper balance is a judgement call, but the rule of thumb that I use for myself is: ‘If I were in the audience watching this film, what would I want?’ Rather than thinking about what I – as a filmmaker – want to show the audience, I try to think about what I – as an audience member – would want to be shown.

9781784533946.indd 127

09/09/2015 15:16

128

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

I think ultimately that the right balance is different for different films. When I watch a documentary that’s primarily entertainment – say, Mistaken for Strangers, or Racing Dreams – I expect, above all, to be entertained with a well-told story. When I watch a film about a politically important, historical issue – say, Street Fight – I expect more journalistic rigour. If I am watching a movie about a morally complex, nuanced issue like If a Tree Falls, I want the telling to be nuanced, and I enjoy having my expectations challenged. If it’s an earnest polemical film, I expect it to follow the rules of a well-argued editorial in the newspaper (factually accurate, but not necessarily subtle). And if it’s a humorous polemic – say, Super Size Me, or Roger & Me – I hold it to the standards of a political cartoon. I know these seas of grey can be murky and hard to navigate. But in the end it may be as simple as pushing ourselves to just ‘tell the truth’ as we see it and understand it. And we should do that in a way that is engaging and entertaining, that assumes our audience is as smart and curious as we are, and that honours the medium of film. And we should also remember to carry extra batteries.

9781784533946.indd 128

09/09/2015 15:16

16 Crime Simon Ford

28. Simon Ford. Photograph by Phil Rudge

Simon Ford is a freelance executive producer of documentaries. He spent 20 years at the BBC where he won many awards, including Baftas for the Secret Policeman and The Tower: A Tale of Two Cities. His credits include The Boys Who Killed Stephen Lawrence, Coppers, 999: What’s Your Emergency? and 24 Hours in Police Custody.

9781784533946.indd 129

09/09/2015 15:16

130

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

P

olice documentaries are a staple of TV schedules around the world. But what is the ethical basis for making them? Do observational documentaries about the police and law enforcement work as little more than a clever marketing device for the law and order lobby, and a voyeuristic spectacle for the audience? Or do they reveal some deep truths about our morality and our society? This is a question I’ve wrestled with a lot in my career as a documentary maker, but which has been more insistent than ever over the last year. This is because I’ve been involved in a television documentary series called 24 Hours in Police Custody, which aimed to capture scenes from the frontline of the British criminal justice system in a more comprehensive, dramatic and intense way than previously attempted. The project was to film for six weeks the work of a single police station for 24 hours a day – from the prison cells to the office of the head of CID – using a combination of 5 documentary crews and over 70 ‘fixed-rig’ cameras. Our aim was to film as much of every case as possible, from every conceivable angle, during the 24-hour period the police are typically allowed to hold a suspect. We would follow the investigation and see if enough evidence would be gathered to charge or release a suspect. There is no doubt that the detectives in the town of Luton come out of the experience well. What is revealed is a group of professionals struggling, with grace and humour, to cope with a tide of intractable social problems and some deeply morally compromised offenders. All the while they carry out their work against the backdrop of an acute shortage of resources and the near collapse of the services that could help repair and support struggling communities and individuals, who are caught up in a depressing cycle of crime and deprivation. Does a police documentary series, even on this scale, have any real purpose beyond entertaining an audience? I would argue that over the years, documentaries on the police have had a profound effect on the culture and practices of those whose job it is to protect us. Notorious miscarriage of justice cases, highlighted on the longrunning British series World in Action and Rough Justice, revealed the violence and corruption at the heart of many police interviews and led directly to the introduction of tape and video recording of interviews. The constant exposure of police work on television

9781784533946.indd 130

09/09/2015 15:16

Crime

131

has also meant that police forces have had to look at themselves through the eyes of the public, which in turn has altered the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. My fascination with watching detectives began in 1993 on a very different sort of project to 24 Hours in Police Custody. 24 Hours in Police Custody depended on a closely negotiated, formal process of access, where you romance the senior echelons of a police force to convince them that transparency will do them more good than harm. But this earlier project – a film called The Case of India One – taught me lessons in filmmaking which I still draw on today. As a very green director on the BBC’s Panorama programme, I stumbled upon a story about police corruption amongst drug detectives. My source told me that tens of thousands of pounds were being handed over by criminals to police in exchange for access to police intelligence and the destruction of evidence. He had recorded phone calls with a detective and was planning to meet him in the car park of a hotel in Kent to hand over money. We decided to secretly film these assignations. To capture these scenes we needed to behave like undercover detectives ourselves. This meant spending days staking out the location from cars and hotel rooms. Once in place we couldn’t move without revealing ourselves. You couldn’t even take a piss. I found that telling the story of finally emerging from our surveillance points, legs crossed, is what actually most engaged my friends and colleagues. The drama in the tale was how we were catching the bad guys, not in the issue we were hoping to expose. Taking this to heart, I tried to include as much process as possible in the final cut of The Case of India One. It made for a gripping film, as well as exposing how the Drug Trafficking Offences Act had inadvertently incentivised a new generation of corrupt police. I took this insight further making  The Secret Policeman, a year-long investigation into racism in the police. It was designed from the outset as an undercover film, and we found a brilliant young journalist, Mark Daly, who agreed to train to be a real policeman. It felt natural to film the entire thing as an observational documentary. This time every process that we could capture in actuality, we did. As a result we saw an unfolding story – from the recruits’ initial pride in wearing the uniform for the first time

9781784533946.indd 131

09/09/2015 15:16

132

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

to the gradual dropping of guards as a culture of casual bullying and isolation of black recruits took hold, arriving eventually at the shocking spectacle of one recruit fashioning a Ku Klux Klan hood and boasting that his sole purpose in becoming a policeman was to use the uniform to further his racist agenda. It was the power of these scenes as observed sequences, rather than reported facts, which meant the film had a disproportionately big impact when it was broadcast. The scenes were real and therefore irrefutable, and more powerful because they played out gradually in front of the audience. Witnessing the developing story meant you came to understand the depth and intractability of the bigger problem. It also meant that the official reaction to the film was fast and thorough-going, with changes to policy and procedure made by all UK police forces. I don’t think that would have happened if this had been a scandal that unfolded outside the gaze of the public. The same is true of the most heralded observational programme about the police, Charles Stewart and Roger Graef’s A Complaint of Rape. It featured an unforgettable scene, in which a rape victim is very clumsily and insensitively interviewed by three male officers from Thames Valley Police. This one scene alone was so powerful that it led to profound changes in the way rape was handled within all police stations. And its power derived from the fact that there was nothing underhand on the part of the filmmakers in obtaining the footage. We saw how victims were treated. As far as the officers were concerned, they weren’t doing anything wrong. To them the case was unexceptional. To the audience, who had never been given the chance to witness the process before, it was profoundly disturbing. The fact that it clearly wasn’t the exception but the rule meant the inevitable demand for an overhaul of police processes was unanswerable. With all good filmmaking, the two most important decisions you make are working out what you’re going to point the camera at, and why it is there in the first place – why it’s okay to intrude into the personal and professional lives of others. With undercover filming, the intrusion is only ethically justified after careful analysis of the prima facie evidence of wrongdoing that has been gathered in advance of fitting the hidden cameras. In observational documentary you rely on straight dealing and properly informed

9781784533946.indd 132

09/09/2015 15:16

Crime

133

consent to justify broadcasting what you witness. The deal (within the limits of the law and common sense) is that we as filmmakers decide what we put on screen, if we’ve been lucky or clever enough to film it. Any other form of agreement and we risk becoming a tool of the institution we are focusing on. With 24 Hours in Police Custody, it was always our intention to tell the story of law and order as we found it on the ground. We were determined not to flinch from difficult subjects – why should we when drama doesn’t? – and to follow the stories as far as we could go. Hence we put cameras all over the police station. We were confident that what we would capture would go far beyond prurience or disguised official propaganda. In the end we recorded moments of sublime process and (black) comedy that I am pretty sure will have transformed the way our viewers see the modern world of cops and robbers. One of the most gratifying bits of feedback was that after watching our films, one of the UK’s leading writers of crime drama set down his pen and declared he would never be able to write a proper police scene again. I’ve marked that one down as another clear demonstration of the power of documentary.

9781784533946.indd 133

09/09/2015 15:16

17 V i o l en c e Penny Woolcock

29. Penny Woolcock. Photograph by Sarah Ainslie

Penny Woolcock is an award-winning filmmaker and opera director. Her films include: the Bafta-nominated Tina Goes Shopping, a mixture of drama and documentary about housing estate life and culture; The Death of Klinghoffer, a feature film based on the John Adams opera; One Mile Away, a documentary about gangland violence in the city of Birmingham; and Going to the Dogs, an exploration of the underground world of illegal dog-fighting in the UK.

9781784533946.indd 135

09/09/2015 15:16

136

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

W

hat interests me about violence is the space it occupies in the collective imagination – how we project our horror of it onto the margins, onto the petty crimes of the powerless, disruptive underclass. Violence with real power behind it remains curiously invisible, hiding in broad daylight, obvious, commonplace, banal. Violence is never creative. The author Hannah Arendt has written: ‘Violence can always destroy power; out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What can never grow out of it is power’ (On Violence, 1970, p. 53). Arendt argues persuasively that even the most despotic tyrant requires the tacit support and collusion of a substantial majority. In a democracy this enables magical thinking that legitimises and transforms repeated invasions and bombings into something not just essential but virtuous, almost lovely. I am drawn to the edges because that’s where everything begins to make perfect sense; raw, stripped of all pretence, it’s an inverted mirror image of the centre where massive violence is shrouded in doublespeak and euphemism, hidden behind sheets of reflective glass and banks of cameras trained to surveil every move we make. These reflections were inspired primarily by the making of and backlash to my dog-fighting documentary Going to the Dogs. When I decided to take the job virtually everyone I told was appalled in a way they had not been while I was making films about young gang members killing each other, their blood staining the streets of the pavements we walk every day. They physically recoiled and often even held up their palms to wave away the idea of it. How could I? Many friends and colleagues who love my films said that they would not be watching this one. I had not particularly wanted to make this film, but now I was really interested. Wherever there is a special locus for anxiety, a place where taboos and prohibitions are truly potent, where the unspeakable and the forbidden reside, that’s when I become curious. The rooms where Bluebeards’ wives are hidden. The dog-fights. The cockfights. The muck and the dirt. The filth.

9781784533946.indd 136

09/09/2015 15:16

Violence

137

It was clear from the start that dog-fighting elicits a special horror because it is a blood sport associated with the poor, and the undeserving poor at that. The horse is the other domestic animal we claim to adore, and we don’t eat them in the UK either. Not intentionally anyway. Horse racing has a far greater rate of attrition. Several hundred die on the track every year and another thousand or so animals that don’t make the grade are slaughtered in abattoirs. But horse racing is the sport of kings. It’s out in the open and wins are celebrated with champagne. My films have often elicited outrage. People who don’t know me think it makes me happy because surely extreme responses are preferable to lukewarm indifference? After a screening of my opera film The Death of Klinghoffer at the London Jewish Film festival, people formed an orderly queue to insult me. The first young woman set the tone. ‘You are disgusting and anti-Semitic and your film is disgusting rubbish!’ The opera by John Adams with a libretto by Alice Goodman is a meditation on a terrible act of violence, the killing and throwing overboard of an elderly Jewish man in a wheelchair by Palestinian hijackers. Terrorists are monsters. Dog-fighters are monsters. Filmmakers who won’t join in denouncing them are monsters too. And somehow the child abusers always find their way onto the monster list. They’re monsters too, of course. This means everyone else can relax because they are not monsters. The explosion of social media means you no longer need to be in the same physical space, or even put pen to paper, in order to express your outrage. I wanted to start this piece by copying out some of the Facebook messages I received after transmission. I have avoided it for as long as possible by reading Mary Douglas, eating cake and looking out of the window. Here are a few of the first lines, each ellipsis signalling a new message from a different person: ‘Horrible woman … You are nothing but a evil money-grabbing bitch … That film is disgusting … Fucking animal abuser you disgust me … You are literally the worst filmmaker I have come across … Lets put u in a fight till ure ripped to shreds you little waste of oxygen. Die!!! Die!!! … You thoroughly EVIL WITCH may you reap what you sow … I think you and ur film are disgusting … You ignorant self seeking cunt! …

9781784533946.indd 137

09/09/2015 15:16

138

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

You’ll be filming peodophiles next … Absolutely disgusted … You bitch you should be sacked … Penny Woolcock you are a disgrace …You heartless moron who obviously is sick in the head … I hope they lock you up and throw away the key you pathetic evil bitch … You disgusting pompous human being … Lets see u get put in a ring and get ur horrible head ripped apart … Perhaps someone should use you as bait … You should be ashamed of yourself … Sick!! … What next follow a serial killer around? … You are HATED right now and rightly so … You disgusting human being … You are a vile whore nothing but a rotten bitch … You sick vile woman … You are a piece of shit … What a stinking bit of shit you produced … Your disgusting … You are sick twisted and fucked up … I am disgusted … You are the scum of the earth shame on u! … You need to go on Twitter you are probably the most hated person in the UK … The most disgusting thing I have seen aired on British television … You are the most disgusting coward, cold hearted person I have ever not met … You disgust me …’.

30. Still photograph from Going to the Dogs, courtesy of Latimer Group

Apart from these abusive Facebook messages – and it was precisely the grinding repetition that made them effective – twenty-six thousand people signed a petition to ban Going to the Dogs the weekend before it was broadcast. There were 1,805 complaints to Ofcom after it was screened, and a hostile Twitter storm suggested I should have acid thrown in my face. I accepted a large number of Facebook friend requests from angry dog-lovers because I was open to debating the choices I had made. After all there are legitimate questions to be asked about what I had filmed and the voyeurism

9781784533946.indd 138

09/09/2015 15:16

Violence

139

I had admitted to on camera. But whatever I wrote just provoked a repetitive torrent of abuse. Many of my interlocutors asked why I had demonised the pitbull dog. There are two lengthy sequences in the film explicitly defending the breed. In the first, criminologist Simon Harding explains that at the beginning of the twentieth century the pitbull was the poster boy for the frontier spirit, a loyal family dog wrapped in the Stars and Stripes. The same animal then fell out of the public eye, re-entering the frame as the devil dog in the 1970s, now associated with the racialised ghettos of America. Going to the Dogs ends with a family man eloquently arguing against dog-fighting while his small son climbs all over their placid pitbull and rams a plastic truck into its legs. When I pointed this out they simply repeated the original accusation with more abuse about what a cunt I was, re-posting horrible pictures of tortured and emaciated dogs – not from the film – and asking if I was proud of myself. One man calling himself ‘Jay Training Bull Terrier’, fond of posting lengthy denunciations, challenged me to admit that I had been present at the dog-fights. I replied that of course I had been present, I had said so in the film and filmed it myself as it clearly says on the credits. His response was to accuse me of being ‘evasive’. I realised then I was simply a target. After a week of this I began to regard my laptop as a toxic machine that spat venom at me; I felt nauseous and then nervous about coming home in case people were hiding inside waiting to harm me. I heard noises. I started checking behind doors and under beds. I knew I was just an algorithm to them, not a human being. But the line between the real and the virtual world is more permeable than I had suspected. A couple of weeks later I met Jen Robinson, a solicitor on Julian Assange’s legal team, and found myself confiding in her, thinking she’d have some experience of this. She did. ‘You have to block them,’ she said immediately. She explained that to start with it’s like someone running a nail very softly over your skin, always in the same place. ‘It’s nothing right? But soon it starts hurting and then you’re bleeding. You feel like you’ve been skinned alive, you start feeling queasy all the time and then you lose your confidence.’ I forced myself to trawl through my Facebook friend list and methodically block everyone who had sent hostile messages and anyone who was a mutual friend of theirs. It went against the grain of everything I believe about censorship, although as Jen said the

9781784533946.indd 139

09/09/2015 15:16

140

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

trolls were not interested in debate, just bullying. It took a few hours but I did it. And I immediately felt liberated and no longer afraid. The only way I know to digest this kind of thing is to think about it. The language used was repetitive and straight from the cloaca – scum, filth, shit, cunt and permutations on disgust, disgusting, disgusted. The re-posted images of tortured dogs, to be pored over and over, reminded me of William Gladstone and the Victorian gentlemen from The Church Penitentiary Society Association for the Reclamation of Fallen Women, who were obsessed with prostitution. A fetishistic fascination with what you profess to loathe is one good way of letting it in the house without admitting you want it there. ‘Disgust always bears the imprint of desire. These low domains apparently expelled as “Other”, return as the object of nostalgia, longing and fascination. The forest, the fair, the theatre, the slum, the circus, the seaside-resort, the “savage”’ (Stallybrass and White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, 1986, p. 191). I sifted through the piles of insults and I found three rational grounds of complaint. Firstly, I had shown dogs being trained for a fight and two of these techniques were extreme. One dog was made to run tied to an electric treadmill and another was shown pulling his owner uphill on a bicycle while he clutched the brakes. My fear before starting research was that the fighting dogs would be starved and beaten to make them vicious. This turned out to be nonsense. The dog-fighters drew an analogy with boxing; a starved and humiliated boxer is not going to be a confident fighting machine. The dogs were well fed and treated, and the two I knew best had a close bond with their owners. The training is gruelling but so is that of any athlete. The reality of the training was less gruesome than my imagining of it, and so I chose to show it. Filmmakers make good waiters. We wait ages for funding. Then if it’s a fiction you wait for actors to be ready, for lights and sound, for props to arrive, for the rain to stop, the traffic to pass, the baby to stop crying … the list goes on. When it’s a documentary on a sensitive or illegal subject, people let you down constantly because

9781784533946.indd 140

09/09/2015 15:16

Violence

141

you are not paying them and they don’t know if they can trust you. I spent weeks at a Travelodge in Birmingham waiting in a soulless room with a view of the car park watching daytime television. I watched the Jeremy Kyle show for the first time in my life and thought that dog-fighting could not possibly be as cruel. By the time I was told we could film a dog-fight I was frankly relieved. Cue more outrage. These were off the chain bouts – short fights to test a dog’s aptitude. The final film includes several minutes of the first fight and a brief sequence from the second. Once I had decided to make a film about dog-fighting, I felt there had to be some actual dog-fighting. If a full match had taken place – it didn’t happen only because the main dog was raided by the police and killed, or rather put down because only the poor kill dogs – I would have filmed it too. The first bout was a washout because one of the dogs wouldn’t fight, possibly because Dylan, my presenter and I had spent so much time petting her while waiting for the other dog to turn up. The next two dogs were up for a fight including Sniper, the dog on the treadmill. His owner fished a gun out of his pocket and started waving it around. I say yes to things. I take one little step, another little step, another tiny step and whoah I’m flying down the rabbit hole and I’m hanging around in a park at dusk with armed men who want to kill me, or sitting on a bed listening to a killer talk about his murders. Or hearing two young men tell as a funny story how they broke into a man’s house, and one of them stabbed him in the belly and broke his legs with a hammer while the other one laughed and licked a Cornetto he’d found in the freezer. Or I’m in a garage in the middle of nowhere about to film a dog-fight with men with guns. And this is what it’s come to. There was a flurry of biting and fighting. These days I have to shoot my own documentaries, so I furiously concentrated on keeping the dogs in focus and in the frame, remembering to pan up to get shots of the few spectators who had turned up. They were biting and snarling and then I could see Sniper with his jaw clamped on the other dog’s leg and I heard the referee shout ‘scratch them, scratch them,’ and they stuck a ‘breaking stick’ in Sniper’s mouth to prize his jaw open before he broke it, and I panned over to Sniper being

9781784533946.indd 141

09/09/2015 15:16

142

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

sponged down before being put back in the pit and the two dogs fought again. It was all one shot. When it was over I cut and looked around. Cyrus the sound recordist and Dylan the presenter looked shocked. They shook their heads and blew out air. They had found it intense. I felt nothing. The next morning I woke up with a pounding headache that became more pronounced as the day went on. By the time I returned to London it was a full-blown migraine that lasted three days. The camera had protected me from feeling anything at the time, but that wasn’t the end of the story. The feeling sat in my stomach and fucked with my head and I woke up sweating. Violence gets under your skin. The second complaint was that I had not clearly condemned dog-fighting. There is a trope in contemporary television, a jaunty, mocking, regional voice-over, usually male, belonging to someone you never see. The voice introduces what you are about to see and then passes judgement on it, the bad home-cooked dinner, the naughty benefit fraudster, the fat Big Brother contestant, leaving you no space to have a thought of your own. The last shot of a fighting dog in Going to the Dogs is of a little brown bitch whimpering in pain on a pile of bloody wet-wipes. I cannot fathom how this image could possibly be interpreted as glorifying dog-fighting. But without a narrator standing between them and the film, angry viewers felt let down and confounded. What were they supposed to think? They felt invaded by an uncomfortable image of a dog in pain. The soft tissue of the eye is the portal through which images enter our brains and then hang about delighting or disturbing us in very material ways. The little dog was in their private space; ‘matter out of place’, as Mary Douglas calls it. The film has wormed itself inside us uninvited. It can literally make us sick. Disgust us. And we lash out to expel the invader. ‘If we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt we are left with the old definition of dirt as matter out of place. This is a very suggestive approach. It implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contravention of that order. Dirt then is never a unique, isolated event. Where there is dirt there is system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as

9781784533946.indd 142

09/09/2015 15:16

Violence

143

ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements’ (Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, 1966, p. 44). Douglas talks about pollution behaviour, rules and restrictions that we obey in order to keep our social relationships and hierarchies intact. In our culture, pets are granted special privileges that separate them from other animals. Cruelty to them is considered even more horrifying than cruelty to children. We give them the run of the house and we don’t serve them for dinner. When we kill our pets, we euphemistically call it putting them to sleep. We define ourselves as human by what we are not: almost the first thing we teach small children is the not us of the animals in the zoo and Old Macdonald’s farm. I began to wonder whether this special treatment of dogs helps us overlook our mistreatment, farming and slaughter of other animals, the exceptions that hide the brutal rule we exercise over the other creatures who live with us on this planet, many of them also fully conscious, with recognisable faces, eyes, noses, lips and ears. The third objection was that I had protected the dog-fighters by distorting their voices at source, their faces disguised with balaclavas. I did not identify them or film anything that could be used as evidence in court, and I did not hand over footage or information to the police. Between me and the people who agree to be in my films there is absolutely nothing but trust. I say people advisedly. Not characters or subjects. This is not semantics; I am mindful that people have lives after transmission. They are not defined as characters in my films. Without trust neither they nor I are safe. I never work undercover, change my name or speak differently, and I never film people secretly. I hand out my only phone number and plenty of them have been to my home and me to theirs. I’m not pretending to be objective because that’s nonsense anyway. My work is to go out into the world and tell the best truth I can about it. I do not work for the police. I hope that by looking carefully at what terrifies me, it will lose its power. It’s the nameless dread, the invisible presence of the unspoken and unspeakable that terrifies me, the enormous lies

9781784533946.indd 143

09/09/2015 15:16

144

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

that hide inside what is not said. My mother was a Christian Scientist and their mantra, the ‘scientific statement of being’, is to deny the reality of anything unpleasant and know the truth, which is that it does not exist (see Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 1875). There are no headaches, there is no poverty, there are no wars, no cruelty or natural disasters. I couldn’t live with that. Like Oedipus, I feel more at ease knowing the truth, however terrible and inconvenient it might be. Whether it is Mummy’s Christian Science that still propels me doesn’t really matter. I want to know about the stuff we consider so monstrous that the only acceptable response is a howl of disgust. (‘What is next after your sickening illegal barbaric dog fighting programme? Filming a pedophile, rapist or a murderer carrying out there (sic) acts?’) Because the paedophiles, the incestuous fathers and – however disproportionately ridiculous the analogy might seem to me – the dog-fighters, are not like us. I suspect that these howls erupt in order to whip up a cloud of confusion to hide how paper-thin the divide really is, how complicit we all are. Not because we are all secretly wanting to have sex with children, but because those who do are very close to home. At the time of writing, a scandal has broken about a group of men grooming and raping girls in care in Rotherham. Leaving to one side the collusion of the police and a care system predicated on not caring about vulnerable children, this episode might still be squeezed neatly into the them not us narrative, if the us is white, English and middle class. But what about the paedophile Liberal MP Cyril Smith who preyed on hundreds of boys in state-run hostels and schools for children with learning difficulties, protected by his party, by the police and security services. The Elm Guest House in southwest London was allegedly frequented by politicians, high-ranking policemen and celebrities. A dossier compiled by the late MP Geoffrey Dickens went missing after it was handed to the former home secretary Lord Brittan in 1983, and the two most famous children’s entertainers on British television have been outed as predatory paedophiles. Let alone the scandals in the Catholic Church. This is all beginning to sound very much like the us of us. Elfriede Jelinek’s brilliant essay on Josef Fritzl (Im Verlassenen, quoted by Nicolas Spice, London Review of Books, 5 June 2008) speaks to this, scratching at the surface of what she calls the ‘land

9781784533946.indd 144

09/09/2015 15:16

Violence

145

of smiles’ – the tourist Austria of rows of yellow and pink freshly painted houses, cowbells and geraniums, an ahistorical storybook land of collective amnesia. This is where violence lives. We love to imagine that violence lurks on the margins, in the sewers, on the edges with the misfits who shame and terrify us. I’ve made two documentaries about homeless people (The Wet House, for Channel 4, and On The Streets, for the BBC). I was worried about hanging out with people with no teeth who appeared to be out of control so I sought advice from a major homeless organisation. I was warned to be careful with scarves or loose clothing when bending over a homeless person in case they throttled me, never to touch anybody and chillingly, not to be kind because they’re not used to it. It soon became obvious that there was a breathtaking phobic inversion at work. Homeless people are always the targets of violence, not the perpetrators. They are kicked, spat at, pissed on and insulted, set on fire and even killed for fun. I never saw or heard about a single instance of ‘a member of the public’ (as homeless people refer to the rest of us) being attacked. We invert our shame about the violence we indirectly or directly inflict on others and turn it into fear. Most of the violence of the oppressed is directed inwards, towards themselves and each other. In a desperately unequal society it’s not that the oppressed don’t want to retaliate, they just don’t have the military capability. From street robbery to the Hamas rockets that bounce harmlessly off the Israeli Iron Dome air defence system, their violence is often petty and ineffective but perhaps preferable to remaining supine. Franz Fanon writes: ‘Violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.’ (The Wretched of the Earth, 1968, p. 94). As a child growing up in Argentina, a socially divided country where the desperately poor were not across the world but living by the railway track in shantytowns, we understood that we had so much more than they did and that they dreamt of taking our place. So where is the real violence? It hides in plain sight, lighting up the skies of Baghdad like the 4th of July, behind military campaigns with video game titles like ‘Desert Storm’ and ‘Shock and Awe’; our violence is spectacular, clean, clinical and restorative of order. The violence of others, of Islamic State for example, is dirty,

9781784533946.indd 145

09/09/2015 15:16

146

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

barbaric and chaotic. When the soldiers on our side kill people they’re heroic. When the other side does, it’s sickening. The rates of suicide among our returning soldiers is swept under the carpet with the Other and disguised with acronyms, because they say that killing people gives you nightmares. Drones and military aircraft dropping 1,000 lb bombs is civilised warfare. Chopping heads off with a machete is not. A drone sounds boring, not barbaric. The enemy, a spectre we call terrorism, justifies everything we do to obliterate it. ‘The story of terrorism is written by the state […] The spectators must certainly never know everything about terrorism but they must always know enough to convince them that, compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case more rational and democratic’ (Guy Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, 1998, p. 24). The young men who remotely pilot these deadly aircraft are sitting in bunkers in Nevada or Lincolnshire, watching porn and playing video games. Or perhaps they’re reading Proust and playing the piano. They are not filming each other beheading infidels with their bare hands, and the killing happens thousands of miles away from them – they say that 5,000 miles is best. Unfortunately for Lynndie England, she removed the smiling mask and showed the violence for what it was in Guantanamo Bay, a naked man at the end of a dog leash. The Israeli government describe their incursions into Gaza as mowing the lawn, and bombing schools and hospitals as eliminating terror capabilities. Rendition once meant a performance or interpretation. It became ‘extraordinary rendition’ and now it’s just ordinary again; it means flying terrorist suspects to be tortured in countries with (according to the Oxford English Directory) ‘less rigorous regulations for the humane treatment of prisoners’. Euphemisms are the name of this game. The performance takes place at one remove and nobody’s hands get dirty. Dog-fighting has no euphemism. It is exactly what it says on the tin. Two dogs are fed a high-protein diet, trained to a peak of fitness and set to fight each other. The performance lasts until one of them submits. At this point the loser is usually very damaged and has to be put down. It might seem deliriously far-fetched to connect drones to Josef Fritzl and dog-fighting, but perhaps not quite as delirious as the curious fact that only two of those three invokes disgust.

9781784533946.indd 146

09/09/2015 15:16

18 P r i so n s Liz Garbus

31. Liz Garbus. Photograph by Rommel Demano, courtesy of Moxie Firecracker Films

Liz Garbus is an Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Awardwinning producer and director. Her films include: Bobby Fischer Against the World, which won a Grierson award; Love, Marilyn, which brings to life the writings of Marilyn Monroe; The Farm: Angola, USA, an observational film set in a notorious maximumsecurity prison in Louisiana; Girlhood, following two inmates at a juvenile detention centre; and The Execution of Wanda Jean, which tells the story of Wanda Jean Allen, who was executed in the US for first degree murder in 2001.

9781784533946.indd 147

09/09/2015 15:16

148

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

D

uring my career, I’ve explored several themes: iconic historical figures, whose lives intersect with history in fascinating ways; families and their secrets; and the criminal justice system. For me, the criminal justice system in the US is fascinating – so noble in its ideals, yet so imperfect and so vast. And the stories you find within it are important; they raise complex, timeless questions about right and wrong, about the nature of justice, about hope and forgiveness, about the meaning of freedom. What is life without freedom? Can inner freedom be found in places that are unfree? In a country with a criminal justice system that’s as punitive as ours, which gives longer sentences than most other countries around the world, these questions are very significant. The stories that you come across in prisons are also often compelling from not only a political but also an emotional and dramatic point of view. And part of what I want to do as a filmmaker is shed light on hidden stories, those of people we don’t have easy access to in our everyday lives. Documentaries allow you to go behind the headlines and look more closely at the stories and the people concerned, which is particularly important in post-9/11 America, where people have stopped paying attention to domestic issues like crime and the enormous prison population. You can dig much deeper with documentaries than with news, tell untold stories, and get to a far more profound level of understanding about human behaviour. But filming in prisons is hard to do. There are obstacles everywhere you look, because prison is a closed world that’s supposed to protect the outside from the inside, and keep the inside from the out. How do you get inside when you’re from the outside world? Chance and timing play a part. Angola Prison, where I made The Farm: Angola, USA, for example, had long had a terrible reputation for brutality, inmate deaths, and violence between guards and prisoners. At the moment I knocked on the door, its reputation was at an especially low point, which in fact worked very much to our advantage, because they had nowhere to go but up. The prison authorities saw it as an opportunity to dispel some myths, and get the Federal authorities off their backs. We didn’t create those circumstances; we just understood them and chose to work with them. The situation suited our purpose, which wasn’t to single out conditions in this particular prison, but rather to

9781784533946.indd 148

09/09/2015 15:16

Prisons

149

explore the day-to-day lives of the prisoners, and the question of how you survive when you’re serving a very long sentence. I had been inspired to go to Louisiana by the writings of Wilbert Rideau, an inmate turned prisoner-journalist who had been writing stories about life inside Angola in his magazine, The Angolite. We built up a relationship with the prison warden and got our permission to film. Once inside, there was a lot of waiting around. We’d show up at 8am, and not be able to film until four in the afternoon. The reasons were purposefully vague. You’re in the hands of the authorities. But there was never anything we filmed where we were told ‘you can’t use that’, and we captured scenes that proved to be quite controversial, like a parole board hearing that was felt by people to be very racist. Generally, our access was good, because our purpose in being there was straightforward and consistent. We discovered some very surprising and inspiring stories of humanity surviving and flourishing within harsh conditions, which I think is what made the film successful. The practical obstacles you encounter in prisons can all be overcome with patience and good communication. More testing are the ethical challenges and dilemmas that filming with prisoners present. For example, you need to take into account the victims and their families. You need to reach out and make sure that you are known to them. Often there is a sense of: ‘Why are you letting this person, who destroyed a life, speak? Why should they have a chance to speak? My loved one can’t speak.’ That is a powerful sentiment, and you must give tremendous respect to that position. But at the same time you might feel, as I do, that prisoners should have a voice, and that questions such as how much time is too much time to spend in prison need to be addressed. You have to juggle these sorts of conflicting concerns. On The Execution of Wanda Jean there were some members of the family of Gloria Leathers, the woman whom Wanda Jean killed, who thought that Wanda Jean was beyond the pale as a human being, and that we shouldn’t be giving Wanda Jean a voice. That is a difficult wish to go against. It’s treacherous terrain to navigate, and it doesn’t always feel good. You have to remind yourself why you are making the film: that 100 years from now it is going to be looked upon as barbaric that in this country, the State executed people. You remind yourself that you are part of an important dialogue. You

9781784533946.indd 149

09/09/2015 15:16

150

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

remind yourself that your film does not condone or make light of killing – it takes it incredibly seriously. And you proceed as sensitively and respectfully as you can. Another set of ethical problems you encounter quite a lot when you’re dealing with prisons and prisoners comes from the fact that a disproportionately large percentage of the prison population is struggling with diminished mental capacities, learning disabilities, and often serious mental illness. Wanda Jean, for example, had frontal brain damage when she was a child, and she clearly had a very low IQ and impulsivity issues. And when you’re dealing with people with diminished mental capacities, you run up against the issue of consent, and to what extent your subjects and contributors understand what it means to be in a documentary. It’s one thing to get your release form signed. But then you also have to think about all the various social forces and questions around power that might have influenced someone to sign that document. In the case of Wanda Jean, did she do it because her lawyers wanted her to? Or for her own stated reasons, that she never got to tell her side of the story, and never truly felt like she had a voice? You take on an enormous responsibility when telling these stories. To honour your subjects, be true to your word, and make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. What gets you through the dilemmas you encounter is an internal process of interrogating your own motives and your own conscience. You consider both the individual and society. So if sometimes your subject feels ‘what good are these film people to me? I’m done,’ you might press them to move onward, because you feel clear that your film might be important to others. You feel it inside when you are crossing lines or veering towards exploitation. Then you pull back, check yourself, examine your motives, and find the clear path. With Wanda Jean, I asked myself over and over: ‘Did she really comprehend what it meant to be in a film two months before her execution date?’ Ultimately I think she did. She just felt that what was happening to her was unjust, and wanted that story to be known. For me that notion is a guiding light in films about prisons and prisoners: they’re all about making stories known. There are channels in the US that are filled with imagery of criminals as beasts and monsters – subhuman almost. So when you present a

9781784533946.indd 150

09/09/2015 15:16

Prisons

151

criminal in all his or her humanity, as a human being, it is a very different dish than what is normally served, and people need to know these stories to balance out the picture. Sometimes we twist ourselves into pretzels over difficult choices and ethical dilemmas, but at the end of the day you have to remember: ‘If we are not portraying these people, then the only portrayal of them will be what is being offered up by the fear-mongering news stations.’ That puts things in a much clearer light. The message of The Farm and The Execution of Wanda Jean is that human nature is complex and layered, and that we are all connected, even though at times we might like to think that we are not. And a person is never equal to his or her worst action. I am not, you are not, and they are not.

9781784533946.indd 151

09/09/2015 15:16

19 P ov er t y Anthony Wonke

32. Anthony Wonke, left, on location. Photograph by Ariel Grandoli

Anthony Wonke is a triple Bafta award-winning filmmaker. His work includes: Fire in the Night, about the Piper Alpha disaster; The Battle for Marjah, a documentary about a platoon of marines in Afghanistan, which was nominated for three Emmys; Children on the Frontline, about children caught up in the civil war in Syria; and The Tower: A Tale of Two Cities, an eight-part documentary series for the BBC.

9781784533946.indd 153

09/09/2015 15:16

154

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

I

might be completely deluding myself, but over the years I’d like to think that the process of making films has got a little easier. In some ways, I can see my films shaping up a little earlier. I spend less time agonising on the relevance and strength of some footage over others. Ideas come a bit faster, and I can pull on 15-odd years of experience in the industry to help me make decisions more quickly. But what never seems to get easier are the ethical questions and moral conundrums you encounter and struggle with on a regular basis when you make documentaries, especially documentaries in which you are observing life unfold in front of the camera. What makes observational documentaries exciting to watch and make is the unpredictability of it all, the idea that as much as you try and organise a filming day and legislate for the unknown, things happen that are out of your control, and your job is to adjust and film what you think matters. Whether it’s something that’s drummed into you when you start out in television, or something that you learn on the job the hard way, doing the right thing is something every documentary filmmaker takes very seriously. As much as one wants a story to unfurl in a way that’s full of drama, excitement, passion, insight and emotion, an ability to hold to a strong moral course will ultimately force you to make a better film. Sometimes you just need to know when not to shoot, and appreciate why and how in the long run it might improve your film. I’ll try and illustrate what I mean by describing a sequence of events and decisions I had to make while making an eight-part series for the BBC called The Tower. The plan was that I would spend three years on the Pepys council estate in a deprived area of South East London, where one of the estate’s tower blocks had been sold by the council to private developers, who over that period of time would turn the council flats into expensive private apartments for a whole new type of resident. For me it was Dickensian, an epic story of class and regeneration, of being rich and poor in Tony Blair’s Britain. Here was an opportunity to follow profound change in peoples’ lives over a long period of time, and a chance to examine poverty and wealth in London. Documentary filmmakers are often drawn to the theme of

9781784533946.indd 154

09/09/2015 15:16

Poverty

155

poverty and people living on the margins. Poverty is an important issue, and it can make for extraordinary and dramatic scenes. But it throws up all sorts of ethical questions: how do you go about filming people who have very little without exploiting them and stripping them of their dignity? And without being mawkish and sentimental? I wanted to try and show that although there would be huge differences between the social classes on the estate, there would be common threads in the lives of both rich and poor, and I didn’t want to fall into familiar documentary traps of patronising, vilifying, moralising or romanticising people’s situations. I was lucky because I had time to try and tell the story in a more nuanced fashion. I really wanted the series to be an important document of our times – something the people who took part in the series could embrace and be proud of. Real commitment from the film’s characters was really important to me. After all, we were asking people to have a camera crew follow their lives for three years, and then have the rest of the country – and more immediately the rest of their own community – watch their stories unravel on television. It was especially important that we the crew understood that we were in a sense guests of the estate. People knew each other well, and for a vast sprawling estate where multiple languages were spoken, there was a good sense of community amongst the tenants. It wasn’t just individual permission from our characters that was important, but a tacit agreement from the estate in general that we could be there. Our behaviour on the estate and how we communicated the aims of the film to people was going to be crucial. At first the BBC wanted to have a big team of junior assistant producers, armed with newly available cheap and lightweight digital film cameras, flood the estate and film multiple characters and story lines, and then have a team of editors sift through the thousands of hours of footage that would result. In short, it would be an in-and-out job. But I balked at that suggestion, and managed to persuade the powers that be that this would not be the right tactic. They let me rearrange the budget and create the team I needed to stretch filming over the three years I wanted, and more importantly, to allow me to be a continuous presence in our characters’ lives. Continuity and trust would be vital for our

9781784533946.indd 155

09/09/2015 15:16

156

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

relationships with our characters, but also for the way we were with each other in making decisions about what we were going to film. I managed to broker a buy-out deal with the amazingly talented cameraman Paul Otter. I’d made four films with him already, and we got on very well. He was incredibly experienced, calm and affable, and I knew people would get on with him brilliantly. We then found a young and not-so-experienced, but very talented guy called Adam Toy for sound, and took on the wonderful and charismatic Angie Bass as associate producer. Eventually we chose our characters for the film. It was important that the people involved weren’t interested in 15 minutes of fame, but wanted to be part of something bigger. In certain parts of the TV industry at the time, in the early noughties, there was unease at the growth of reality TV and how it tended to portray people. The tide of factual television was turning towards quickturnaround, reality-based formats brimming with combative, brash and shrill behaviour, where notoriety was rewarded, encouraged, and ultimately celebrated. There was a feeling amongst our team – and some of our characters – that we would probably never see a commitment like this again from a broadcaster in British television. After several months we started filming. We had great characters on board – bright, interesting, varied and committed, including a young couple getting married, an expectant mother of seven battling with the council, a local pub landlord with financial issues, a young Muslim father, and three sisters and their respective families. And then there was Lawrence, whose flat overlooked the River Thames. Although Lawrence – or Lol as he was known – was one of the first people I ran into on the estate, it was a while before I spoke to him. He led a group of local scrappers, who would trawl up and down the estate and the general area for scrap metal to sell to the yard at the entrance to the Pepys. If there was ever an apocalypse, these guys would be the only ones left. Along with the local gangs that hung around, they were the most intimidating presence on the estate. But I was determined to talk to them. So one Sunday I drove out to the Pepys and found Lawrence sitting with a well-dressed Nigerian man in his fifties, and his best mate

9781784533946.indd 156

09/09/2015 15:16

Poverty

157

Nicky, a strangely handsome but extremely weathered-looking man, who appeared as though he’d been born at sea and had only just found land. All three were sitting on deckchairs drinking cider outside a garage, and chatting to some gang members who had dropped by to get their bikes fixed by Lawrence. It was a heady mix of individuals, and one a dramatist wouldn’t take a risk on putting together for fear of being ridiculed. I said hello, introduced myself and told them about the film. Lawrence was nothing like I imagined. Gentle, polite, funny and extremely accommodating, he was incredibly likeable and charismatic. I pulled up a seat and stayed into the evening. We arranged to meet that following week and start filming. After a few days of shooting relatively light sequences – looking for scrap in skips and hanging out with his pals – Lawrence’s story began to unfold. Now in his early forties, he had been a serial drug abuser since his teens. It didn’t seem this was borne out of any deep-seated trauma, but was something that had progressed from a recreational practice into something much darker. Although I could have told his story in many different ways, I knew what I wanted to explore. Lol had recently split up from his long-term girlfriend, Donna. Also a junkie, she had broken his heart. And although Lol was trying to stay off heroin, the pain was getting too much for him. He had started to drink very strong cider with Nicky – something I think he wasn’t quite used to – and he was openly sharing his heartbreak with friends as a way of healing. Completely normal behaviour, except for the fact that they were junkies and alcoholics. They were a sort of sub-class that lived right next to this new tower, which would soon house a new breed of young professionals moving in from the banks and trading floors of Canary Wharf, on the other side of the river. Lol had a Grade 1-listed flat on the estate with amazing views, but behind its front door, it was a mess of scrap, artifacts from his past – books, magazines, VHS tapes and so on – and lots of needles and pipes. He was a compulsive hoarder, and the flat was filthy, but it did have a strangely homely feel to it. We had been filming with Lol one day when someone started pounding the door (a normal occurrence when you’re spending time with hardcore junkies). It was his ex-girlfriend Donna and her new boyfriend. She had come round to say hello, smoke some crack and borrow Lawrence’s savings book (she knew Lol loved her so much she could completely trust him

9781784533946.indd 157

09/09/2015 15:16

158

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

with the benefits money she had just picked up). I watched and filmed as Lol’s heart began to shatter. Here was the woman he loved, now out of reach, joking about their shared addiction: ‘What’s the difference between a crack-head and a heroin addict?’ ‘A heroin addict will rob your purse for your money, whereas a crack-head will rob you and then help you look for it.’ Lol tried hard to cling to his dignity. As Donna left, his parting words to her were: ‘We’ve become the people our parents used to warn us about’. It was an intense and extremely moving afternoon, and through the haze of crack cocaine, cider and general drug abuse, I realised we had captured a very strong scene. The following day when we showed up, it seemed Lawrence had got up very early. He was off to build a fire on the wasteland behind his flat. Lol was with Nicky, but Nicky soon left when another drinker appeared, a scrawny man who had known Lol all his life and looked like a hardcore drinker. He was a match for Lol not only in drinking but also intellect, far from the pushover Nicky was. He was sharp and bitter. They drank and joked, but then the mood turned. Lol started to share his feelings about Donna but this man wanted none of it, and started to rip Lol apart for being weak and vulnerable. We filmed and listened, and I knew that things were going to get unpleasant. I gently tried to diffuse the situation, but decided the best policy would be to leave. I didn’t want Lol to see us witness any more emotional bullying. We packed up and headed off. Later that evening we went back, and as we turned the corner to Lol’s block, we heard screaming and shouting and things being thrown. It was Lol and he was going mad, lashing out at Nicky and a few of his other friends. He was in a full-scale rage about why they hadn’t backed him up. It emerged that Lol had fallen asleep, to be woken by some kids from a nearby estate throwing stones at him. He was hurt and wounded, not just by the kids but by everything that had happened in the last couple of days. Anger and frustration poured out of him. I felt as though the situation was on the brink of getting really violent. Although I knew at the time this would be an incredible, explosive scene to film, a culmination of several very intense and strong

9781784533946.indd 158

09/09/2015 15:16

159

Poverty

33. Stills from The Tower, courtesy of Anthony Wonke

filming days, the crew and I decided not to film. We purposely put our kit down in full view, about 20 yards away, and I moved slowly to the scene. At the time part of me was ruing my decision, kicking myself for not covering what was happening. But my instinct told me it was the right thing to do. Eventually things calmed down and Lol’s pals took him to his flat to sleep it off. We turned up the next day and didn’t speak of the previous evening. I was never sure if Lol could remember – he would often have amnesia. But I knew not filming him had been the right move. If we had filmed I think Lol and his friends would have viewed us as ruthlessly voyeuristic and insensitive to the situation. I also think word would have got out, and people would say, ‘These camera guys are just here to see fireworks, and not to tell the bigger story.’ I’ve often heard executive producers, who are never really on location with you, say ‘Just film everything and then we’ll decide in the edit.’ But the act of filming means you have the footage – it’s yours to control and manipulate. No matter what your arrangement with your contributors and the promises you might have made to them and to yourself, in the eleventh hour before a deadline in the cutting room, where you’re far away from your characters, if that footage exists, it can be used and probably will be.

9781784533946.indd 159

09/09/2015 15:16

160

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

I learned that lesson, and I think to this day it has helped me shape my films. Sometimes, as life unravels in front of you, it’s good to put the camera down and walk away. If you feel as though you are being tested ethically, it can help you frame your film editorially. Like a strange companion that sits with you throughout the process of making films, the more you embrace those difficult ethical decisions, the more they push you into thinking about how to construct your film.

9781784533946.indd 160

09/09/2015 15:16

20 V u lner ab l e P eo p l e Dave Nath

34. Dave Nath. Photograph courtesy of the author

Dave Nath is an award-winning director and executive producer. He recently won a Grierson Award for The Year The Town Hall Shrank, a series about austerity Britain, and a BAFTA for his mental health series Bedlam. He has made several films for Channel 4’s premier documentary strand Cutting Edge, including the acclaimed observational film Brian’s Story.

9781784533946.indd 161

09/09/2015 15:16

162

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

I

think I’ve got a fairly healthy moral compass. I should have, it’s gone through the wringer the last 20 years.

It’s not actually the shooting and editing that’s exhausting, it’s what sits alongside it: the endless self-justification, the notion of unforseen consequences, the responsibility that I could change someone’s life and how the world views them. There’s a returning voice in my head that keeps asking: ‘What if …?’. When I finally silence these demons, then I get to sleep again … until the next time. That’s the deal. But perversely I need those demons. My conscience is my police. I’d turned 32 when I was given my first big break by Channel 4, to make a film for what was then the acclaimed documentary strand Cutting Edge. Fourteen years on, Brian’s Story remains the most personally challenging documentary I’ve directed. The subject of the film, Brian Davis, was 54, Cambridge-educated, a published author, and a highly respected journalist in the advertising industry. He’d once edited the flagship magazine Campaign (and claimed to have had dinner with Cary Grant too!). I still remember the first time I ever saw him. We were due to meet at a pub in Kensington. I had no idea what Brian looked like. All I knew was that he had fallen on hard times. Walking down Kensington Church Street I became aware of a dishevelled little man in front of me wearing a soiled, off-white linen jacket and clutching two plastic bags bursting at the seams. He reminded me of the Rumpelstiltskin character in an illustrated Ladybird book I had when I was six – that and Woody Allen. He’d sporadically break out into frantic sprints then stop abruptly and examine something on the pavement. He was searching for dog-ends. I’d been told Brian had suffered a nervous breakdown several years earlier and since then his life had gradually spiralled downwards to the point where he was now destitute. Friends who’d tried to help and advise him had eventually run out of patience, and with it he had run out of favours.

9781784533946.indd 162

09/09/2015 15:16

Vulnerable People

163

He was sheepish during our first meeting, clearly embarrassed at the position he found himself in. He was living in a hostel. He proudly took me through some of the old articles he’d written; features on film director Alan Parker, Blackadder producer John Lloyd, the novelist Christopher Isherwood. The plastic bags held his life. The frayed newspapers and faded print were who Brian was. This current situation was ‘merely a blip’, he told me. The meeting between us had been prearranged, brokered by one of his few remaining close friends, a journalist called John who worked at the Mail on Sunday. He in turn was a friend of my executive producer and that’s how the idea of the film had come about. John thought his friend’s situation was a salutary tale for all of us but I wondered if he was also harbouring some hope that being the subject of a documentary might make Brian take a close look at himself and perhaps act as an impetus for some positive change – a wake-up call. I asked Brian what he wanted the film to say. He explained that he wanted to show how easy it was to descend from a life of relative comfort and success to spending the night sleeping in Paddington Station. More importantly, he wanted it to document him turning his life around. It would start with a visit to France where he’d be doing a pre-arranged interview for a feature on Roman Polanski. It sounded fanciful but 15 years earlier these were the circles Brian Davis had moved in, and everyone concurred he was a quite brilliant writer. He was determined to show the doubters that this was just a phase: that he could handle the drink – he was ‘a journalist for God’s sake’. And what better way of proving the doubters wrong than committing it to film? Brian had a history of bipolar disorder, or manic depression as it’s sometimes known. I read up about the condition, and before I started filming, spent some time talking to a psychiatrist about the day-to-day realities of living with it. It’s a mental illness characterised by dramatic mood swings. At one end of the scale you can feel incredibly down. At the other, you’re euphoric, like you’re capable of anything. But often the euphoric phase is accompanied by great irresponsibility, where you don’t think about the consequences of what you’re doing, like binging on spending or sex.

9781784533946.indd 163

09/09/2015 15:16

164

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Brian rarely saw a doctor and didn’t want to be on any form of medication. He wasn’t in complete denial but struggled to acknowledge his condition, and because of that he didn’t really have a support group around him. There was no social worker or community mental health worker. He also had no close family. But his outlook on life was characteristically positive: ‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I don’t. I’m basically very happy. I find life a laugh,’ he once told me. Capacity to consent was clearly something to consider. Was Brian making an informed choice to take part? Like a lot of people with mental illness, his capacity could fluctuate. Observing him for the next seven months I’d say that he was in a fairly good place during our early meetings, but I’m no psychiatrist. I suppose I wanted to believe that Brian was his own best advocate and to a large extent I still believe that today. But that’s not to say it’s a position I didn’t question as his life grew more and more troubled. On the subject of informed consent, it was important to me that he’d already been discussing the idea of participating in a documentary with his friend John, someone who had Brian’s interests at heart. It was only after that that he’d decided he wanted to meet me, so there was clearly a self-motivation on his part. What I’m saying – and this isn’t some kind of cop-out – is that I wasn’t trying to talk him into the film. He had an ego, a vanity. He had something to say, and like many of us was perhaps in search of a legacy. That night when we first met, he wanted to size me up. Brian Davis wasn’t one to suffer fools gladly. I was 20 years younger than him and I felt it. Fortunately, we got embroiled in a conversation about a mutual passion – cricket. He seemed to warm to me and we agreed to collaborate on the film. Our commissioning editor at Channel 4 was the brilliant, bold and insightful Hilary Bell. Unlike many commissioners, Hilary didn’t need to know what the story’s end point was before we started shooting. She was excited about going on an unpredictable journey, and willing to embrace the risks that went along with that. She immediately recognised that, like Brian, we’re all just one small step from falling off the high wire. It was a cautionary tale.

9781784533946.indd 164

09/09/2015 15:16

Vulnerable People

165

We started filming in the winter of 2000, me and a camera operator named Paul Woods. It wasn’t really a film that would have worked with an orthodox crew. It required intimacy and familiarity, but on a practical level you couldn’t schedule a phone call let alone a 10-hour filming day with Brian Davis. We also had no idea when this film was going to end or where it would take us. It was bitterly cold and Brian had just left a temporary hostel in Euston. He was sleeping rough in an alleyway, ironically in one of London’s more salubrious districts, St James. The subject of money became an issue from the off. He was a proud man and felt very uncomfortable asking for help. But at the end of a day would come the apologetic mumbled request: ‘Don’t suppose you can spare a couple of quid, can you?’ We’d established some ‘ground rules’ around this. It was okay to give him a fiver here and a fiver there, to buy him the occasional meal or a packet of fags. But beyond that we’d draw a line because we were trying to document what it was like to have to survive hand-to-mouth. We were trying to capture the truth of his situation, not change it. It sounds a bit self-righteous now but I believed it. At the end of a day of filming I’d leave Brian with his bottle of wine, waxing lyrical about his past glories, wearing his fedora and cravat in this tiny freezing doorway. As he bedded down for the night I’d return home to the luxury of central heating. Little things like being able to make a cup of tea and climb into a comfortable bed quickly gained a new importance. And then there was the guilt. I’d lie awake wondering about him. Was he ok? What if he was suffering from hypothermia? Maybe some lads were giving him a kicking? There was nothing I could do to control that, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it either. Brian had no phone or forwarding address. I had no way of contacting him but it was revealing that he’d never go more than a day or two without calling me, typically reversing the charges from a phone box. Sometimes the calls to my office were to ask for money. When I told him no, he’d scream ‘fucking cunt’ and slam the phone down. It didn’t mean anything; I’d seen him do it to dozens of others. He’d call back again minutes later as though nothing had happened and we’d agree to meet.

9781784533946.indd 165

09/09/2015 15:16

166

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

The Polanski interview still hadn’t happened. When he had money Brian drank but his behaviour remained fairly constant. He was eccentric and had a short fuse, but was frustrated more than anything. I thought things might change when, a few months into filming, a distant relative bought a house in Liverpool and generously invited Brian to go and live there. It was a nice terraced two-up two-down in Aigburth, not too far from where Brian grew up across the Mersey in New Brighton, and he had the place to himself. He got all his books, his records and his typewriter out of storage and moved in. He was again talking about work: ‘In a year’s time I’ll be quite well known. I’ll be very successful.’ Things were looking up and I genuinely thought it might be a new start for him; some stability, some security, a base. He was saying all the right things. I worried less and became curious as to whether we might actually witness some dramatic change. We did. Less than a fortnight after he’d taken residence, I went up to see him. When I knocked, the front door just creaked open. He’d trashed the place. The kitchen was like a refuse site. It appeared as if a year’s worth of rubbish had been dumped by a tipper truck through the kitchen window. There were magazines in the sink, vinyl records carpeting every inch of the floor, empty food tins in every nook and cranny, cigarette ash everywhere, smashed plates, booze bottles in the bedroom. Even I could tell the state of the house illustrated his state of mind. When I questioned him about it, he was quite affronted. He didn’t recognise the place was a mess and deeply resented any suggestion from me that he couldn’t look after himself. I started to feel really concerned for his welfare. He couldn’t live independently it seemed, but I felt I was in a very tricky position. I thought about contacting the cousin who’d generously provided him with this house to live in. But Brian didn’t want us to. There were no other surviving family members. He didn’t want help, certainly not from social or mental health workers. He was consistent and adamant about that. I didn’t feel like I could go against his wishes and alert the authorities. It would be a betrayal. I also felt that I had to go on documenting what was unfolding, no matter how distressing it was to see. It’s no secret

9781784533946.indd 166

09/09/2015 15:16

Vulnerable People

167

that there are thousands of people with mental illness who struggle to acknowledge their illness. Brian was one of them and our film was beginning to capture the consequences. That felt important. And despite all this he had the ability to surprise and reassure me with moments of what appeared to be great clarity: ‘I’m very selfaware. I know when I’m depressed and I know when I’m manic and I’m neither manic nor depressed.’ He would look at his own situation objectively and see the humour of it: ‘Even Woody Allen wouldn’t lose a shoulder of lamb in a small house […]’. As the weeks went on he was drinking more and his life was becoming more chaotic. He’d habitually order meals in a restaurant and be unable to pay the bill. The police would be called and he’d be ejected. One day I found him selling his dining chairs just to raise some money for a meal. This disintegration was at the same time incredibly powerful and very disturbing to witness. He’d become increasingly gaunt and dishevelled. His behaviour was becoming more erratic. Where was it heading? Things came to a head when he twice accidentally set fire to the house. Despite Brian’s ambivalence I decided to try and make contact with a social worker who’d just been appointed to look after him. It was partly because I felt it was important to illustrate in the film how difficult it was to get someone like Brian to engage, but also because we wanted to sit down and discuss what the film was about and how best to handle things. We had one of those stilted round table meetings with various representatives from the local health trust. Although there was some acknowledgement that the film had important questions to raise about the idea of individual choice and consequences around mental illness, the general view was that despite Brian’s wishes, they didn’t think it was in his best interests to participate in the film. Our position was that we too had a duty of care towards him, but that shouldn’t fly in the face of his wishes. He’d invested in the film. It was his platform. Brian would have been furious if we said we were going to stop, and I didn’t feel a health authority that had no real relationship with him could make that decision either.

9781784533946.indd 167

09/09/2015 15:16

168

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

At the same time though, I was starting to grow anxious about how Brian might react to watching the documentary when it was finished. It was clearly going to be a stark and deeply challenging portrayal of his life. I wasn’t sure how he’d handle the realisation that things were getting worse not better, that all his promises were empty. And then of course he’d have to come to terms with the idea that the general public would see that too. It wasn’t something we’d discussed but we’d have to, and it wouldn’t be easy. Brian reluctantly agreed to a voluntary admission into a local psychiatric hospital, ‘to calm down’. While he was there the health trust refused to allow us to film. We visited him regularly and he always seemed pleased to see our familiar faces. He talked about the desperate plight of others he shared a ward with as though he was different to them. The lithium he was on seemed to make him sluggish and drowsy. He was far less talkative but put on weight and looked physically healthier. When I went to see him I felt for the first time that we were friends. The absence of the camera temporarily changed our relationship. SuddenIy I wasn’t viewing his life as a narrative, just for what it was. He had freedom to go out during the day so we met one afternoon and took a trip to the seaside town of New Brighton where he was brought up. He went on the Ferris wheel and showed us the house where he lived. He was nostalgic and reflective. I thought it was a good opportunity to test the water on what he remembered and thought about the filming we’d done so far. Despite the chaos of the last few months, he seemed to be well aware of what we’d shot and was characteristically ambivalent. With Brian, it was like he viewed his life as an unfolding tragic comedy: ‘A combination of Tarantino and French farce, pure Jean-Luc Godard!’ Our film was just another chapter. It was the summer, and I was making another documentary at the same time about a retired Met policeman who claimed to be psychic. Keith Charles was flying out to New York to help the police in Buffalo try and find a missing body. I was going with him. I told

9781784533946.indd 168

09/09/2015 15:16

Vulnerable People

169

Brian we’d see him in a couple of weeks and by that time he’d more than likely be out of hospital. He seemed to be in a fairly good place, much calmer and more relaxed. I was less worried about him than I’d been a month or two earlier. The shoot in Buffalo went as expected; Keith Charles’ special powers didn’t lead us to the body. Back in England I went into the office one morning and saw that I had a message on my phone. The red light was blinking at me. I dialled the voicemail number and played a message. It was from the Metropolitan Police saying that by now I was probably ‘aware of the death of Brian Davis’, and that they’d like to talk to me. I hung up the phone thinking I’d misheard the message and played it again. It was true. ‘Brian’s dead’, I told Paul, my cameraman. I felt nauseous and ashamed. Ashamed that I’d been seeing Brian’s life in the context of a film rather than as a fellow human being. For the past seven months I’d been observing him and capturing a life in free-fall. I’d done nothing to help him and now he was dead. I hadn’t seen it coming at all. Over the next few days I became withdrawn, questioning the rights and wrongs of what I’d been doing. I was called in by the police to give them a statement, but couldn’t provide much to help as I’d not seen Brian for a couple of weeks. They told me he’d come down to London and checked in to a bed-and-breakfast in Paddington. He’d gone out on to the roof of the building after buying a bottle of Vodka and a bottle of Martini. It was four or five storeys high. It wasn’t clear whether he’d fallen or jumped but his body was discovered down below in a courtyard two days later. There was a discussion with Channel 4 about whether or not we should continue making the film. Initially I didn’t feel able to offer an opinion. I was trying to come to terms with what had happened. Paul and I kept replaying the sequence of events that had been given to us by the police. Was it suicide or an accident? I felt Brian wasn’t someone who’d take his own life and I’d never heard him talk in those terms. He was also terribly accident-prone, almost

9781784533946.indd 169

09/09/2015 15:16

170

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

comically so, and could easily have slipped off the flat roof when drunk. But we all have a breaking point and maybe, following the hospitalisation, he’d had an epiphany: that his life wasn’t going to get better and in desperation decided to end things. No one will ever know. The inquest, which I later attended, recorded an open verdict. Brian’s cousin was his nearest relative. According to him they weren’t close but he’d greatly appreciated her giving him somewhere to live. She wrote us a long and persuasive letter about why the film should not be broadcast. It would indeed be distressing for anyone that knew Brian. But the letter did not include anything about what Brian might have wanted. The letter felt like somebody else was deciding and speaking for him. I felt very strongly that I owed it to Brian to give him the platform to talk about his life, the highlights and also the more recent troubles. What we’d filmed would be a tribute to Brian because it shone a light on his charming idiosyncrasies, his sense of humour, and the occasional absurdity of his day-to-day life, as well as the desperate struggles he faced. I decided to include some of his writing and poetry in the film too. There was much more to Brian than the story of the last seven months. His funeral took place at Kensal Green Crematorium in London. To her great credit Brian’s cousin made no objection about me attending to pay my respects, despite her unhappiness about the film. The Bobby Darin favourite Beyond the Sea, which Brian dances to in the documentary, ended the service. It was a small gathering; friends and colleagues from his days in advertising. I took the opportunity to speak to some, including John, the journalist who’d first discussed the idea of a film with us and Brian. He was adamant that Brian would have wanted the documentary to be broadcast and that it had something profound to say: that we’re all just a hair’s breadth from toppling off life’s precarious tightrope. This too made me more confident about forging ahead with the film. John and other friends I spoke to knew it was going to be hard to watch, but no one wanted to try and speak for Brian. He needed to do that for himself. Brian’s Story was broadcast on 8 May 2001 on Channel 4. The following day Andrew Billen, writing in the New Statesman, said:

9781784533946.indd 170

09/09/2015 15:16

Vulnerable People

171

‘Nath’s brutish objectivity got so close to suicidal mental illness that I wanted a futile gesture from him, at some stage, to salve the conscience of us viewers. It is a perverse tribute to his honesty that he did not provide us with one.’ For me honesty was the Holy Grail during the making of that film, but there was a cost. For ‘brutish objectivity’, read callous, uncaring and inhumane. I’ve watched the film once since it was broadcast. It reminded me that observing and documenting the last few months of Brian Davis’s life was uncomfortable, at times excruciating. But if you’re trying to get to the truth – and that’s what we try to do isn’t it? – then it’s the only way.

9781784533946.indd 171

09/09/2015 15:16

21 Fi ght i n g f o r J u sti c e Barbara Kopple

35. Barbara Kopple. Photograph by Andrew H. Walker

Barbara Kopple is the winner of two Academy Awards. She received the first in 1976 for Harlan County, USA, about a Kentucky miners’ strike, and the second in 1990 for her film American Dream, about another workers’ strike, against the Hormel Foods company. Her other films include the documentary Shut Up and Sing, about the Dixie Chicks and the fall-out from their public criticism of US President George Bush and the American-led invasion of Iraq; and Running From Crazy, about the troubled family history of the author Ernest Hemingway.

9781784533946.indd 173

09/09/2015 15:16

174

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

I think the cameras probably saved a bunch of shooting. I really don’t think we’d have won it without the film crew. If the film crew hadn’t been sympathetic to our cause, we would’ve lost […] Thank God they were. I mean, thank God they were on our side. Jerry Johnson, Harlan County coal miner

I

was living in New York City. I was young, idealistic and passionate. Though rural Kentucky was a world away from what I knew and had experienced up to that point in my life, I was completely riveted by the story I would go on to tell – a strike against the Duke Power Company-owned Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan County. I was heartbroken to read of the miners’ struggles, and I was inspired by their courage to speak up about their difficult situation. The miners were living in poverty in small cramped spaces, often without even the basics of indoor plumbing. They were fighting for safer working conditions, the right to have the union of their choice, and the right to earn a livable wage for themselves and for their families.

I had been working as a sound recordist and editor in documentaries, and I knew this story was one I needed to capture. My determination reflected a certain degree of naivety, but at the time there was no way anybody was keeping me from making this film. I was bound and determined that I was going to do it, although looking back, I now recognise the many obstacles in my path that might have deterred a more seasoned filmmaker. I knew no one in Kentucky. I had no money to make the film. I had no knowledge of coal mining. But I was completely consumed by the mission. I raised a small amount of money – a loan of $12,000 – and I gathered together a small but talented crew of a cameraman and an assistant camera­woman, with me doing the sound. Then off we went to Kentucky. Right away, we knew we were in over our heads, but we knuckled down to the task in hand. Upon arriving, we stuck out as you might imagine a crew of New York City folks in rural Kentucky would, but we felt it was important to present ourselves as honestly as possible. The miners were guarded initially and thought we might be infiltrators from the Duke Power Company who owned the mine. When we attempted to introduce ourselves, the miners’ wives gave us fake names like ‘Martha Washington’ and ‘Florence Nightingale’. We knew gaining their trust would be no small feat.

9781784533946.indd 174

09/09/2015 15:16

Fighting for Justice

175

It would take time and we had to be dependable. We knew we had to film when we said we would, with no exceptions. Because ‘being there’ was so important, we were always on the picket line when the miners and their wives told us they would be there. We even managed to make it following an early morning car accident coming down a slick mountain road. Our car skidded off the road and was not drivable, so we gathered all our equipment and walked the rest of the way down the mountain. News travels quickly in Harlan County, and when the picketers caught wind of this, their opinions started to shift. I guess they began to sense our determination, eventually realising that we genuinely cared about their struggle. From that point on, we were in. We were always present, filming not only the picket line, but also the organisational meetings, intimate moments with the miners and their wives and children, the music and the gatherings. We wanted to capture the rich and vibrant Appalachian culture, as well as the central story.

36. Still from Harlan County, USA. Photograph courtesy of Cabin Creek Films

But the main through-line continued to be the sheer determination of the miners and their incredible wives to fight for better lives for themselves. Mining is gruelling, it’s extremely dangerous, and it poses many health risks. The Duke Power Company who owned the mine was experiencing phenomenal profits, and yet the miners were given yearly raises that did not even reflect increases in the cost of living. It was time for a change. A union!

9781784533946.indd 175

09/09/2015 15:16

176

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

We were on the picket line day in, day out. The miners, their wives – and our crew – were shot at, kicked, knocked down and threatened. As filming goes, it was gruelling, but the bravery of the picketers lit a fire beneath us and made us want to continue. We also felt it was important to be there and film (or at least pretend to) in order to keep the violence at bay. We were told again and again that the presence of the cameras was keeping the non-union ‘gun thugs’ from unleashing gunfire into the crowd or beating them. In the end though, the violence did escalate and there was a tragic death – something that still haunts me to this day. A young miner, Lawrence Jones, was killed by a ‘gun thug’. He left behind a 16-year-old wife and baby. This death was painful for everyone, including the crew.

37. Still from Harlan County, USA. Photograph courtesy of Cabin Creek Films

After 13 months of filming, the bitter and violent strike came to an end. The miners were given a new contract that both sides agreed to, but it was evident that it was not the real end – the struggle would always continue as long as there was such great economic disparity, poor working conditions, and efforts by the mine owners to undermine the union and their ability to organise. The miner at the end of the film summed it up the best when he

9781784533946.indd 176

09/09/2015 15:16

Fighting for Justice

177

said: ‘It was a fight before, and it’s still a fight […] The coal miner will always keep fighting.’ I’ve been asked many times about the influence of the crew on the events in Harlan County. This is sometimes followed up with a question along the lines of: ‘Is it ethical or fair for a filmmaker to shape a story by their presence?’ To a large degree, influencing a situation as a filmmaker is virtually impossible to avoid. A filmmaker’s presence is always going to shape a subject’s behaviour or the outcome of a situation by at least a small amount. I know that on the rare occasions when I find myself in front of a camera, I definitely feel its presence and shift my behaviour – at least a little! Everyone does. Some filming situations (surgeons deeply absorbed in their work, for example) mean this influence is minimised. But in Harlan County, USA it was difficult because our presence was so well known by both sides of the picket line. Even though we were a small film crew, in a county where everyone knew each other, we stood out. We were clearly on the side of the striking miners and we were always in the thick of things. There was no avoiding it. It was what it was. Even as a novice filmmaker, I knew from my experience working with the Maysles brothers that in order to get people to be themselves in front of the camera, the crew and I would have to be present as much as possible. We hoped that by doing this, everyone would get used to us and perhaps forget the camera, to some extent at least. The crew and I made a conscious decision early on to be present as much as possible (even if we didn’t have a camera in hand) so that our subjects would at the very least be used to us as people, if not the camera. Our presence did shape the events in Harlan County, but it’s impossible to tell exactly how much. By being there and filming, there was less violence and the strike ended perhaps more quickly than had we not been there. We were told this again and again by the miners who had experienced strikes and labour skirmishes in the past. We may have prevented miners and their wives from being shot or beaten, but again, to what extent our presence reduced the violence is unknowable. I’m certain, though, that the non-union ‘thugs’ were not happy about us being there. They did not want our cameras to capture them breaking the law.

9781784533946.indd 177

09/09/2015 15:16

178

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

In making Harlan County, USA, I learned it’s sometimes okay to intervene in the story. If you’re filming with a subject who’s living in poverty, do you offer them food or pay their electricity bill for them if you’re able, and thus change their circumstances? I think the answer should usually be ‘Yes!’ You should choose to intervene because people always come first. The film that you’re making is secondary. It’s okay to change the course of a story by intervening through actions or simply being present, especially when it saves people from violence or even death. It follows that documenting violence, atrocities and injustices is a moral responsibility of filmmakers. Filming Harlan County, USA made that abundantly clear to me. As a documentarian, you’re fortunate enough to have the resources and positioning to be able to capture abuses and tell the world about them. It’s important never to waste this power and to use it in a responsible way. Further, if you’re put in a position in which your presence is protecting others, then it’s your absolute responsibility to continue. Because of this, I’m comfortable with our role in the strike and whatever changes to the course of history our cameras may have caused. Among filmmakers and journalists, there’s often a legitimate question as to whether or not one should intervene, but in the case of Harlan County, USA I’m absolutely glad that we did, and I would do so again in a heartbeat. Another lesson I learned early on in making Harlan County, USA was that in order to gain trust with the miners, I would absolutely have to be on their side. But siding with the miners did pose an ethical dilemma, because in order to fully devote myself to them and their cause, it would mean that the Duke Power Company would not have an equal opportunity to argue their side in the film. I felt the Duke Power Company was behaving greedily by not improving their employees’ working conditions and wages. I did try to get Duke Power Company’s side of the story, but they declined to be involved. I admit to not forcibly or persistently pursuing this dimension of the story, though. Why? Firstly, I didn’t want to facilitate their efforts to perpetuate injustices. Secondly, had they agreed, I suspect the information I gleaned would have supported my assessment that they were completely in the wrong. I felt the squalid living conditions of the miners said enough.

9781784533946.indd 178

09/09/2015 15:16

Fighting for Justice

179

I did tell the miners that I would be attempting to get an interview with Duke Power because I believed I should honestly and accurately represent my intentions to them. I felt that at the very least, I owed it to them to keep them apprised of my plans and get their blessing to pursue it. In making Harlan County, USA, I learned that it’s okay to pick a side, and that you do not have to give equal measure to all sides of a story. I did not hide whose side I was on in the film, either. A documentary is a story from one person’s perspective. You can capture the other side of the story, debate, or argument if you see fit. But Harlan County, USA was the story of the miners and their struggle. As a documentary filmmaker, it’s difficult not to get involved in the personal lives of your subjects and to be thoroughly invested in their lives. With Harlan County, USA the crew and I were particularly close with the film’s subjects, and each act of violence against the miners affected us deeply. At the beginning of filming, we actually began living with some of the miners and their families, and we naturally became quite close to them. We were deeply immersed in their struggle and fought with them as if it were our own lives and futures on the line. From the start, we were shown extraordinary acts of kindness and hospitality by the miners who had so little. Early on, a miner and his wife invited our hungry film crew into their home for dinner with their children. They didn’t have many possessions to share, but they had an abundance of humour, tenacity and grit. Acts like these blew me away. These people became my friends. As filming progressed, I learned that filmmakers are humans. You can try to be detached or shut off your emotions, but that’s not going to last long. Nor is it healthy. It’s very hard to avoid an emotional connection with those who are opening up their lives and homes to you. I learned it’s okay to form friendships, to be advocates, and to be completely and wholeheartedly biased. Some people outside of the documentary realm assume that documentaries are unbiased. That’s not the case at all! Documentaries represent an opinion, and that is okay with me. At one point early on, a miner’s wife invited the crew and me into her home to talk. As she spoke with us, she began preparing a

9781784533946.indd 179

09/09/2015 15:16

180

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

bucket of water in her kitchen in order to bathe her small child. Because they had no indoor plumbing, this was completely normal and routine. Her child wedged herself into the small metal bucket and the miner’s wife began scrubbing her down. She was not embarrassed about bathing her child like this – it was all that she knew. She was aware of the camera, of course, and felt completely at ease with us filming. I decided to keep this moment in the film. It’s a tender moment between mother and child, and one in which the miner’s wife explains to her young daughter how they will have hot running water and a ‘big old bath tub’ one day, when her daddy gets a new contract. The experience of filming that moment was something of a personal revelation. I knew that I had to illustrate the miners’ living conditions to bring to life the gravity of their situation, and it’s a powerful and touching scene in the film. But I was careful not to be gratuitous with it. As a filmmaker, it’s important to carefully consider how to capture other people’s cultures and lifestyle, especially when it’s one that’s unfamiliar, and especially when someone has really opened up their life to you. It’s important to always exercise sensitivity, and to be conscious of the feelings of those you are filming. Harlan County, USA was the first film I directed and still one that I hold close to my heart. The production was clunky at times, and none of us really knew what we were doing. But the crew and I worked through each ethical dilemma with pure intentions and pure hearts, relying on our gut feelings to figure things out. I didn’t have all the answers then, and I still don’t now. But I continue to strive to tell stories honestly, clearly and with conviction. Have there been flaws in my films? Yes. Will there continue to be flaws? Of course! But I will always do my best to tell one truth among many, and I’ll continue to shine a light on issues I consider important. I will do this knowing full well that I will likely be shaping unfolding events, that I may be telling only one side of the story, and that I’ll likely be biased in favour of a particular point of view. My hope is that despite any flaws, missteps and imperfections, my films will give a voice to the voiceless, create awareness, and maybe even serve as a springboard for positive change.

9781784533946.indd 180

09/09/2015 15:16

22 A li e n En v i r o n m en t s Dan Reed

38. Dan Reed. Photograph by Tom Pursey, courtesy of AMOS Pictures

Dan Reed has made films for Channel 4, the BBC, HBO and PBS, which have received five BAFTAs and three further nominations, a Peabody Award, a Primetime Emmy nomination, the Prix Italia and numerous other awards. His work includes Terror in Moscow, The Battle for Haiti, The 9/11 Liars, Children of the Tsunami and The Paedophile Hunter.

9781784533946.indd 181

09/09/2015 15:16

182

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

N

ow I think about it, my first encounters with many of the gut-wrenching ethical issues I’ve faced in two decades of documentary filmmaking all happened in one small space: a narrow concrete courtyard criss-crossed with washinglines in the heart of Manenberg, a gang-infested township on the Cape Flats in South Africa where I spent the best part of 1993. When in the 1960s and 1970s the so-called ‘coloured’ (mixedheritage) population of Cape Town was forcibly resettled by South Africa’s apartheid regime as part of a nationwide ethnic cleansing of cities, this is where they were dumped, in a series of crudely built townships, of which Manenberg became the most notorious. Its rows of twin low-rise concrete blocks, each containing 60 tiny flats, powerfully evoked prison architecture. Control of every corner and courtyard had been sliced up between competing criminal gangs: the Americans, the Jesters, the Sexy Boys, the Dixie Boys, the Mongrels ... Some were street-gangs with just a few dozen members. Others were criminal syndicates with branches all over the Western Cape and close ties to the powerful ‘number’ gangs which dominated South Africa’s prisons. The subjects of this documentary – my first as a director – was the dominant gang in Manenberg, the Hard Livings or ‘HLs’. The gang’s social and operational hub was Aletta Court, the graffiti-daubed concrete arena where I learned some enduring lessons in documentary ethics. I was introduced to the HLs by Irvin ‘Che’ Kinnes, a young African National Congress activist who had grown up with nine siblings in Belinda Court, right across the road from Aletta Court. He was on nodding terms with the gang’s leaders Rashied and Rashaad Staggie, the twin sons of a head waiter at Cape Town’s grandest hotel, the Mount Nelson. Che took me one afternoon to meet Rashied at his modest home in Salt River on the edge of the city, just a few streets from where I was staying. It was a bracing experience for a nice middle-class boy from Battersea to enter that tiny room packed with hard-eyed, fearsomely tattooed gang members clustered around their wiry, henna-bearded leader. The meeting, which lasted perhaps 30 minutes, was interrupted by a youngster offering a stolen limpet-mine for sale. I looked Rashied unflinchingly in the eye and told him that I wouldn’t try to make him look good but I wouldn’t tell lies or denigrate him either. I would make an unbiased film for the BBC about him and his men and the conditions that gave rise to them. In politically isolated

9781784533946.indd 182

09/09/2015 15:16

Alien Environments

183

places like Manenberg, the so-called ‘coloured gangs’ were both a scourge and a support network for the poor, and in 1993, on the eve of Nelson Mandela’s election victory, some gang leaders saw themselves as the voice of the ‘coloured’ underclass. Rashied, a self-confessed psychopathic killer who had murdered more than a dozen people and spent 14 of his 39 years in prison, considered himself a natural leader of the people of Manenberg. Rashied considered my request for a few minutes, then said: ‘It’s okay, you can come.’ So now I was in possession of something like an ‘access all areas’ pass to an extended criminal network based in one of South Africa’s most violent townships. My career so far hadn’t prepared me particularly well for this opportunity. I’d been making tea on Richard O’Brien’s Crystal Maze show for a few weeks, then was Adam Curtis’ assistant producer on his Pandora’s Box series for 18 months. This was the early 1990s, before health and safety awareness courses and hostile environment training became compulsory. It was my first film and I was prepared to go to almost any lengths to make it powerful and true. So as I set out on my ten-month ‘embed’ with the HLs I wasn’t looking out for any ethical land mines that might lie in my path.

39. Dan Reed on location in South Africa in 1993. Photograph courtesy of Dan Reed

By the time we started filming in Aletta Court one rainy day in April, I had already spent a couple of months getting to know the HLs

9781784533946.indd 183

09/09/2015 15:16

184

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

and their families. Today we were bringing expensive equipment and three more white men – camera, sound, camera assistant – into Aletta Court where the police would be powerless to help us if anything went wrong. There were guns everywhere, and within a couple of hours a newly acquired 0.38 Special revolver came out of an oily rag and was passed round a group of the younger HLs draped over the climbing frame at the back of Aletta Court. Gun battles in Manenberg were frequent and the victims were mostly random bystanders felled by stray bullets or ricochets. In that era it never crossed my mind that we ought to be carrying body armour, helmets, trauma kits and so on. To me, staying safe was about making sure that we appeared at ease and unafraid. The hostile environment get-up would have made us appear alien and hostile to the people of Manenberg. That first day of filming brought home the first big question: even though I was fairly comfortable with the risks I was taking, how safe was my crew? How could I balance the risk of harm against the goal of completing the film? I remember feeling very afraid at times, but also very driven to get the film made. Looking back I realise that there were moments when I came very close to getting badly hurt without even knowing it. I suspect that my general naiveté and evident dedication to the task of documenting gang life somehow acted as a talisman, protecting me from harm. Or maybe I was just lucky. The days passed, often without even taking out a camera. Sometimes I drove into Manenberg alone, sometimes with my crew. My priority was simply to get people used to our presence, and sure enough the curious or hostile stares gradually turned to smiles or indifference. We were now a familiar part of the everyday picture in Aletta Court. ‘Dan, go home man. Don’t you have anything to do?’, people would laugh. We’d shot a few scenes. Nothing very dramatic. Then, just as we were beginning to feel very much at ease and slightly bored in our little corner of Manenberg, something happened that pulled the ground from under my feet. We drove into the township one early evening as the mountains began to glow orange, feeling that tickle of adrenaline as our van lurched off the highway into the township. As we rounded the bend of Manenberg Avenue there was Aletta Court criss-crossed

9781784533946.indd 184

09/09/2015 15:16

Alien Environments

185

with lines of washing that streamed horizontal in the stiff Atlantic breeze. But today something felt different as we nosed into our usual spot by the climbing frame at the back of Aletta Court. One of the HLs jogged past me as I got out. He seemed jubilant. ‘What’s up Fanie?’ I asked. ‘We caught a Mongrel!’ he grinned, referring to a rival gang. ‘He shot one of ours. We’re gonna kill him. Get your camera!’ My legs felt suddenly weak. I looked over at the cluster of excited gang members emerging from one of the ground-floor doorways and felt a huge dose of fear jolt through me. Our routine was for the crew to get in shoot mode from the moment they stepped out of the van, and they were busy doing that. I glanced over at my cameraman Richard Ranken, but he was busy with his Aaton. As the director and producer, the person solely responsible for our presence in this situation, I felt suddenly very alone. ‘Isn’t this what you wanted?’, I asked myself guiltily. This was the pay-off of all my days of waiting, positioning, patiently seeking acceptance by the HLs. Now here we were, right where we needed to be to make this film. In an hour or so night would fall and the HLs would kill a man right in front of us. Maybe take him round the corner first to do unspeakable things to him. What should I do? Calling the police would have been little use. I’d filmed gang members test-firing a pistol as a police patrol passed by, lazily cracking off a couple of shots as they shared out a take-away pizza. The local cops were outgunned and outmanned and some, from what Rashied told me, did quite a lot of business with the HLs, selling them drugs or weapons they’d seized. I couldn’t imagine these cops rushing into Manenberg to stop the revenge killing of another gangster. Simply getting back in our van and retreating back to the comforts of Cape Town didn’t seem like a sensible option either. I’d spent months building a relationship with Rashied and the HLs. And right now that was the only leverage I had, the only way I could possibly influence the outcome of what was to happen that night. The presence of the camera might well save the prisoner’s life. I turned to my crew and explained the situation. My cameraman and sound recordist were older and more experienced than me and I observed their reactions closely. After some thought they agreed we should stay for now and film what we could. So we picked up our gear and moved towards the ground floor apartment where the young man was being held prisoner.

9781784533946.indd 185

09/09/2015 15:16

186

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Inside I glimpsed the terrified face of a young, skinny guy sitting in the corner on a small plastic sofa surrounded by the younger HLs. One of them, a vicious young gangster by the name of Watson, looped his arm casually round the prisoner’s shoulders and patted his head. In this context the display of relaxed intimacy was one of the most chilling things I had ever seen. I looked for Rashied and found him propped against the corner of Aletta Court, sipping beer from a small glass with a kind of nervous glee. ‘He shot Godless and put him in a wheelchair. The others want to burn off his tattoos and rape him then kill him.’ Rashied took another gulp of beer and wiped the froth pensively from his moustache. ‘But it’s not worth killing such small fry.’ Now the prisoner was brought outside into the courtyard for questioning. I noticed a couple of the HLs were carrying wooden clubs. ‘See that guy there?’ croaked Watson with his arm draped loosely round the prisoner’s neck. ‘He’s gonna shoot you just like you shot our man Godless!’ Watson’s leering face was just an inch from the prisoner’s. The prisoner remained upright and calm but his eyes were pulsing with fear. Then Watson slapped him hard in the face. I felt a tremor go through my knees again. Then I caught the boom-pole and the microphone out of the corner of my eye and saw Richard was calmly filming from a few feet away as Rashied questioned the prisoner, asking him to explain why he’d put a bullet through Godless’s spine. ‘It was over a girl,’ mumbled the prisoner. I knew that if they decided to kill him in front of us I couldn’t just stand there and watch, I’d have to intervene somehow. But what if it all happened too quickly? What if they took the prisoner out of sight somewhere and the next thing we heard was a gunshot? Was it right to risk dragging me and my crew into a tortuous legal process, becoming witnesses in a gang murder trial in apartheid South Africa? As the risks multiplied in my mind a mustard-coloured Mercedes roared up, driven by a clean-shaven man with gelled black curls and a flowery shirt. Grinning from ear to ear he jabbed a finger at the prisoner. ‘Kill him! Kill him!’ he yelled. ‘If I say kill him, Rashied must kill him! Because I’m the boss!’ Rashied cursed the man and swiped at him with a ringstudded hand. The HLs collectively guffawed with laughter at this piece of clowning. The arrival of Rashied’s twin brother Rashaad came as a relief to me, as the HLs’ money-man was usually a moderating influence on his more bloodthirsty brother. With both of the gang’s leaders now present I guessed that the younger HLs would be less likely to murder the prisoner out of hand,

9781784533946.indd 186

09/09/2015 15:16

Alien Environments

187

although a couple of them still casually assured me that he would be taken off by the railway line and killed that night. I assumed that Rashaad, despite his earlier clowning, would stand with Rashied and stop the gang from taking vengeance on their captive. Rashied was always complaining that the youngsters just wanted to fight and kill without thinking of the future. His authority would be called into question if something happened to the prisoner now and he was someone that no one in the gang would want to cross. All I could do was hope my guesswork was correct, carry on filming and make sure we captured the scene on film as best we could. As the HLs toyed with their catch, who remained sitting bolt upright on the sofa, plates of hot curry were passed around and Michael Jackson songs drummed out on beer-crates as the air grew still and the washing now hung limp on the lines that criss-crossed Aletta Court. The older gang members would confer intensely and I would grow worried. Then there would be more laughter and clowning around. Finally the captive was shoved out under the street-light at the back of Aletta Court, by the climbing frame festooned with children and teenagers. He and a couple of HLs close to him were soon enveloped in dense white musty-smelling smoke from a ‘white pipe’ – a broken bottleneck filled with a mixture of cannabis and Mandrax, a powerful downer that was the drug of choice on the Cape Flats at the time. I noticed that the prisoner barely inhaled, knowing that a ‘white pipe’ was sometimes the prelude to a bullet in the head. ‘He’s going to work for us now,’ croaked one of the HLs. ‘He’s going to shoot for us. And bring us guns.’ We saw him walk away, accompanied by a couple of HLs and trailed by a dozen laughing children. Very quickly Aletta court emptied out until it was just a dark, hostile jumble of painted concrete walls, washing lines and zigzag staircases all stained with dirty orange street-light. We wrapped our gear, got in our van and drove back towards the ocean and the pretty streets of Cape Town. I heard a rumour that they’d caught the same guy again some weeks later and this time had crushed his head with a concrete block, but I wasn’t able to verify if it was true. Would they have killed him that night if we hadn’t been there filming? My biggest problem had been keeping a clear head and figuring out, in all the noise and confusion, what was actually happening. Maybe I had guessed right, that our presence at the scene acted as a deterrent, especially once Rashied and the older gangsters had got a grip of the situation and concluded that the captive wasn’t worth killing. I had also experienced something

9781784533946.indd 187

09/09/2015 15:16

188

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

strange and new as a documentary-maker, an uncomfortable thrill of excitement followed by a gut-punch of guilt when filming the prisoner. It didn’t matter that he was a dangerous gangster who had put a bullet through a rival’s spine, I still felt dirty for being there, for witnessing and recording his helplessness. As the months passed I became more comfortable – perhaps too comfortable – with the HLs’ morally disjointed, frightening world. They tolerated my presence and I felt some of them even enjoyed having me around and were curious about the filmmaking process. One morning one of them asked if I wanted to go on a drive-by shooting. I laughed it off, but he was serious. I began to feel that the film was in danger of becoming one-dimensional and lacking in complexity, and that I might be ‘going native’. I wanted to try to step outside the world of the HL gang and include in my documentary someone who was in conflict with them. So with the help of Che, the ANC activist who had become a close friend, I contacted a rival of the HLs’, a gangster with whom the HLs were having a serious, long-running vendetta. They had been looking for this man Waleed all over the Cape Flats, with several cars patrolling in shifts day and night. I went to meet him clandestinely at a safe house in Mitchell’s Plain, another township some distance from Manenberg. As luck would have it one of the HLs was driving right in front of the safe house as I emerged from the meeting. The driver Qasif recognised me immediately – the only tall, bald-headed white man for many miles around – and beckoned me over with a friendly wave. ‘What are you doing here, Dan?’ he asked. I walked towards his car, my mind suddenly blank. Waleed and his men emerged from the doorway of the ‘safe house’ and Qasif’s mouth contorted with rage. He flipped open a shallow rectangular box next to the handbrake and took out a semi-automatic pistol but by the time he had brought the weapon to bear Waleed was gone. The weapon was now aimed straight at my belly. I saw Qasif’s finger rest on the trigger and I stared at the weapon, fascinated. It was the first time someone had pointed a loaded firearm at me. Then I heard Che’s clear, urgent voice from somewhere close behind me: ‘Don’t shoot! You don’t need to shoot. Don’t shoot.’ The moment passed and strangely enough my overwhelming feeling at the time was not fear of death but remorse that I had somehow betrayed the HLs’ trust by meeting up clandestinely with their worst enemy. I felt angry with my own stupidity, although in retrospect my attempt to tell the other side

9781784533946.indd 188

09/09/2015 15:16

Alien Environments

189

of the HLs’ vendetta with a rival gang was a perfectly sound idea. But I should probably have let Rashied know I was planning to meet Waleed. I think he wouldn’t have objected and would probably have liked the fact that I’d had the guts to tell him. But now I’d been caught meeting the enemy on the sly, my relationship with Rashied and the gang – and possibly my safety – was at risk. As documentary-makers the consistency of our dealings with our subjects is as important as the written rules which govern our relationships with the audience and the broadcaster. Trust, and the privileged access which flows from that trust, is based on an unspoken or assumed code of behaviour which usually becomes explicit only once it has been breached. I would say that honest and consistent behaviour with a subject has been my main safeguard in many situations where I’ve had little control or even understanding of the dangers around me. I had to re-establish that trust with Rashied, so for the next two weeks I would drive to Manenberg and stand on the corner, hoping to catch Rashied. I got a few leaden looks and some half-jokey death threats, but mostly I was ignored. When Rashied finally appeared he pondered my apology, avoiding my gaze and nodding gently to himself. I’d seen him do that before, just before stabbing a young man in the head. ‘Dan, you’re a dead journalist,’ rasped Watson, the vicious lieutenant. The moment passed and within a few days a level of trust was restored. But when a few years later during the Kosovo War I felt compelled to give my ground-level documentary The Valley a richer, more complex perspective by filming through the eyes of both Serbs and Albanians, I made no secret of my intention to cross the lines. We had to drive 150 km or more on broken, dangerous roads and negotiate a dozen checkpoints to reach the other side of a 200-metre stretch of no-man’s-land between a cluster of Serb and Albanian foxholes. ‘Tell us what kind of weapons they have up there,’ a Serb policeman would ask, nodding towards the Albanian position. ‘I won’t do that,’ I would reply. ‘Same as I won’t give those guys any information about you.’ That usually got a puzzled laugh or the occasional grunt of approval from men who generally had a low opinion of the foreign press. One day I found Rashied sipping beer on the corner of Aletta Court, looking very pleased with himself. Nearly ten months had passed since I’d first met him and I had spent a good deal of that time in his company. As one of the younger HLs topped up his

9781784533946.indd 189

09/09/2015 15:16

190

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

glass, he told me that yesterday he had stabbed to death a leader of the ‘Americans’ in the course of what sounded like a gang brawl. Lawrence Gardner my cameraman buttoned on as Rashied described the incident. When he’d finished I looked over at Lawrence and told him to cut and take the camera off his shoulder. I looked at Rashied. ‘I just filmed you confessing to a murder.’ He shrugged. ‘Yes Dan. I know. You filmed.’ I wasn’t offering him the chance to ‘veto’ this part of my rushes – not that he’d have had any difficulty taking them by force if he’d wanted to. But I wanted to make sure that he knew the score, because his on-camera confession might come up as evidence in court one day. I glanced back at Lawrence, who rolled the Aaton again. ‘So does this mean you’re going to go to jail for a long time?’ I asked. Rashied considered the question for a second or so, shading his eyes from the morning sunlight. Then he gave a long, hollow laugh. ‘No, not for a long time. I shall kill the witnesses too.’ I had no idea who the witnesses were but after nearly a year in South Africa I had seen too many instances of the police’s complacency or outright corruption in their dealings with gang violence to think that alerting them would be a good idea. And I’d learned to bide my time before reacting to news. Sure enough, the next day it emerged that the man Rashied stabbed had survived. But looking back I realise that after nearly a year of filming with the gang I’d become perhaps more preoccupied with being consistent and honest as a filmmaker with my subjects (some of the most vicious gangsters in South Africa) than with holding myself to account for the wider moral issues raised by my interactions with them. There is a delicate balance between the two that is hard to find and keep. It’s always far simpler to throw in one’s lot with the contributors and adopt a parti-pris, ‘committed’ stance; or to stay outside and adopt an off-the- shelf, ready-made set of moral conventions. Trying to straddle the two is exhausting and difficult but ultimately the only honest way to make a film that involves the kind of deep and prolonged access to a privileged space which documentary-makers dream of, but which can all too easily turn nasty if you lose your moral compass in the process. Sometimes you just can’t reconcile the two and you just have to muddle through. Five years later I was standing in the smouldering ruins of a village in the Drenica Valley in central Kosovo, listening for tank engines or gunfire in the unnaturally silent dawn and peering through the

9781784533946.indd 190

09/09/2015 15:16

Alien Environments

191

blend of morning mist and smoke from dozens of burning villages at the rutted dirt track ahead of us as it began to rise uphill and out of sight. Serb security forces had encircled the valley a few days earlier and swept through, killing and burning. We had filmed unseen on a 600mm lens as a group of 50 paramilitary police strolled across the hillsides torching farms. Two tanks lurched along behind them through the wheat fields, burping thick black exhaust smoke. They had paused for a rest and a bite to eat on a hilltop while the tanks fired a few lazy rounds across the valley. But this morning the smoke from burning Albanian farmsteads was so thick it had allowed us to slip down a side road at daybreak and penetrate the military cordon unnoticed. We trundled down dirt roads deeper into the valley, peering through the thick ballistic glass of our Kevlar-wrapped Land Rover. Villages lay smouldering in ruins and dead cows lined the road, their bodies swollen, their insides spilling out of their anuses. A few miles into the encirclement I stopped the truck and we got out to listen. A small group of armed men appeared on the dirt track in front of us and levelled their rifles at us nervously. Our interpreter spoke to them and we went to greet them and shake hands. Their clothes smelled of stale sweat and damp earth. Their eyes were sunken and haunted. A couple of them started weeping. We would find out why later.

40. Dan Reed on location in Kosovo in 1998. Photograph courtesy of Dan Reed

A fighter in his late teens was carried out of the bushes. He had been struck in the leg by a bullet or a piece of shrapnel. It was a small wound but he was clearly in pain. The fighters asked us if we had medical kit, if we could give them some dressings for him. I glanced at the boy to see if he was still bleeding. We had enough bandages for two or three casualties. The thud-thud-thud and echo of a machine-gun could now be heard a kilometre or so further down

9781784533946.indd 191

09/09/2015 15:16

192

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

the valley and I had to think of my crew and myself. What if one of us were hit? Or two of us even? How many bandages would we have to use to staunch the flow of blood before we could reach a hospital, our armoured Land Rover slithering around on the rutted Drenica horse-tracks? Besides, the wound wasn’t bleeding any more. So I did the right thing. I lied. ‘Sorry. We’ve given our bandages away.’ The wounded boy turned away bitterly, his face chalky pale. The machine-gun started hammering again, followed by the slammingdoor crump of something heavier. The leader of the local guerrilla unit, a schoolteacher in his forties, burst into tears as he walked alongside me towards a cluster of farm buildings. I asked my interpreter Safet to carry the man’s rifle and gave him one of the energy bars I’d brought from London. We counted 18 bodies scattered around the ravines and homesteads of Ashlan Village, most of them elderly farmers. They’d been gunned down where they stood and their homes set alight. A horse-drawn cart laden with a fleeing family’s possessions had crashed into a gully. The horse lay in a twisted heap at the bottom. A man in his forties who I guessed had been driving the cart lay draped across a thorn bush nearby, his eyes half-closed. The schoolteacher, tut-tutting quietly, tried to arrange the man’s stiffened limbs in a more dignified position. Another farmer lay half-charred next to the ashes of a haystack. The surviving villagers stood around, chatting and making a tally of the dead. One of the villagers brought out a jar of pickled peppers. ‘Eat,’ he urged us. ‘Eat! You must be hungry.’ Filming these kinds of scenes has always put me in a brutally conflicted state of mind. There is usually little time to reflect. It’s my job to watch my crew’s backs, figure out how much danger we’re in, plan the next move, the next shot, the next question. But at some point I catch myself standing there, watching. Being a voyeur. And it feels sickeningly wrong. I want to avert my eyes, or leave, intervene or embrace the person whose misfortune or suffering we are filming. I feel tarnished, guilty. I have to remind myself why I’m here, that recording this event is my only reason, my only alibi for being here. We’re not medics or soldiers. We’re here to watch, feel, understand and record, and in the end – that dreadfully overused phrase – bear witness. Then we jump back into our truck clutching our precious rushes, adrenalised, shocked, barely exchanging glances until we hit the tarmac road again And yes, we can’t help feeling elated because that’s why we’ve come here, to tell this very story. Yet the guilt lingers. We can go, they have to stay.

9781784533946.indd 192

09/09/2015 15:16

23 Tec h n o l o gy David Clews

41. David Clews. Photograph courtesy of Twofour Group

David Clews is a multi award-winning documentary filmmaker and executive producer. He series-directed the Bafta- and Griersonnominated series The Family and the Bafta-winning fixed-rig documentary series Educating Essex, and was executive producer on the follow-up, Educating Yorkshire. His other credits include Surviving Gazza, Boys from the Brown Stuff and The End of the World Bus Tour, which followed a group of evangelical Christians on a trip to Israel.

9781784533946.indd 193

09/09/2015 15:16

194

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

O

n 30 September 1929, the BBC broadcast the world’s first television transmission. Over the next 85 years, television changed the world and became the defining technology of the twentieth century. And as that technology evolved so did the programmes. Black and white became colour, cameras became portable and the worlds we were able to enter became more intimate, vivid and varied. I started working in television in the mid-1990s when another technological revolution was taking place. Broadcast quality cameras were becoming smaller, so selfshooting directors like myself were able to make films without the need of big crews. You’d find us everywhere, often operating as one-man bands, filming everything. I spent my time down the sewers of London, with a famous footballer coming out of rehab, and following a group of evangelical Christians across the Holy Land. Where could documentaries go next? Fast forward to 2008 and things were changing again. Channel 4 had made an updated version of the seminal fly-on-the-wall series The Family, which shocked the nation with its honest portrayal of domestic life back in 1974. Thirty-four years later the Hughes family were filmed around the clock for 100 days, this time using the technology built for Big Brother. Twenty remote-controlled cameras were installed into their house and the ‘fixed-rig’ was born. After years of shooting my own films, I loved the idea of embracing something different and finding new ways into familiar territories. So when the chance came up to direct the second series of The Family, I jumped at it. It was thrilling to enter a usually closed world and see everything that was unfolding inside it. Not just from one perspective but multiple points of view. For someone who normally went around with a DV camera under his arm, the idea of taking on something of this epic scale was (in a good way) terrifying. For this series we installed 28 cameras into the home of the Grewals. Apart from the bathroom, every corner of the house was captured on camera. We also installed ambient mics in each room so no conversations were lost, even when the family forgot to wear their personal radio mics (sometimes on purpose, I’m sure). We could see every camera via the 28 monitors in the gallery that we built in their garden. This was the nerve centre, where we remotely controlled the cameras and observed daily life in extra­ ordinary detail.

9781784533946.indd 194

09/09/2015 15:16

Technology

195

With the evolution of the fixed-rig genre came other documentary series using the same technology, including One Born Every Minute on a maternity ward, 24 Hours in A&E at King’s College Hospital, and Educating Essex, the series I created that was set in a secondary school (followed by Educating Yorkshire and most recently Educating the East End). As I write this, we’ve just installed 68 cameras, 70 ambient mics and 15 km of cabling in a school in Wales for series four. I love what the fixed-rig offers us as filmmakers: the chance to film things in a very simple, unobtrusive way. For me, it’s documentary making at its purest. Cameras disappear into walls much more than human beings standing there holding a camera. A director physically in the room inevitably changes the dynamic. There’s no way around that. The fixed-rig technique offers us the chance to film with contributors in a way that doesn’t alter their behaviour. Of course some argue that people never really forget they’re being filmed. Having closely worked with this technology for five years now, I’m not so sure.

42. Inside the gallery during the making of Educating Essex. Photograph by Philip Hollis, courtesy of Channel 4

We often find ourselves in the gallery witnessing or overhearing things that people do or say, having completely forgotten they are on a mic or in view of a camera. The fixed-rig enables you to gather an enormous amount of privileged information. Most of the time this isn’t a problem, but occasionally I’ve found myself dealing with unexpected dilemmas.

9781784533946.indd 195

09/09/2015 15:16

196

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

During the first week of filming Educating Essex, we overheard one student tell another that she was pregnant, before the school or even her own mother knew about it. Was it my place to inform the school? I didn’t think so. Because we deal with teenagers rather than adults in the Educating series, we naturally follow strict protocols. These protocols stipulate that if we feel students are doing something that endangers themselves or others then we will intervene. Otherwise, we’ll carry on filming; as observational filmmakers, our primary job is to observe life as it happens. The ethical issues with the fixed-rig that I do worry about tend to be around consent and access. With traditional filming it’s easy for someone to ask you to stop. But what happens when you’re not in the room with them? When the cameras literally fade into the background? I think it is much harder for contributors to understand the consequences of their actions. The cameras are never hidden, and I guess you could say most people would be savvy enough to know if they’re being filmed or not, but that isn’t always the case. On top of that, if someone is in an emotional state, the first thing they think about isn’t normally ‘where’s the camera?’ So I regularly ask a number of questions of myself and my team. Is it appropriate to be filming this? Is it too obtrusive? Have the contributors really signed up to this? Do they know what they’re letting themselves in for? This could be a student breaking down in front of a teacher or a child screaming at their mother in the head teacher’s office, blaming them for breaking up with their dad. The truth of it is that we film many emotional and highly charged moments, but that doesn’t mean we’ll always include them in the final documentary. I’ve always felt quite clear about what’s appropriate to use and what isn’t. Recently on Educating the East End we filmed one of the most powerful scenes across any of the Educating series – an unbelievably raw confrontation between a child and parent, that illustrated the shattering complexities around divorce. It was incredibly emotional to watch. Should we have spun the cameras to the ceiling and not filmed it? The mother knew we were filming, but hadn’t expected the meeting to be so deeply personal. Was it too obtrusive to be observing it? I don’t think so. Would I have liked to include it in the series? In another film – about divorce for instance – I would have fought for its entry. But ultimately in this story about education, the family and I didn’t think it was appropriate.

9781784533946.indd 196

09/09/2015 15:16

Technology

197

43. A fixed-rig camera, during the making of Educating Essex. Photograph by Philip Hollis, courtesy of Channel 4

Privacy is understandably a huge issue. What is fair to include in a film and what isn’t? With the fixed-rig we film hundreds of hours of footage to make maybe eight hours of television. With so much material, is it possible to make a fair representation in so few hours? Many people ignorantly accuse the fixed-rig of not being proper filmmaking, that we hoover up hours of footage with little direction or authorship. To be honest that massively riles me. When I directed The Family I had a very clear vision of what I wanted to make and my relationship with the Grewals was very much at the centre of the series. It would be my portrayal of them, but hopefully an honest portrayal. Filming took place around the clock for eight weeks during the summer of 2009. There was dad Arvinder, mum Sarbjit and three grown up children, Sunny, Kaki and Tindy. Eldest son Sunny was married to Shay, and daughter Kaki was married to Jeet. I got to know the family extremely well over a few months before filming began and thought I had the measure of the various dynamics going on within the house. It wasn’t that I was looking for trouble, but with so many people living under one roof I knew there would naturally be some tensions – universal issues, like living with your in-laws, that I was hoping to explore. During the first few weeks of filming the Grewals were in many ways their charming

9781784533946.indd 197

09/09/2015 15:16

198

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

selves, funny, engaging and emotional. But I did feel they were showing their best sides, which made complete sense. We all do it. ‘Arguments?’ They would say. ‘What arguments? We don’t argue.’ I knew that wasn’t quite true. Filming kids in a school is different from filming adults at home. I’m not saying I was entitled to explore every family secret, but they had agreed to open themselves up to a major eight-part series for Channel 4. I wanted to delve deeper than superficial niceties, so I persevered. We had been filming with the Grewals for a month when Sarbjit and Sunny asked if I could show the family some footage. At first I wasn’t keen. But if they felt more reassured, they might stop censoring themselves. Making the series was such a huge undertaking, with 28 cameras placed around the house and a production team camped out in their back garden, that I did understand why they wanted to see how they looked. During filming, myself and the series producer Beejal Patel would regularly go into the house, to make sure everyone was okay and talk about what the family were doing over the coming weeks. This way we could plan what we were going to film outside the house, and arrange times to do interviews, which made up an important part of the series. We stayed out of the house as much as possible though, conscious our presence would alter normal family life. However, on this particular evening Beejal and I went around to the Grewal’s house with a DVD containing about six minutes of roughly edited material. We were planning on showing the DVD and then leaving the family to their night at home, so the production team were still in the gallery recording what was happening. When we entered the house I never would have guessed I’d end up using the footage of the family watching the clips and including myself and Beejal in the series. But events unfolded in a very different way from how I imagined. When I looked back at the material a few weeks later, I asked myself a number of questions. Was it a mistake to show the Grewals the footage? Was I to blame for the argument that took place between Sunny and Jeet? What were the truths at the heart of their disagreement? And would it be fair and appropriate to use it in the series? We certainly were an unfortunate catalyst for what happened. Everyone had sat down to watch the DVD except Jeet (which was definitely a mistake). As a Bollywood actor, he never liked seeing

9781784533946.indd 198

09/09/2015 15:16

Technology

199

himself on screen. The selection of scenes included everyone in the family, and even though Jeet hadn’t watched the clips, he had a strong fear he wasn’t in it enough. Once Jeet told Sunny’s wife Shay to stay out of the discussion, an argument erupted. Defending his wife, Sunny was quickly enraged and before I knew it I was stepping in, physically separating the two brothers-in-law. So what started out as a simple hour with the family had quickly turned into a family drama with Beejal and I caught up in the middle of it. They were hysterical. I was sick to my stomach, terrified I’d wrecked the entire series. Was the fight my fault? Was the gallery still recording, and if so should I get them to stop? As filmmakers we try and observe life, not disturb it, but sometimes events happen that you can’t help but get involved in. Next, Kaki, Jeet’s wife, who was six months pregnant, screamed out in pain. I couldn’t believe it. Was the stress of the argument bringing on early labour? For weeks I’d been hoping for high drama, but not like this. The paramedics arrived and thankfully Kaki didn’t need to go to hospital. Ultimately the disagreement that took place between Sunny and Jeet wasn’t about us or the DVD, but longstanding issues between the brothers-in-law and their wives. The Grewals thought differently and tried to blame it on the pressure of being filmed. They asserted that it was unrepresentative and therefore unfair to use the footage. I understood they were embarrassed and didn’t want to be seen like that. But even though I didn’t come out of it brilliantly either, I disagreed. I felt this incident was an important part of the series. It reflected the moral uncertainty of making authentic documentaries in the media-savvy modern world, showing how people really are rather than simply how they would like to come across. And I honestly felt they had agreed to take part in something and couldn’t dictate what we should or shouldn’t use. Yes, there was certainly a right and a wrong way of using the material – a way that is appropriate, not gratuitous, and sensitively handled. But I’ve always had a strong moral compass and in the end I felt that as long as we were transparent about how the evening began, which meant including me and Beejal, it was important the scene remained in the series. All families have arguments and the Grewals were no different. They were very proud of their family and the loving bonds between them. I knew that with time they would come to be comfortable with us exploring the universal themes of family life and including moments that might sometimes be difficult to watch. And they were.

9781784533946.indd 199

09/09/2015 15:16

200

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Even in the unobtrusive world of fixed-rig documentaries, with their invisible cameramen and silent cameras, this event showed me that no matter how far technology advances, it always comes back to honest storytelling.

9781784533946.indd 200

09/09/2015 15:16

24 Fac tu al F o r m at s Alex Graham

44. Alex Graham. Photograph courtesy of the author

Alex Graham is a television producer of world renown. He established the independent production company Wall to Wall in 1987, which has gone on to win a wide range of awards, including Baftas, Emmys, RTS and Peabody awards, and an Oscar for the documentary feature Man on Wire. Amongst many other programmes, he was at the heart of the successful factual formats The 1900 House (which gave rise to The 1940s House and The Edwardian Country House) and Who Do You Think You Are? He is a fellow of both the Royal Television Society and the Royal Society of Arts.

9781784533946.indd 201

09/09/2015 15:16

202

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

I

t was the phone call I had dreaded. Just three days into a ten-day shoot, our star had walked from the latest episode of Who Do You Think You Are? Patsy Kensit – star of Holby City, Absolute Beginners and Lethal Weapon 2 to name but three – had gone home. She was unhappy with the way her journey was going and didn’t want to carry on. We had a signed contract but of course it was worthless. Who would want to watch an unhappy celebrity forced into exploring her family history against her will? From the start Patsy had been nervous. On the very first day, we filmed her and her brother Jamie flicking through photographs of Jamie’s christening, in which Jamie is being cradled by his godfather, the notorious gangster Reggie Kray. Jimmy Kensit was a small-time East End crook who ran with both the Kray and Richardson gangs. Patsy knew all about her father’s dodgy past. What she needed to know was that not everyone in her family had gone down that road. What she was looking for was redemption. She hoped she might find it in her grandfather’s war record. At first it looked promising. Jimmy Sr had been a gunner in the Royal Artillery and he’d won the British War Medal. It wasn’t particularly special. Everyone who served got one, but a medal is a medal after all. Then came the bad news. He had forfeited his medal when he was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude. A more detailed look at his record just made matters worse: a string of convictions for stealing and forgery. She’d had enough. The prospect of spending another seven days exploring what she now called the ‘family business’ of petty crime was too much. So she walked, leaving us on the horns of a difficult ethical dilemma. The truth is that we knew exactly where her story was going. We had a 40-page script detailing every twist and turn in the narrative. We knew that waiting for her a few days down the road was a story so powerfully redemptive that it promised to be one of the more remarkable episodes we had ever produced. But we couldn’t tell Patsy that. How had we ended up like this? It certainly hadn’t been in the original plan. The original pitch to the BBC for Who Do You Think You Are? had been a simple one: most famous people are descended from distinctly un-famous families. If we could persuade ten of the UK’s best-loved celebrities to explore their

9781784533946.indd 202

09/09/2015 15:16

Factual Formats

203

family history, we’d most likely uncover stories with which everyone could identify. And if we could find stories that intersected with the grand narratives of British history – the great wars, the Irish Famine, the birth of the railways, etc. – we might create an alternative popular history of Britain. So we drew up a hit-list of subjects and personalities and we had an early breakthrough with Bill Oddie of Springwatch and late of The Goodies. Bill had grown up in Birmingham but had been born in Rochdale, Lancashire where his family had worked in the cotton mills – an iconic slice of British history if ever there was one. Bill, we decided, could be our ‘industrial revolution’ episode. There was only one problem. While Bill acknowledged that he wasn’t uninterested in the industrial revolution, that wasn’t why he wanted to be part of the show. Instead, he wanted to understand what had happened to his mother when he was growing up. She had been absent for large parts of his childhood. He had always suspected that she had suffered from some kind of mental illness but he wasn’t really sure. Now in later life, having suffered from bouts of depression himself, he wanted to know the truth about his mother: had she suffered a mental breakdown and if so, what might have caused it? It was an easy decision for us to make, to be honest. What was most likely to make a compelling hour of television? Bill acting as a polite but not-terribly-interested guide to the cotton mills of Rochdale? Or Bill exploring the hidden history of the mother he felt he never knew? But it was not without its risks. What if we were to discover facts that might be genuinely upsetting? The guidelines – issued by both Ofcom (the communications regulator in the UK) and the BBC – are pretty clear on this. It is not enough that people give consent; they have to give informed consent. In other words, as far as possible they need to know what the programme is about and how their contribution is going to be used. The problem was that fulfilling these criteria to the letter threatened to make for a very dull programme. Who Do You Think You Are? is a new take on a very old television genre: the quest. From Great Railway Journeys of the World to Who Got Benny’s Millions?,

9781784533946.indd 203

09/09/2015 15:16

204

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

the journey of exploration has been a powerful format in TV. Unfortunately the need to keep contributors onside, coupled with the need for production teams to construct stories that could be contained within affordable schedules, meant that most of the shows I watched while planning Who Do You Think You Are? didn’t feel like authentic quests at all. (You all know what I’m talking about here. The presenter/protagonist arrives outside a house and addresses the camera: ‘Let’s find out if there is anyone at home.’ Meanwhile you are shouting at the TV screen: ‘Of course there is someone at home. You’ve just brought a film crew with you!’) How then to square the circle between the need to have a story with a beginning, middle and end, and a narrative which seemed to unfold with genuine uncertainty. There was only one solution. The film crew could know (indeed had to know) everything about the next two weeks’ filming. Our celebrity could know precisely nothing. This didn’t just make for ethical dilemmas; it made for practical dilemmas too. Crews had to be sworn to silence for the entire duration of the shoot. And in the hothouse atmosphere of a film shoot where everyone is travelling together, eating together and at least sleeping in the same hotel, this would prove a big challenge. Foreign travel presents even bigger challenges. Visas have to be applied for, and passenger information supplied. Agents (and even relatives) are asked to play the part of conspirators, providing necessary information while revealing as little as possible to the protagonist. Often the celebrity is told little more than: ‘Bring your passport and enough warm clothes for four days.’ And as for ‘informed consent’, well, we do tell people what the programme is about, but as to how their contribution is going to be used, we can’t say much more than: ‘Look, we can’t promise to sugar-coat this story. You may find out things that will make you angry and upset. If you feel you are not up to that, now is the time to tell us.’ To which most people say: ‘Bring it on.’ They are actively hoping for a bit of juicy scandal. Their biggest fear is that they will turn

9781784533946.indd 204

09/09/2015 15:16

Factual Formats

205

out to be boring. (Though most of them are smart enough to figure out that if they really were boring they wouldn’t have made it onto the show). But of course, as Patsy Kensit found out to her cost, it is one thing to sign up to the idea of this magical mystery tour, another thing entirely to have to live it day by day. The next few days for the Patsy production team were a flurry of frenetic activity. Elaborately planned shoots had to be cancelled. Film crews, experts and locations had to be stood down or at least put on standby. Meanwhile Patsy, understandably, wasn’t taking calls. Fortunately for us, however, her agent was being extremely helpful and acting as a go-between in the negotiations that followed. We were of course desperate to tell her everything. We wanted to explain that far from taking her deeper into the criminal underworld, this episode would reveal her to be descended from a line of remarkable men; almost saintly clergymen, working in the impoverished, overcrowded conditions of London’s East End, one of whom would receive one of the Church of England’s highest accolades, a Lambeth MA, presented to clergymen who hadn’t been to university but had given exceptional service to the church. But we just couldn’t. All we could say was – trust us. Trust me, I’m a television producer. Has a great ring to it, doesn’t it? Other celebrity shows of course, from I’m a Celebrity to Celebrity Big Brother, invite celebrities to expose themselves to public humiliation. But generally these shows content themselves with participants from the ‘C-list’ or occasionally even the ‘Z-list’ list. And while some of these celebrities prove more adept at playing the game than others, the rules and the outcomes are more or less transparent. We on the other hand were dealing exclusively with ‘A-list’ list celebrities: people who rarely appeared on television other than in circumstances where they were in total control. They had agents, managers, PR managers and assistants whose job it was to ensure that their carefully nurtured public profile was protected. (One public figure, who must remain nameless, turned up to the initial meeting where we outlined the process and extracted basic information about the immediate family – names, dates of birth, etc. – with an entourage of 12 people! Unfortunately this person’s

9781784533946.indd 205

09/09/2015 15:16

206

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

family was not as interesting as they were, and we did not proceed with the film.) And unlike other reality shows, we were asking our celebrities to cede almost total control. Our show is the television equivalent of being bundled into a white transit van and dumped somewhere in the Scottish highlands with only a family tree for company. And, bluntly, this approach is a large part of the show’s success. The emotional reactions are powerful because they are real. You are experiencing that moment of revelation with the subject and they are sharing it with you. There is nowhere to hide. Shock, surprise, hysterical laughter and of course, tears – they are all there on camera. And for the celebrity, that can be very exposing. We did have one card we could play in this plea for trust. From the very first series, I had argued that our celebrities should be able to view the film before transmission. This was a decision I did not take lightly. While there is no specific prohibition against showing films to contributors, it is a practice which most producers and broadcasters I know are distinctly uneasy about. However many caveats one inserts, the implication is that one is ceding editorial control. The very act of showing the film is an invitation to make changes. Nevertheless, I felt from early on that this was a necessary quid pro quo for what we were asking our celebrities to do. Removing any semblance of control over the narrative, I felt I had to give them a chance to take stock of the results in the cold light of day. The terms of such a viewing were strictly set: we would listen to any concerns they had but we would not guarantee to change anything, and then only matters of fact. Editorial control would remain firmly with Wall to Wall and the BBC. Interestingly, while many of our celebrities avail themselves of this privilege, only a tiny number have actually requested any changes, and those have usually been trivial. I did spend two hours with David Baddiel who, with excessive politeness, tried to explain to me how he would have directed a better film than the one we came up with. He was convinced we had left hidden gems on the cutting room floor. We hadn’t. Ian Hislop on the other hand did succeed in convincing me that my decision to drop the story of his mum’s life in Nazi-occupied

9781784533946.indd 206

09/09/2015 15:16

Factual Formats

207

Germany was a mistake. To be fair, half the production team took the same view. I agreed to take another look and decided that he – and they – were right. The result was a better film. In general though, even those who are most disappointed by the outcome (John Hurt’s discovery that he was neither Irish nor aristocratic was a particularly cruel blow) respect the integrity of the process and the authenticity of the outcome. But I firmly believe the chance to view the film in its almost-finished state is part of that process, and the fact that the offer is made actually makes it less likely that people will use it to influence the outcome. After three or four days, Patsy came back on board. You can see her emotional state in the final cut: wary and nervous but willing to give us the benefit of the doubt. Filming days were re-scheduled. Crews and locations re-booked. And before long, the tears begin to flow. And flow. In a series that has become famous for making famous people cry, Patsy Kensit outdoes them all. Reading a eulogy to her great-great-great grandfather James Dennis, the longserving sexton of Beckenham church, she breaks down. Between sobs, she explains clearly why this journey has been so traumatic for her. She talks of her own religious beliefs, her fears that her family might be incorrigibly wicked, and the enormous relief at discovering some unalloyed goodness and kindness among her ancestors. It is a moment of genuine redemption and everyone including the present rector of the Church was very moved. A confession here. I love it when our celebrities cry. I’ve always been a follower of Victorian novelist Charles Reade in my storytelling. (‘Make them laugh; make them cry; make them wait.’) But in this case, even I felt things had gone too far. If you look carefully at that scene in Beckenham church you will see there is a rather obvious unmotivated cutaway of the angels in the architecture. It was the only way we could cut around Patsy’s free-flowing tears. Of course editing out tears after the fact is the easy part. For the film crews on location, the judgement about when to stop filming is a harder one. There is no hard and fast rule. Strong emotions are very much part of the story we are trying to tell, and a big part of the narrative power of the series. At the same time, editorial guidelines stress the importance of sensitivity when portraying people in a state of distress. Most of our directors and crews have learned

9781784533946.indd 207

09/09/2015 15:16

208

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

how to be sensitive. And we make it clear to our celebrities that if they want us to stop filming, they only have to ask. Some simply leave the room which, for example in the case of Moira Stuart or Natasha Kaplinsky, can provide a powerful moment in itself. Some people argue that celebrities are pros and can therefore be treated differently to so-called ‘ordinary people’. But I am not of that view. Indeed, I am often asked why we don’t include ‘ordinary people’ in Who Do You Think You Are? and my answer is always the same: we do. Generally, genealogically speaking, they are ordinary people who happen to have become famous. They therefore deserve the same treatment we would give to anyone. Patsy Kensit’s episode was the opening episode of series five in August 2008. Patsy graced the cover of that week’s Radio Times and the episode remains one of the top five rated shows in the entire history of the programme. A testament to Patsy’s courage in being willing to carry on, and to the patience and sensitivity of the production team. Former BBC Director of Television Jana Bennett once praised what she called the ‘hidden methodology’ to Who Do You Think You Are? It looks simple but (as producers and directors new to the show sometimes discover to their cost) it is demanding and complicated to make. Of course I firmly believe the ethical dilemmas that the programme poses are directly proportional to the emotional impact and the continued popularity of the series with audiences around the world. Which is why I hope we’ll continue to wrestle with them for some time to come.

9781784533946.indd 208

09/09/2015 15:16

25 L ong-T er m P r o j ec ts Steve James

45. Steve James, standing, at work on location. Photograph courtesy of Kartemquin Films

Steve James is the producer and director of Hoop Dreams, which follows two high-school students over a five-year period as they pursue their ambition of becoming professional basketball players. The film won a Peabody award, the Sundance audience award for best documentary, and a Directors Guild of America award for outstanding directorial achievement. His other films include Stevie, a documentary about James’ own relationship with a troubled young man, and the Emmy award-winning observational documentary The Interrupters, about violence on the streets of Chicago.

9781784533946.indd 209

09/09/2015 15:16

210

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

I

’ve had the opportunity in some of my films to follow stories over a period of years. The advantages of so-called ‘longitudinal filmmaking’ are many for the film and filmmaker. Instead of capturing a snapshot of a person’s life – freezing them, so to speak, at a very specific time in their lives and within a very specific set of circumstances – one is able to present a person in a narrative context. You can see someone’s life evolving and changing, which allows for a more complex portrait and understanding of who this person is or becomes. Filming over the course of years makes the filming experience for the filmmaker one of true discovery, for no matter who we think a person is at the beginning of the project or what story we think we are telling, we inevitably find our subjects and story change in surprising and dramatic ways. I often come to feel that I am living inside an unfolding real life novel. In two longitudinal films of mine – Hoop Dreams and Stevie – the stories felt like Dickens and Faulkner, respectively. The resulting experiences for me on a personal and creative level were eye-opening, deeply moving and profound. But what about the subjects or characters themselves? (I’ve never found a satisfying name for the people we film in documentaries. ‘Subjects’ feels like we are studying them in a science lab. ‘Characters’ feels like we are turning them into fictional creations.) What do they really get from the experience? I have found it can be a good deal more complicated.

Most people who agree to be in a documentary are at first surprised, then flattered by the prospect. If they’re not famous, they often don’t understand why they’re worthy of such attention. Really? Me as a subject of a movie? It immediately causes them to look at their life in a different way. To think that someone – a stranger and a filmmaker no less – believes their life to matter so much that it should be captured for posterity; it flatters them, of course. But they, like the filmmaker, cannot predict the future, or know where their life is truly headed. And I believe most subjects don’t think about the ramifications of having a filmmaker document their lives over time. They are too caught up in the moment, and the exciting prospect of this filmmaking experience. And often, the terms or the length of the filming commitment are not known at the beginning, to anyone. These circumstances, I’ve found, can send the subjects of long-term projects on their own journey of discovery, but one fraught with peril for them, since it’s their lives that will be on display.

9781784533946.indd 210

09/09/2015 15:16

Long-Term Projects

211

Such was the case with Hoop Dreams. My partners Peter Gilbert, Frederick Marx and I began the film with extremely modest intent. We were going to film intensively for three or four weeks in a poor black neighbourhood in Chicago. Through the prism of a single basketball court populated by young dreamers, washed-up ex-ballplayers, and perhaps a pro player who hailed from there, we hoped this short film would reveal the culture of the game and its hold on black inner-city America. The film would be completed in six months! But once we discovered Arthur and William, the film eventually morphed into nearly five years of filming, followed by two years of editing, as we followed the two boys’ (and their families’) lives as they tried to pursue their own individual hoop dreams. Of the two, Arthur Agee and his family’s story would become more fraught with ethical questions. When we first met them, family life appeared stable, and Arthur was soon on his way to attend St Joseph’s, the Catholic basketball powerhouse in the western suburbs. Arthur’s tenure at the school was brief, though. His family was unable to keep up with their part of the private school tuition payments, and so the school kicked Arthur out in the winter of his sophomore year. We learned that had Arthur been a more valuable basketball prospect like William, arrangements would have been made, and their tuition payments covered by a wealthy donor. Instead, Arthur found himself returning to Marshall High, the poor public high school in his neighbourhood. Because the Agees had no telephone to easily stay in contact, and because of our limited shooting at that time due to virtually no funding, we entirely missed capturing that part of Arthur’s story. When I finally learned what had happened, I attended a Marshall game to reconnect with Arthur. After he’d played his junior varsity game, I flagged him down to sit with me during the varsity game. His first question to me was: ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked him what he meant. ‘I didn’t think you guys would be interested in me anymore,’ he replied, staring out at the game. He went on: ‘Since St. Joe’s kicked me out, I’m not going to be no star or nothing.’ I felt sorry for Arthur at that moment. He was clearly embarrassed and saddened by having ended up back at Marshall. But I also had two other thoughts. Firstly, even before St. Joe’s sent Arthur packing, we ourselves had never been convinced that Arthur would be a star. In fact, it was one of the reasons that

9781784533946.indd 211

09/09/2015 15:16

212

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

we’d originally decided to follow William along with Arthur. Coach Pingatore at St. Joe’s had told us that William had the potential to be ‘the next Isiah Thomas’ – the then NBA All-Star who had played for the high school. Since we clearly wanted to follow a kid with real star potential, we talked at the beginning about following both boys for a while and then picking one on whom to focus the film. We expected that would likely be William. The second thought I had sitting there in the stands with Arthur was that his story just got a lot more interesting because he didn’t appear to have star potential. This turn of events was both dramatically compelling and the first indication to me of just how ruthless the business of basketball could be even at the high school level. It was also not lost on me how ruthless the business of filmmaking could be when looking at the lives of our subjects. So I felt both sorry for Arthur and guilty for reducing his life to a great plot turn in the story we were telling. I told him that we wouldn’t abandon him because of what St. Joe’s did, that we wanted to tell his story no matter what happens to his basketball career. He took comfort in that. In fact, I think it even boosted his spirits because – I would come to realise later – our filming was one of the few positive things going on in Arthur’s life. We would soon find out that the reason his family had failed to pay their part of the tuition was due to turmoil within the family. Bo, the father, had lost his job. The fact that three white filmmakers had chosen Arthur to be the subject of a film – a movie – had made him feel much better about his troubled life. Our following Arthur and his family provided a kind of anchor through the hard times, though it hardly prevented them. We became confidants to Arthur and his mother Sheila, and the filming came to mean that the struggles they weathered would somehow matter more. They wouldn’t, like countless other families in besieged communities, suffer their fate in anonymity. Their story would at least be told. And the act of filming would provide them with a kind of ongoing therapeutic experience – an opportunity for them to examine their own lives, at the same time as we examined their lives as outsiders. All of which, of course, made the film significantly richer and more affecting as drama. There was one real moment when these mutual ‘benefits’ clashed. During junior year, the Agees hit bottom. Bo was running the streets and Sheila had lost her job as an attendant at a retirement home due to a back injury. They ended up on welfare

9781784533946.indd 212

09/09/2015 15:16

Long-Term Projects

213

and couldn’t pay their electric bill. Their power was turned off and they found themselves sitting in the dark. I learned of this from Sheila and had to convince her to let us film it. She was understandably worried that this would be profoundly embarrassing for her and Arthur: that seeing them like this, people would think she was another ‘welfare queen’ with no job and living on the dole. Of course nothing could have been further from the truth. I told her that revealing their circumstances would actually be a corrective to such harsh and unfair judgements. Sheila finally agreed, but we both worried about how Arthur would feel. I did something insensitive and unethical. I arranged for us to film Sheila in the dark apartment one day behind Arthur’s back while he was at basketball practice. But in the middle of our filming, he showed up. He was not happy. Arthur and I didn’t talk that out because Sheila told me it would be best for her to handle it. It wasn’t until some years later that I actually apologised to Arthur for that day. But by then, Hoop Dreams had been released, and had become a very successful documentary. The Agees’ story had moved so many viewers, and that moment in the darkened apartment had become one of the more memorable in the film. Arthur waved off my apology. He understood, he said. You could say that we had all become ‘winners’ in the end. We filmmakers got a better film, and the Agees enjoyed a not insignificant degree of fame and eventual financial reward (we shared the film’s profits with them). Arthur and his dad Bo even launched their own rolemodel foundation in the wake of the film’s success. But if we all benefited, the stakes were so much higher for the family. They lived through hell and still had the courage to intimately and candidly share it all with us. To trust that they would not regret giving us such access to their troubled lives was an extraordinary – and at the time, a desperate – leap of faith. With my next documentary, Stevie, the desperation on the part of the subject was even greater, and the ethical dilemmas involved much more acute. Unlike any other film I’ve made, I had a pre-existing relationship with the main subject. In the case of Stevie Fielding, I had been his advocate Big Brother for nearly three years while I was going to school in southern Illinois. His

9781784533946.indd 213

09/09/2015 15:16

214

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

life had been a tragedy: born to an unknown father and a single mother who beat him unmercifully, and then abandoned him when she got married. Stevie lived 50 yards down the road from her with his step-grandmother, knowing full well that his mother didn’t want him. He was 14 years old when I left to start a career in Chicago. I returned after Hoop Dreams with the intent of making a short film portrait of what had become of him in the intervening ten years. My first shoot in the spring of 1995 was a sobering one. I don’t know what I had naively expected, but Stevie’s life since I left had included stints in numerous foster homes, being committed to a state mental institution, jail time, and a brief marriage marred by violence. I left after that initial shoot wondering whether I should – or could – continue to make the film. For the next two years, the decision was made for me. I landed an opportunity to direct my first feature film, Prefontaine. That film was completed early in 1997, and my thoughts returned again to Stevie. I called him with hopes of resuming the portrait film. I found out that he’d been jailed three days earlier for sexually molesting his eight-year-old cousin. I spoke to him in jail, and he told me that he wanted to recant the confession he’d given the police, that he was innocent. A couple of days later, Stevie’s sister Brenda came forward to say that he had molested her years earlier when they were kids. She did this not to bury him, but with hopes that it would help authorities realise that Stevie needed help more than prison. I ruminated for days over whether to try to continue with the film. My wife, Judy, was against it. She happens to be a therapist for sex offenders and worried that continuing with the film would undermine what little self-esteem he had, especially given the horror story that was emerging. I made what I now know was a lame counterargument: that the film might reinforce his selfesteem by making him feel that his life was worthy of being examined. Maybe that had been true on Hoop Dreams, but not here. Judy pointed out that sex offenders are viewed by society as worse than murderers. If Stevie is indeed guilty, how could a film possibly ‘redeem him’? I called Stevie in prison to discuss it all with him and see what he wanted to do. But the truth is, I’d made up my mind to continue. Of course it was up to Stevie, but I knew it would hardly be a fair fight. Successful documentary filmmakers are persuasive if

9781784533946.indd 214

09/09/2015 15:16

Long-Term Projects

215

46. Steve James with Stevie Fielding, the subject of his film Stevie. Photograph courtesy of Kartemquin Films

nothing else, and know what buttons to push. With Stevie, I wasn’t completely shameless. I didn’t tell him that I thought him innocent and that the film would track his story and expose this injustice. No, I told him that I believed he was guilty and that the reason to do the film was to help people understand how he’d arrived at this place in his life. Knowing his murderous rage for his mom, Bernice, I told him we would bring that tortured history into the open and show how her early abuse and ultimate rejection had profoundly impacted him. Stevie liked that. Holding his mom to account fuelled his long-running desire for revenge. He said yes to continuing with the film. A month later, after a couple more shoots, I wrote in my journal: I know all the reasons for doing this film, for continuing, especially now that events have taken such a dramatic, if depressing turn. I know that the aim is to reveal Stevie and his past, and how despite the best intentions of some of those who work in it, the system has failed Stevie. I see the larger social value of telling his story. It will in some ways, I hope, redeem Stevie as a human being and not leave him as a budding monster. But I can’t shake the guilt I feel over doing it. As if I’ve used our friendship from the past as a means to tell a nasty

9781784533946.indd 215

09/09/2015 15:16

216

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

little story. I can’t shake the feeling that Stevie himself would choose to suffer in obscurity rather than be redeemed in public. This feeling haunted me throughout the entire making of the film. It never caused me to abandon it. But it did prompt me to put myself in the film far more substantively then I’d ever imagined. My formal reasoning was that I was now a part of Stevie’s story because I was no longer just making the film, but once again acting as a Big Brother to Stevie as he navigated the personal and legal fallout from his arrest. My deeper reasons might have been to also hold myself accountable for my decision to make the film. To let the audience see this flawed filmmaker whose motives and actions are suspect. It’s one of the reasons why at several junctures in the film I include unflattering moments that normally are left out of documentaries. At one point, I am interrogating Stevie’s mother over her treatment of Stevie as a child. I tell Bernice in the scene that my intentions are not to grill her, but in my voice-over, I acknowledge that ‘I proceeded to do just that.’ Later, on camera you see me pick at a scab of a supposedly resolved disagreement between Bernice and Brenda until the wound is reopened and they reveal how unresolved the issue truly is. Bernice turns to me, in tears, and asks, ‘Why do you do this?’ It would have been easy to make this scene play without implicating my actions. There have been times in other films when I have employed similar strategies and left them on the cutting room floor. But in this film, it felt dishonest to not show my machinations. I needed to hold myself up to the same critical light I was holding everyone else up to in this story. Nearer the end of the film, Stevie and his girlfriend Tonya visit me in Chicago before the sentencing hearing that will send him to prison for ten years. They go to a nightclub where Stevie ends up getting drunk and belligerent, in part because the club gave him free drinks due to our filming. At the end of the scene, Stevie is sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, barely coherent, as I angrily cajole him to get up. In my voice-over, I reveal that years ago when I had served as his Big Brother, I’d never thought of him as a film subject. The voice-over says: ‘Tonight, it’s as if that’s all he was to me.’ That sentiment might have been a little harsh on me, fuelled as it was by my having allowed him to drink unresponsibly and then filmed the awful outcome dispassionately. But I felt I deserved the reprimand.

9781784533946.indd 216

09/09/2015 15:16

Long-Term Projects

217

By the end of the film, I had come to two realisations. The first was that Stevie’s real reason for continuing on with the film had less to do with wanting to expose his mom and more to do with wanting to spend more time with me. He missed my wife, Judy and me from all those years before. And secondly, I realised that as much as I wanted to believe that it was Stevie’s legal travails that had brought me back into his life, there was no disputing the fact that making the film had made me more committed to helping him. I remained in his life after the film was done, when he went to prison for 11 years. Still, I do take some comfort in the fact that this film continues to be watched in universities – in sociology and social work departments focusing on questions of what society does with those we deem too poor, too uneducated and too damaged to save. It’s also shown in film departments, often to spur discussion on documentary ethics. And I know the film is used in the field by Big Brother organisations, foster care institutions, and counselling centres that deal with sexually violent persons. Is that rationalisation on my part? Sure. But it’s also undeniable that Stevie’s tortured life is having a positive impact that it never would have done, if no film had been made. Stevie is the most honest, painful, and uncompromising documentary I have made. I expect it will remain so when my career is over.

9781784533946.indd 217

09/09/2015 15:16

26 L a r ge -S c al e P r o j ec t s Amy Flanagan

47. Amy Flanagan. Photograph courtesy of Channel 4

Amy Flanagan is Deputy Head of Documentaries at Channel 4, where she has worked in commissioning  since January 2014. Previously, she was executive producer on the BAFTA-winning Channel 4 series Bedlam, the Bafta-nominated Keeping Britain Alive for BBC2 and series producer and director on the RTS-winning first series of 24 Hours in A&E. Her other credits include the critically acclaimed documentaries The Artful Codgers and the Bafta-winning Feltham Sings, both for Channel 4.

9781784533946.indd 219

09/09/2015 15:16

220

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

W

hen I was asked to make the first series of 24 Hours in A&E, I thought it was unmakeable – and unmakeable for ethical reasons.

How on earth would it be possible to make something of this scale, with this degree of moral complexity, in an ethical way – and make it good television to boot? Until now, all programmes of this scale were dramas, with a script, actors, hundreds of extras and a massive production team. But this was to be an observational documentary, traditionally the province of one director possessed of a single camera, several months to make it, and a carefully built relationship of trust with a few contributors. We, however, had been commissioned to shoot a 14-part series in four weeks, with 70 cameras manned by a production team of 80, in an emergency department where hundreds of staff treated over 300 patients every day. It cut against every tenet of traditional documentary making. But I liked the challenge and agreed to do it. Two weeks before I was due to start, I had a phone call to say that my father had had a massive stroke. He had collapsed on a street in Northampton and had been rushed into the nearest A&E. His mother had died young of a stroke 40 years before. The first week we spent at his bedside in hospital was the most terrible week of our family’s collective life. He was in and out of consciousness, in enormous pain, and his blood pressure wouldn’t come down. The atmosphere around his bed was highly emotionally charged – our complacent family bubble had spectacularly burst, as we all sat terrified that he might die any minute. The very idea of a young researcher approaching me and my family at this intense and frightening time was unthinkable. It made me question whether any attempt to negotiate access to a situation like the one we found ourselves in was fundamentally too intrusive. And yet, the very point of filming with a fixed-rig in an A&E department was to capture with unmediated intimacy incredibly emotional situations exactly like ours. The problem is, unlike a maternity ward such as the one captured in One Born Every Minute, no one wants to be in A&E. Most people

9781784533946.indd 220

09/09/2015 15:16

Large-Scale Projects

221

are in pain and many are vulnerable and frightened. For some, the stakes are as high as they come: life or death. Was it right not only to film in, but to rig a place of refuge – a place where people go when they are in dire straits, often don’t really know what’s going on and are in a genuine state of emergency – just to make a television series? The answer to that question would only be yes if we could successfully navigate an ethical minefield. We would be telling individual stories – some tragic, some comic and lots in between – and using them to shed light on the bigger picture of why the public uses and needs emergency departments, at a crucial time in the history of the National Health Service. It is the eternal dilemma we have as documentary makers: treading the line between legitimate inquiry and intrusion into personal lives in order to help us better understand the world we live in. There was always good reason to be in A&E. It was how we would manage it when we were actually in there that presented the dilemmas. I moved home to help look after my father and pulled out of the job, but offered to hire the team and manage some of the pre-production until they found a replacement series producer. I knew that before a single shot was filmed, there would have to be a protocol in place. But like all protocols, it would be black and white. I also knew that we would find all of life in King’s College Hospital’s A&E department – people from all backgrounds, there for all sorts of reasons, stories in every shade of grey. We would therefore need people on the team who were not only sensitive but who had good judgement of their own when facing stories that didn’t fit a simple box to tick; people who knew a good story but who had their own steadfast moral compass despite the pressures of filming. The challenges of filming would be exacerbated a hundred-fold on this series. What we were expected to film was unprecedented – one episode every other day, which is to say that we needed an hour’s worth of content, and an hour’s worth of people consenting, every 48 hours. Most hour-long documentaries are filmed over weeks if not months. As my father slowly recovered, the team grew. Fundamentally, I had hired people whom I would like to approach my own family, who would have known when and how to do it and who would also know whether, in some cases, to approach at all. It became

9781784533946.indd 221

09/09/2015 15:16

222

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

more reassuring to me having people on the team whom Anthony Philipson, the series director, and I both trusted. I decided to stay on. It also made a difference that our agreement with King’s was an incremental one. We were working out together with them how we would approach the filming and what the moral parameters might be. They didn’t formally commit to the actual filming until six weeks before it started. The first challenge we had to negotiate was how we would go about building relationships with the contributors when there were so many of us in the production team, and so many of them in A&E. There could be up to 400 people in A&E each day. How on earth could we build a relationship of trust (the foundation which underpins all documentaries) when half the contributors had no idea they would even be in A&E that day (the patients) and the other half were on a dizzying variety of ever-changing and often unpredictable shift patterns (the staff)? Despite the Big Brother technology, we were after all making a documentary series, not an entertainment show, and the basic rules of documentary-making still applied. We started working with the only known element we had – the staff. We began to drip-feed a steadily increasing number of producers and assistant producers (APs) into the department to shadow different members of staff at work, and to start getting to know them. By constantly changing our own shift patterns, after a few weeks, a core team of about 25 producers and APs had begun to build relationships with a core group of the 200+ doctors, nurses and porters who were interested in taking part. As we got to know the staff, the team began to work out where the interesting stories unfolded: in ‘Resus’ (short for ‘Resuscitation’) where the most serious cases were rushed in; at the nurses’ station in ‘Majors’ where stressed-out sisters juggled beds; in cubicles in ‘Minors’ where ailments were diagnosed; and in the Waiting Room where bored patients passed the time of day. These were all the places we definitely wanted to put cameras – but every single camera spot presented an ethical dilemma of its own. We would eventually be fixing 70 cameras to the walls of the department, but would only ever actually be filming on six cameras at any one time. This was not CCTV, but a way of filming which

9781784533946.indd 222

09/09/2015 15:16

Large-Scale Projects

223

would allow us to capture simultaneous action throughout the emergency department and to film documentary scenes (that you might normally film with a single camera) with three cameras from different angles at the same time, making it feel like drama. For example, we could film relatives in the family room waiting for news while also filming the trauma team working on the patient in the room next door. It would also allow us to film in extremely sensitive situations without getting in the way. However, each of the 70 cameras, with their own correlating screen in the gallery, was a window with a different view, a robotic cameraman in waiting, should we press the button. In a normal documentary, the camera crew is obvious and visible – a small team holding equipment – but here, the cameras were the size of footballs, painted white. In an environment already full of beeping machines, they could easily be mistaken for medical equipment by the general public. This was both an advantage and a problem. It would be an advantage once someone had given their consent to be filmed because they were so unobtrusive. But it was also morally problematic and posed three key questions. How could we make sure that this vast flux of people coming in and out of the department were aware of the cameras? How and when would we approach them for their consent? Finally, the question of privacy: forget filming, what should we even be  seeing  through these 70 windows, whether we were recording or not? In the Waiting Room, consent seemed most straightforward. A researcher would approach the patients, only once they’d taken a ticket and sat down to wait, to let them know about the filming. They would ask them if they were happy to have their story in the emergency department filmed, and would reassure them that we couldn’t broadcast even a shot of them without their written consent. So far, so good. But those patients in the Waiting Room would go on to get treated, mostly in Minors. What would happen if patients who didn’t want to be filmed ended up being treated in a cubicle already rigged with cameras? Once the cameras were installed we realised that we would still be able to see things we shouldn’t, even if the cameras weren’t recording, breaking every privacy law in the book. So, we

9781784533946.indd 223

09/09/2015 15:16

224

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

changed the protocol to ensure that all cameras in all the cubicles should be turned towards the wall by default and only remotely turned round once a patient had given their consent. Yet another unforeseen hurdle came from the mental health team. There were lots of mental health patients coming into the emergency department from the Maudsley Hospital across the road. Many of the patients they treated had paranoid schizophrenia. Some of them also had surveillance issues – fears that they were being watched by the CIA, MI5 or the Illuminati. And they’d be walking into a hospital rigged with 70 cameras … So again, we changed the protocol. We couldn’t take the cameras down every time one of these patients came in, but the psychiatric team suggested that any patient with a mental illness whose story we were filming should be filmed by a director standing in front of them with a hand-held camera. They were worried that remotely operated cameras moving in the patient’s direction might fuel their delusions. As the team embedded in the hospital, the complexity of real cases began to hit home. A woman came into the Waiting Room for three days running with painful hands. She turned out to have Munchausen’s syndrome, a mental illness where people feign trauma or illness to gain sympathy or attention. It’s also known as hospital-addiction syndrome. Was she able to give her consent? Would we have been inadvertently encouraging her, once we knew she had Munchausen’s, by giving her attention every time she came in? A gang of young men came in to support their friend who had been stabbed. Most were 16 and were actually from a rival gang. They looked and said they were older. Would we need their parents’ permission to even film the 16-year-olds? Would it have been irresponsible to film both sides and exacerbate an already flammable situation with vulnerable kids, despite their bravado? A lot of these cases weren’t what they first appeared to be, which is partly what made them perfect for television, but none of them neatly fitted categories in the protocol. They had all the messiness and unpredictability of real life and real people. And the messiest

9781784533946.indd 224

09/09/2015 15:16

Large-Scale Projects

225

place of all – the place with the most complex cases that would keep me awake at night during the shoot – was Resus, where all the most serious cases were brought. A patient was rushed in to Resus with life-threatening burns. He turned out to be a doctor in the department and a colleague of the staff there. A man dying of an unknown condition. His next of kin didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation and wouldn’t come into the hospital. It turned out that his wife had dementia and his daughter schizophrenia. All the cases in Resus presented a slew of ethical issues. Unconscious patients, sometimes alone. Traumatised relatives desperate for news. Doctors and nurses working at the epicentre of dramatic human stories of life and death. There was no doubt that the stories unfolding here were the stuff of ER and other television dramas. But these were real families, like mine two months before. Terrified, unconscious, many at a life-changing moment, and often one that would change life for the worse. But without these stories, we would have a 14-part series about toe-nails, cut fingers and sprained wrists. These stories in Resus would be the emotional backbone to the series, would give us the emotional highs and lows, the drama and jeopardy, and crucially also the narratives to carry you through each episode. The hospital was also keen for us to show the life-saving work they carried out on a daily basis. Consent here was based on the protocol already followed by most broadcasters for filming seriously ill patients of this nature. The doctor would always ask the patients in Resus about filming; we would never make the first approach ourselves. But the doctors made it clear to the patients  that the footage could only be broadcast with the consent of these patients later on. In the case of unconscious patients, the doctors would ask their families for consent. If they were unconscious and alone, the doctors would decide about filming on the patient’s behalf. I knew we had to put our most experienced producers in this part of the department; the atmosphere in Resus could get

9781784533946.indd 225

09/09/2015 15:16

226

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

incredibly emotionally charged as expectant relatives were given news. Knowing when, if at all, to approach people was key.  But they would have to approach people, because we needed to capture those stories. For the four producers here, it would be an emotionally draining month. All the cases filmed here were editorially high risk. Given the fact that every Resus patient whose story was featured would at a later date have to give consent again for the footage to be broadcast, there was a risk that we would not be able to use some or any of the material. They might be asked for that consent four weeks later in some cases, or four months in others. When no longer traumatised, full of drugs, drink or morphine, they might not want to re-live their time in hospital, and particularly not on national television. They might not even remember that they had consented to be filmed. Two days before the shoot started, as the riggers were trying to thread 24 km of camera cabling through the ceiling of the main corridor in the emergency department, part of the old ceiling fell down onto the busy hospital floor. While outwardly reassuring, the incredibly brave Chris Rolfe (Head of Communications) and Briony Sloper (Head of the Emergency Department), who had both championed the series at King’s, were concerned. It was a terrifying moment for all of us. The shoot started. I was on location for 20 hours a day for the first week in a constant state of anxiety about me or one of my team making the wrong call. From day one, the moral dilemmas kept coming thick and fast. A 9-year-old is rushed into A&E, unconscious, having been hit by a car. His father is traumatised and praying on the floor in the corridor. His mother isn’t present. The doctors inside Resus think he might die. Can we approach the father? Is it appropriate to film? A 46-year-old man is brought in with serious diabetes and is seriously ill. He consents but begins to deteriorate and within four hours of arriving, he no longer knows his own name. It soon transpires that the man has schizophrenia and is known to the mental health team. He has also stopped taking his schizophrenia medication and is no longer able to give informed consent. Do we carry on filming?

9781784533946.indd 226

09/09/2015 15:16

Large-Scale Projects

227

A man is folded in half under a bus. He’s alone and completely unconscious. Should we be filming at all? A man in his twenties has taken a drug overdose. He is recovering in Resus and is conscious. As the nurse leaves his cubicle, we see him lean across to a drawer by his bed, rummage around and pull out a syringe and a bottle of liquid he happens to find. He fills up the syringe and is about to inject himself. Do we carry on filming? Or immediately stop and tell a member of staff? We filmed all of these cases and many others like them. Often, the families weren’t approached for several hours, until it was more appropriate. In many cases, we would just concentrate on filming the staff, and would include the patients once they’d given consent. In the case of the young man who had overdosed, we immediately told staff. The moral line here was very clear. The patient could have killed himself. During the shoot, of course we made some mistakes. An overefficient producer asked a doctor to turn off a machine which was making a loud beeping noise because it affected the sound in the gallery. It was a patient’s heart monitor. You can imagine what the doctor said. A vulnerable patient was moved out of sight of the sister in Majors because a researcher wanted to put a consenting patient in a rigged bay. And another very sensitive producer approached a relative with a cup of tea only to have her shout ‘My mother is having a heart attack!’ before speedily backing away from her bedside. But we got a lot right. In the month that we were there, 10,000 patients came through the doors. Some people died. Many more were saved. About one-fifth of the patients agreed to be filmed for the series. For some it was an entertaining way to pass the time. For others, it was an unexpected comfort and distraction. Incredibly, almost every Resus patient whose story was filmed gave us secondary consent later on when we asked: people who’d suffered brain damage, should have died, been run over, had strokes, fallen off bikes, under buses, down ladders. For many of these people, I think what we filmed became a record of trauma survived together, as a family. For others, our filming preserved a memory of a loved one lost.

9781784533946.indd 227

09/09/2015 15:16

228

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

I also think that the most vulnerable agreed to take part because their vulnerability was recognised throughout the process – that  they  could decide whether their experience was shared or not, months later. This both put them at the centre of the decision-making process, but also gave them enough confidence in us to take part in the first place. We didn’t have time to build a relationship with those patients beforehand, but we empowered them afterwards. As far as the hospital was concerned, our relationships underpinned the whole process. On all access-based documentary series, issues arise all the time. On a documentary series of this scale, it was inevitable that there would be a slew of issues to resolve and problems to solve, but the key to it all was an open dialogue with staff, and a commitment to resolve issues together as they arose. How do you make a series of this scale, with these complex ethical dilemmas? We worked with a very brave institution, who trusted us enough in the end to let us take their ceilings down and put 70 cameras into their workplace. But just as important, the team of people who worked on it had big hearts, their own moral compasses, and most of them I know would ask themselves the question, over and above the protocol – would this be okay if it was my dad?

9781784533946.indd 228

09/09/2015 15:16

27 Humour Morgan Spurlock

48. Morgan Spurlock, during the making of Super Size Me. Roadside / Goldwyn / The Kobal Collection

Morgan Spurlock is a documentary filmmaker and writer. His films include: Super Size Me, which won the best director award at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar; Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?, about the Al-Qaeda leader and the US ‘war on terror’; and POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, a documentary about, and entirely funded by, product placement.

9781784533946.indd 229

09/09/2015 15:16

230

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

H

umour helps documentary filmmakers make a connection. It gets people’s guard down, so I try to use humour as much as possible, to get people engaged in a story. We have a mantra at my company: ‘If you can make someone laugh, you can make someone listen.’ I think humour makes almost anything accessible. Throughout history, it’s been used to explore terrible issues and topics. It allows people to have a discussion around those issues in a way that they feel comfortable. Comedy doesn’t necessarily detract from the seriousness of an issue. It actually gives you permission to think about it. But people don’t always agree. After I made Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?, we were criticised for trivialising the issues, for making light of a serious subject, and even accused of making a joke out of terrorism. And we did think hard when we were making the film; how far should we go, ethically speaking? Is there a line, and if so, where is it? From a documentary standpoint, there are probably some things that it would be hard to make funny because they are so dark, but not many. And that changes over time. If you want a film to be entertaining, and to draw people in to think about a serious subject, the most important thing is to be thoughtful about how you use humour, and when.

I want people to come to my films and know it’s okay to laugh. That this is going to be a fun experience, and there are going to be uncomfortable parts that are okay to laugh at. So we draw you in, frame by frame, and you’re laughing and enjoying yourself, and then suddenly things get serious. There are scenes in Where in the World? and Super Size Me where suddenly you’re not laughing, like the Taliban ambush or when my doctors tell me to stop. Suddenly you’re thinking about an issue and a situation that you’ve never really considered before, and that’s what we’re aiming for – to rope you into a conversation you would normally avoid. I try to use humour and comedy to both get you into those moments and get you out. You never want humour to lessen the impact of a dramatic situation, so that people in the audience say: ‘Oh this is hilarious, so it can’t be that big of a deal.’ If it’s something you want people to care about, then you can’t completely treat it as a joke. I want

9781784533946.indd 230

09/09/2015 15:16

Humour

231

49. Morgan Spurlock during the making of Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? Non-Linear Films / The Kobal Collection

the largest possible audience to see my films, and for the films to be a gateway to debate and discussion and deeper exploration, and for people to leave having their own ideas. I put a great deal of thought and research into all my films, so that the serious moments will still pack a punch. Finally, you have to think about the kind of comedy you’re using. Some comedy is cold and cruel. Some comedy is flippant and dismissive. The comedy in my films is usually ‘fish out of water’ comedy, with me or someone else being the fish – just an ordinary person in an extraordinary world. And whether that be Super Size Me or The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, the most important thing is that you and I are both just trying to make some kind of sense of it all. It’s a vicarious journey you’re on with me, and I try never to belittle other people or their ideas. If anyone gets belittled, it’s me, and when I learn, see, feel or laugh at something, so do you. Humour opens up all kinds of subjects and topics to audiences, including those who’ve never thought about those subjects and topics before. I truly believe that so long as your intention is in the right place, you’ve got something to say, and you’re not setting out to be mocking or dismissive, it’s one of the most powerful tools at a filmmaker’s disposal.

9781784533946.indd 231

09/09/2015 15:16

28 Ed i ti n g Rupert Houseman

50. Rupert Houseman. Photograph courtesy of the author.

Rupert Houseman is a documentary editor. His credits include: the Grierson-winning documentary series The Year The Town Hall Shrank; the Bafta and RTS-nominated series Coppers, about policing in modern Britain; the Bafta, Grierson and RTS award-winning 7/7: One Day in London, about the 2005 London bombings; and the Bafta-winning Bedlam, an observational documentary series set inside the world’s oldest psychiatric institution.

9781784533946.indd 233

09/09/2015 15:16

234

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

I

’m an editor, and I’ve been cutting factual films for the last 20 years. You don’t often hear from editors. We usually hide behind our subjects and let them do the talking. We make others look good or bad, and we can be found mostly in small darkened rooms or the pub (a larger darkened room, with booze). When I first set out to be a documentary editor, it was seen as an almost noble vocation, to find the truth and let the subject reveal itself. The world has changed a bit since then. It’s not good enough just to have privileged access to a subject; now we have to think about engaging the audience much more, and entertaining them. ‘Making it dance’, as they say. At best we are brave storytellers. At worst we become Machiavellian. I’m not a saint, completely innocent of ‘tricksy’ editing. But I’m not a complete bastard, nor a liar. I’m a human being and I try to ‘do as I would be done by’. There are some unscrupulous editors. I can’t speak for them, but what I can say is that, for me, every choice has a consequence, not just for the film, but also for all those involved in it. I believe the programmes you make, or in my case the programmes you edit, will reflect the person you are. You’ll bounce around a bit at the beginning of your career, but eventually you end up working on something very you. Bedlam, a Channel 4 series about the Maudsley, the oldest mental health hospital in the world, was very me. I’d suffered from anxiety a few years ago – the pressure of the job, I suppose. I ended up not being able to work for a few months and had to take antidepressants to slow me down and help me cope. The first episode was about anxiety. James, the central contributor, was suffering with extreme anxiety. He would lock himself into the toilet for hours at a time. He would constantly worry about shitting himself in public, so he needed to be sure he was ‘completely empty’. It was only the beginning of his problems. James is a sweet, open young man in his early twenties. The first time I watched him in the rushes, I really liked him. Dave Nath, the series director, was also typically brilliant with him, and within the first few hours of the 200 hours of rushes I had to watch,

9781784533946.indd 234

09/09/2015 15:16

Editing

235

I knew this film would have something new and interesting to say. Considering the subject of anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) had been well documented before, this was no mean feat.

51. James, from the series Bedlam. Photograph by and courtesy of Richard Ansett

James was doing a 12-week residential course at the Maudsley. There the therapists would try and get him to face his fears and hopefully overcome them. He was very honest with us, and let us film everything – the tasks he was set, weekend visits home, even very intimate therapy sessions. It was in these sessions where we discovered the root of James’ problems. You see, James suffered from intrusive thoughts. The kind of throw-away thoughts we all have – some of them dark, like when you’re driving to work and suddenly imagine steering your car into the path of oncoming traffic; some of them just inappropriate, like taking a really important phone call and imagining telling the person on the other end of the line to fuck off for no real reason. (I get that one a lot!) James, however, has an obsessive mind and had trouble letting go of these thoughts. Because of this, they’d mutated into absolute horrors. The issues James was having intrusive thoughts about

9781784533946.indd 235

09/09/2015 15:16

236

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

were everywhere. Operation Yewtree, the police investigation into historic cases of child abuse occasioned by the posthumous ‘outing’ of a famous celebrity as a prolific sex abuser, was in full swing. Every week we saw another old celebrity hauled into the dock and accused of paedophilic sex crimes. These events apparently had a devastating effect on those with extreme anxiety disorders, namely that many sufferers started to worry about being wrongly revealed as paedophiles. This mass psychosis is nothing new. In the 1980s, these same people worried about having AIDS. James is not a paedophile, but his anxiety convinced him he could ‘catch’ paedophilia, so he stopped engaging with anything that had been tainted. He even stopped listening to the rock band Oasis because they had borrowed a guitar riff from a Gary Glitter song. The question for us was how far should we explain the situation. These intrusive thoughts were such a massive part of James’ condition we couldn’t just ignore it. We would have to be completely clear in explaining, so we could be sure that the audience would understand. That sounds simple enough, but we would have to balance this with a desire to make the series bold and dynamic. The subject of anxiety is one that we all believe we know, so in the editing I wanted to reflect my personal experience of it, deliberately jump-cutting to unrelated elements then cutting back to the original sequence to help build up the idea of a wondering, worried mind and create a general feeling of uncertainty. I also used this technique to seed Operation Yewtree early on in the film, so when James began to talk about his fears two-thirds of the way in, the ideas were already in the minds of the audience. Our first cut was 86 minutes long, which is way over length. But it worked extraordinarily well. Don’t get me wrong, the old ‘we think it’s a 90 minute film’ scenario happens a lot in docs. I’ve cut enough 90-minute films to know that 99.9 per cent of the time – some would say 100 per cent – these sort of films are better at 60 minutes. But because of this film’s depth and intimacy, it really benefited from having the time to unpack fully. It also meant that we could explore some of the other people on the residential course with James, which helped to ground the subject. At this length, the complexities of the story didn’t feel so difficult. The audience had time to breathe and really observe. And it wasn’t a slow watch. It really romped along.

9781784533946.indd 236

09/09/2015 15:16

Editing

237

Those who saw the film inside the production company all agreed it had the legs to run as a 90-minuter, but we all knew the channel would probably have an issue with it. Who would want to sit down after a long day at work and watch 90 minutes of TV about mental health? The channel completely understood our position, but as we suspected they insisted on a 60-minute version, which on a commercial channel with ad breaks is actually 46 minutes. So I had to effectively halve the length of the film without losing content, context or its unique feel. When the call came in we had concerns that we could not tell James’ story properly without the extra time. The line from the execs was: ‘Look, we know it’s not going to be as good shorter, but what the audience don’t see they don’t miss. It will still be really good.’ But we didn’t want it to be ‘really good’. We wanted it to be great. Editing is all about making choices – refining your rushes down to something coherent, clear and compelling. And the process of refining can throw up all sorts of ethical dilemmas and problems. Stories need to be simple and easy to follow, but you can’t oversimplify. That opens the door to misrepresenting someone, and misleading the audience. Sometimes a moment or sequence or exchange that really helps make sense of a character and how they’re feeling will just get in the way of the story moving forward. So how do you do justice to the complexities of someone’s life and personality within the parameters of a (fairly short) piece of television? And the more serious the subject matter, the more difficult the choices you have to make. At times, you can really feel the pressure, especially with the clock ticking; editing is an expensive process, and you’re almost always up against it to finish on time. With some films, the choices you make are more straightforward. But that’s rarely the case with observational films, which are often filmed over months or even years, generating enormous amounts of footage. Every hour captured will contain something of worth – a new element of the story, or a bit more context or truth. You have to choose what to use, and what to leave out. In times of trouble – and we were really up against it to halve the length of the anxiety film – you rely on your experience. A couple of years before Bedlam, I’d worked on another series for Channel 4 called Coppers, about the police. At the time we were very used to

9781784533946.indd 237

09/09/2015 15:16

238

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

seeing police documentaries on TV. They’d become a bit dull and predictable. They all had lots of narration explaining everything, telling you nothing new. I was cutting the first episode of the first series, a film about custody. The director was Anthony Philipson. He’s brilliant at spotting something new in something old. He’d filmed masses and masses of stories, and when he arrived in the cutting room was unusually confident about what he’d captured. When I sat down to watch the hundred hours of rushes he’d filmed I was amazed. All the stories felt fresh. They all had amazing moments, and they all had something to say. I wanted to find a way of weaving them all together, to give a complete picture of police custody. One of the first sequences I cut started with one of the gaolers walking around and knocking on cell doors and speaking through the hatch: ‘You alright love, finished reading that? You really want to get a plaster on that love […]’ Then I cut to another gaoler having a fight with a disembodied arm that had been shoved though the hatch of a cell door: ‘Leave it! Leave it!’ These moments had entire stories connected with them but I’d ditched the stories. I just wanted to use the moments as ‘establishers’, sort of superpowered GVs (general views, used to set up a scene), and it worked really well. I loved not explaining the moments or ever returning to them. The more oblique the better. We used this technique throughout the film. It really gave you the flavour of the place, and gave the show a really rich feel. We applied some of these lessons to Bedlam. As members of the production team, we knew why people were in the anxiety unit. We knew their stories. But our plan was to make some of these contributors into cameos. The trick was not to do so disrespectfully. We treated them sensitively, and they became quite enigmatic as a result. My priority was to protect the core elements of the film, and develop James’ story. Fine in theory, but reducing these other stories would not be at all easy. In our first cut of the film, we opened with Aaron, an American man who has an obsession with numbers. He reminded me of The Dude in The Big Lebowski. He was just cool. The first thing Dave filmed with him was in his bedroom in the unit. He showed us his wardrobe and explained how difficult it was to unpack his stuff. ‘I have to count the clothes in,’ he said, and then proceeded to show

9781784533946.indd 238

09/09/2015 15:16

Editing

239

us. It was fascinating to watch. He was very honest and articulate. He explained his situation so well, it had to be the first scene of the film. Then we came back to him later, when he was counting his credit cards into his wallet: ‘Four, five, six [...] Hang on [...] That didn’t sound right. So now I’ve got to skip to fourteen, my next “magic number” [...]’. Here he told us that he lived a lie. He hadn’t told his wife about his obsessions even though he had lost whole days counting things and risked losing his job. He told us that he lost three days counting the parts of a new wristwatch. His wife was away at the time, so she didn’t know what was happening. He told us that he knew it was wrong, but he was trapped in a process. He wasn’t eating or sleeping. He was totally exhausted by it. Finally he finished putting his credit cards into his wallet and Dave asked if he could hold it? ‘No, not now, I would find that very difficult.’ Okay said Dave. Aaron told us: ‘I don’t want to be a seen as a mad man. I’ve got an illness which I’m trying to get better from, not only for me but for my wife and my baby son.’ In the first cut, he appeared throughout the film, joining in sessions and taking part in life inside the Maudsley. At the end of the film Dave once again went to see Aaron in his room, on his last day at the hospital. ‘Can I hold your wallet?’ Dave asked. ‘Okay, Dave,’ and he passed it over to Dave who began to remove cards from it. ‘Is this okay?’ ‘I’m not enjoying watching you do that, but I’m okay. It’s okay.’ It was amazing to see such progress, and it was also our only real demonstration of someone getting better. To see Aaron overcome his demons was extremely moving. And now I had to cut him down to one scene! Aaron’s was not the only story; I also had two others, each with a handful of scenes to reduce, and both just as complicated. In my first cut I removed Aaron completely, his words ‘I don’t want to be seen as a mad man’ ringing in my head. Surely with only one scene, and with no obvious progress, that’s just how he would be seen? The film suffered massively from his absence. James’ story had also lost something. The other stories had created space for James, and gave us some relief from the intensity of his experience. It took three weeks to cut the film down. There was lots of swapping sequences here and there, and lots of trimming dialogue

9781784533946.indd 239

09/09/2015 15:16

240

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

inside sequences. Lots of difficult choices, battling to not oversimplify things. Lots and lots of late nights. With editing, you have to accept that you’re constantly learning, and that you’re not failing when you’re stumped by a problem. You just haven’t found the solution yet. It’s a process. And sometimes the struggle, the search for that elusive solution, makes your film better. You have to hold your nerve. I ended up combining the first two sequences of Aaron and squeezed them as much as I could. I also included his line about not wanting to be seen as a mad man. At the end of the film we cut a sequence with shots of all of our contributors living life outside the Maudsley. It was quite beautiful, really. Aaron was shown on the train, going home to his family. Finally, we had a 46-minute cut of the film that we could show. As an editor, watching or screening the film is a normal everyday part of the job. A broadcast hour takes between five and ten weeks to cut, depending on its complexity, ambition or importance, and during that time you’ll watch the film about a dozen times. Screenings are a nervy affair. Execs and commissioners arrive, and then we all sit, fingers crossed, in the hope that the film will work for everyone. There’s always tension in the room. But that’s nothing compared to when you show your film to the people who appear in it. For me as an editor, the contributor screening is one of the oddest parts of the job. By the time a contributor arrives to see a film, I have watched them for hours and hours on end, observing everything as they go though the most extreme, lifechanging and challenging moments of their lives. I’ve listened attentively to their every utterance. I know them inside out. But they don’t know me at all. Most contributors won’t even have considered me. They have a relationship with the director, and I’m a complete stranger. When I started editing I often got these first contributor encounters terribly wrong. I’d chat with them, make small talk and then in a very conversational way ask them about something not even their nearest and dearest would know about. Almost like a stalker, revealing himself. This is the moment they realise that their life,

9781784533946.indd 240

09/09/2015 15:16

Editing

241

which has been observed and captured by a very small and select crew, will be seen by the wider world. That can have quite an effect. My first ever contributor screening was in fact life-changing. Not for me but for the contributor. I was working on Airport for BBC1, which back then got an audience of 10 million people every week. We had been following an airport ambulance crew, and they had been called to a man having an extreme asthma attack. He was in a bad way and was taken to the local hospital. En route he had a massive seizure and, as it turned out, was lucky to survive. The director had filmed the lot. It made for a very dramatic sequence. Keen to include it in the film, the director stayed in close contact with the man who, after a few weeks in hospital, agreed to watch it through with us. It transpired that this wasn’t the first time he’d had a dramatic escape from death. In fact, he’d been having seizures for years, and his wife was at her wits’ end: ‘He never listens to me. I tell him to slow down all the time, but he just says I’m over-reacting.’ They came to our cutting room in Shepherd’s Bush. It was a powerful experience. There was complete silence as it played through. On screen, paramedics were frantically trying to save the man’s life. In the cutting room, his face told me he was deeply shocked. There were tears. At the end he reached for his wife’s hand and said ‘I’m so sorry.’ In that moment, his life was changed. At the contributor screening of Bedlam, James, and in particular his mum Penny, really engaged with the film. Penny thought it perfectly encapsulated the traumatic journey they’d been on together, and that it had been sensitively handled. But it pulled no punches and she was worried what the rest of the world would think of her son. This was something she couldn’t control and neither could we. Together we all took a huge leap of faith. James had finished his course at the Maudsley and with their help found ways to cope with his anxiety. He returned to university and was leading a normal life. But I have to say that by the time the series started transmitting a few weeks later, I was quite anxious. The UK had become obsessed with stories of paedophiles and vigilantes were on the hunt trying to ‘out’ sex offenders. And nowadays, thanks to Twitter, we can literally read the reaction to a film as it transmits.

9781784533946.indd 241

09/09/2015 15:16

242

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

For James, a young man trapped for years by the fear of public humiliation and disapproval, the reaction was hugely uplifting. The series trended number one on Twitter, and countless viewers told James how brave, handsome and wonderful he is, which in itself was pretty good therapy. Documentary’s ability to publicly exorcise demons and reveal the truth is its greatest strength. As editors we move on from job to job: new faces and new stories every couple of months. When we get stressed we say: ‘Come on, it’s only TV.’ We’ll never save anyone’s life. But in reality, it is more than just TV. You become the champion of your characters. You want them to be all they can be, all within the confines of 46 minutes. I work with people’s stories, their hopes, their ambitions, their failings. The truth of their lives. Their stories will be picked and paced by me. For a period of time at least, my choices will define them, and define me also.

9781784533946.indd 242

09/09/2015 15:16

29 Af ter c ar e Nick Fraser

52. Nick Fraser. Photograph courtesy of the author

Nick Fraser is the editor of Storyville, the BBC documentary strand which showcases international documentaries. Films that have appeared in the strand include Blackfish, Searching for Sugar Man, Taxi to the Dark Side, Man on Wire, The House I Live In, Bobby Fischer Against the World, Diameter of the Bomb and Why We Fight. Established since 1997, Storyville has garnered many awards, including 4 Oscars, 15 Griersons, 3 Peabodys and 3 International Emmys. India’s Daughter, a documentary which tells the story of the gang rape and murder of a 23 year-old medical student on a moving bus in India in 2012, and the protests and riots which followed, became part of the strand in 2015.

9781784533946.indd 243

09/09/2015 15:16

244

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

W

omen are raped every day in India, but the 2012 rape and murder of Jyoti Singh affects people in a lasting way. This is partly because of the appalling suffering she experienced at the hands of her aggressors. It’s also because, as a successful intern, and the daughter of poor parents determined that she should be successful, she seemed in her short life to represent a new India. Think, for a moment, about what it means to be Jyoti Singh. You’re young, you’re getting to where you want to be in life. Soon, you’ll be able to pay back your parents. And then, on your way home from seeing a movie with a male friend, you board a bus. That’s when you’re assaulted, punished for who you wanted to be, raped again and again, thrown out onto the pavement. Amid scenes of national horror, you’re treated for your injuries, first in Delhi, then in Singapore. You become a celebrity. In moments of consciousness, however, you are aware that you won’t recover. That’s what, hooked up to tubes, still bleeding, you tell your parents. And that’s what ultimately proves to be the case. India’s Daughter, telling Jyoti’s story, is an utterly shocking film, perhaps because it appears so artless and raw. At its best it allows the viewer no comfort whatsoever. This is what happened, it tells us, and this is what happens. Nonetheless, as we watch the film, in viewing after viewing, closeted in a stuffy, over-air-conditioned hotel room in Delhi, I wonder what we’ve got ourselves into. I’m known as a series editor, or commissioning editor. I’ve been in charge of the BBC’s flagship documentary strand Storyville since 1997. Some films I think up myself, but most occur to me, and the small team of people I work with, through meetings. A friend called to tell me about the producer of India’s Daughter and her project. ‘You don’t do enough Indian films,’ he said. ‘Take this one seriously.’ And this is what I did. When considering films for commission, I try to balance a number of factors. Will the BBC like the film? Will it get the audience it deserves? And these days, there are other questions to ask. How difficult will it be to fund this film? Outside the BBC, globally, will this film reach people? Is it made in such a way that, despite the forbidding subject matter, people will want to watch it? Will they enjoy it? I want the films into which I pour my colleagues’ energy,

9781784533946.indd 244

09/09/2015 15:16

Aftercare

245

and the money of the BBC and its partners, to be successful. And I want them to be good. Fixing and improving films is at the heart of what I do. Increasingly, though, these considerations have to be balanced with ‘aftercare’, management of the many issues and difficulties that arise after filming has finished. Filmmakers have to be protected as they venture out into the world. Legal complexities also have to be addressed. Sensibilities have to be taken into account. Promises made early in the production process have to be met. More and more, it is the totality of the film – all the people it involves, including its contributors and its audience – that requires attention. This is because documentaries have become bigger than I could have dreamed. They may not cost much, but they have become one of the most important cultural forms of our time. They matter. So here I am in pre-Monsoon Delhi, in June, for four days. I have never encountered heat like this, and I cannot eat Indian food. I feel lost. Some of the themes I thought were central to the film back in England – for instance, how is it that rape hasn’t until recently been a preoccupation of Indians outside the cultural elite? – seem less important now. I realise now, not how vast India is, but (and though this sounds banal) how different it is here. But the main question of the film, how such an attack could occur on a crowded street of the capital, persists. I don’t know the answer. The Indians I interrogate say they don’t know.

53. Still from India’s Daughter, courtesy of BBC Storyville and director Leslee Udwin

9781784533946.indd 245

09/09/2015 15:16

246

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

The film is close to picture-lock, but it has developed its own, distinctive set of problems. Leslee Udwin, the producer and director, has spent weeks here with the Indian editor, Anuradha Singh, and Dibang, a well-known Indian reporter who is executive producer. As we make each cut, we discuss. The parents have given an interview at some length, but they haven’t seen the film. Will they approve? Does the film require their approval? The BBC, in my view correctly, insists that it does. (This is indeed the only stipulation of the BBC. No objections are raised to the subject matter. There is no footling about with questions of taste; we must simply tackle the subject in the way that seems most appropriate.) Would I like it, if my own daughter’s death was described as the film has described Jyoti’s? I am here to see Jyoti’s parents, bearing a letter that tells them how important the film is to the BBC. Through intermediaries they respond politely that they are not sure they want to meet me. I’m upset, not because this is a social slight, but because I had wanted to meet them. I don’t always want to meet people who appear in films. But this film was different, because I admired their courage. Dibang calls them again and again as the time for my departure approaches. They say yes, then they say no, then they say maybe. When we walk around the streets, people approach Dibang for selfies. I hope that the Indian public will watch the film when it is aired here. I look at the girls posing with Dibang, and think of their families. What must they think of Jyoti’s story? I watch some of Dibang’s films. They’re different in tone from what one might find on the BBC, or indeed on the online broadcaster Vice. Dibang goes in search of the very poor. On camera, he has a calm, burdened expression. I like Dibang very much. I wish I helped to make films that end up being watched by so many millions. At night we watch the World Cup, and try not to think about the film. I sense that in the end, he will deal with Jyoti’s parents, but, because this is India, I have no idea how he will do this. One of the young men on the bus is  interviewed in the film. Convicted and sentenced to death, he awaits the outcome of an appeal. The lawyers in India whom we consult aren’t sure whether the film can be shown before the Supreme Court has decided whether he should be hanged or not. To be sure, nothing in the film could influence the justices, or indeed the president,

9781784533946.indd 246

09/09/2015 15:16

Aftercare

247

who makes the final decisions where the death penalty is concerned. And yet some think the lawyers for the accused will seize on the film in an attempt to somehow reopen the verdict, casting doubt on the culpability of the rapists. I don’t see how this could be the case, but feel obliged to defer to local opinions. I watch these well-dressed, middle-aged defence lawyers, some of whom have daughters of their own, say that Jyoti’s death was her own doing, that she should never have been out at night with a friend, and I find myself hopelessly, emotionally split between wanting everyone to know that there are people who cherish such opinions, and wondering whether allowing them expression will make it all worse. Or, which would be just as bad, make no difference at all. Not so long ago, one had to visit the premises of a television station in order to view a documentary. VHS cassettes and DVDs then made it easier to see documentaries outside television, but only recently has it become possible to view films instantly and anywhere in the world. Docs are now a democratic form, among the principal ways in which we make sense of the world. They exist to be enjoyed or used. They have become as powerful as investigative journalism. They may change us if we allow ourselves to be changed. Good documentaries with a view about the world win Oscars. I know this because some of those I have been involved with have done so. More satisfying is their seepage into public opinion. I like to be told about their success years later. Not so long ago it was rare to find people who might say they once watched a documentary and it touched them. In the modern age of documentaries, that’s no longer the case. In the old days, the relative scarcity of documentaries gave them a cachet of sorts. But it also enabled filmmakers to hide behind their profession. Those who made docs seemed to be superior to humble hacks. Gifted with the power of imagery, they were free (in ways that no news editor on a newspaper would have tolerated) to indulge in metaphor. And, I suppose, they were to some degree freed from the obligation to consider the consequence of their actions as filmmakers, because their films were, relatively speaking, unwatched. Most films didn’t receive a theatrical release, and the internet wasn’t around. They were the mendicant friars of our time, wholly dependent on charity for their livelihood but high in status, going from festival to festival tolling their bells.

9781784533946.indd 247

09/09/2015 15:16

248

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

It would be foolish to regret the passing of this era, just as it would be insane not to think of the sudden, back-from-oblivion global life of documentaries as a good thing. But where, precisely, this leaves docs and their makers isn’t clear. Do we want to spend our precious time thinking about what can or should happen to films? Isn’t it enough that they should simply be available to us, to find and to watch if we choose? From their beginnings, documentaries have enjoyed a half-separate existence from film, at a crossroads between fiction, reportage and storytelling. In ways that continue to astonish reporters, those who make films struggle with the question of how ‘true’ their narratives are. They divide into two camps, for the most part. There are those who think that their films should be ‘read’ like fiction films – that they are essentially no different from fiction films, except that the material is real. According to this school, Jyoti’s life and death is essentially a fiction, worked and reworked, processed and reprocessed. For the other camp, however, documentary films should seem and be more ‘real’ than other, competing visions of reality. I might have thought about these disputes differently some years ago. At the very least I would have energetically repudiated both views. I would have argued that documentaries that aren’t truthful aren’t really worth watching at all. At the same time the notion that the depiction of reality should be governed by a series of often staid rules would have seemed abhorrent. I still hold to such views. But from where I sit, as an executive producer and commissioning editor, the problem now seems worth posing in a different way, as one of somehow, day by day, punching through the clutter of contemporary media and reaching an audience. These days it is so easy for messages to be lost out there in non-translation. Good films and good reportage get neglected or ignored. But it doesn’t have to be so. This is where I come in, helping to shape and reshape a film in the cutting room, balancing truth with storytelling, and guiding it out into the world, minimising problems that might hold it back, maximising exposure and impact. All but the most successful docs fall after all the hurdles have been cleared, failing to reach the people who should have seen them. So part of my work, allied with colleagues at the BBC and

9781784533946.indd 248

09/09/2015 15:16

Aftercare

249

in Denmark and New York and elsewhere, is documentary reclamation. We fish films from oblivion, cut them to a shorter length where necessary, update them, and re-present them to the world. They will be shown on the BBC World News platform, then they go onto BBC Arabic and BBC Persian channels. And then we version them in ten or more languages, so that they can be broadcast by public broadcasting stations throughout the world that don’t ordinarily show docs because they can’t afford to make them – Taiwan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Palestine, Lebanon, Zambia and Colombia, amongst others. We hope they will be accessed online in China, and distributed online and physically in Brazil. We’ve just started talking to Indian channels. In the so-called developed world, and in the age of the internet, this project is greeted with mild incredulity. Why are we so interested in the ageing media of broadcast television? We point out that the largest audiences most reliably come via the broadcast medium. Vice are pleased if they get an audience of a million for a documentary. When we distributed documentary series such as Why Democracy? and Why Poverty? in this old-fashioned way, we reached an audience of hundreds of millions. Re-working films, looking at them afresh, you see what the filmmaker wanted to do. You see how every good film is a new thought about the nature of the world. I’m thinking of the Danish Afghan journalist who gave mobile phones to Afghans so that they could record the war in their backyards, for the film My Afghanistan: Life in the Forbidden Zone. I’m remembering, too, the Israelis who asked themselves what happened to the young women, some of them idealistic, who served at the checkpoints separating Jews from Arabs during the no-end-in-sight, never-changing occupation of Palestine, damaging themselves. Their film, To See If I’m Smiling, was outstanding. And I’m thinking of Enemies of the People, the story of a Cambodian journalist who spent ten years in search of the Khmer Rouge mass murderers in an effort to understand how all of his family perished, sacrificing his own safety in a search for truth in relation to which there was no discernible positive outcome. I hope that I’m helping to shape India’s Daughter into a form that will match the impact of these extraordinary films. A few months later, I view India’s Daughter again. The parents don’t want to watch it, but they have agreed to back the film, and

9781784533946.indd 249

09/09/2015 15:16

250

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

even to appear at festivals. The perpetrators are still waiting for the results of their appeal. I wonder now about the ultimate fate of the film. What will it do? Can it really achieve anything at all? Of the many, many films I’ve helped launch into the world, some have significantly underperformed. No reliable means of predicting the success or impact of a film exists. You can blow money on an outreach programme and get nowhere. Alternatively you can assume that a film doesn’t require promotion, that it will somehow catch on anyhow, and be proved completely wrong. It comes down to what people are interested in, and that isn’t fixed. But you don’t need luck, cleverness or cunning to know that Jyoti’s story will attract viewers, in India and elsewhere. There’s a wave of global indignation. People want to put a stop to such terrible events. They are angry. I suspect that will be the film’s legacy – not to have immediately transformed the way police, lawyers, judges deal with rape in India, but to have asked the right questions, at the right time. I hope that people will be made to think; why was Jyoti Singh killed?

9781784533946.indd 250

09/09/2015 15:16

30 M ak i n g C h o i c es Nick Broomfield

54. Nick Broomfield. Photograph by Richard Jopson, courtesy of Nick Broomfield

Nick Broomfield is a British documentary maker, known for developing his own influential style of filmmaking, in which the challenges and choices of the filmmaking process are included within the films themselves. His work includes: Tales of the Grim Sleeper; Biggie and Tupac; Kurt & Courtney; The Leader, His Driver and the Driver’s Wife; and Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer, about the last days of Aileen Wournos, spent on death row in Florida. Broomfield has received a number of awards for his work, including a Grierson, a Peabody award and a BAFTA lifetime achievement award for his contribution to documentary filmmaking.

9781784533946.indd 251

09/09/2015 15:16

252

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

F

ilmmaking for me is a very personal thing, full of personal choices and decisions. People have different values and ethical standards, and different ways of seeing things. It’s this diversity of points of view that makes documentary so alive and fascinating, and so encompassing of different styles of filmmaking and storytelling. But there’s always been a strong puritan streak in the documentary movement, which is obsessed with making rules for how you deal with ethics and problems and dilemmas. Questions about documentary ethics are so frequently asked as to imply that there is something inherently unethical about documentaries, that it’s a form that needs to be tightly monitored and controlled. I remember being at film school some 40 years ago when a debate about ethics and voyeurism in documentary filmmaking was raging. I noticed that the debate was being led by one or two academics, neither of whom had ever in fact made a documentary film themselves, but who had nevertheless developed extensive theories on documentary filmmaking practice, and a long list of do’s and don’ts. It seemed to me that this debate had a very harmful effect on the film school and its students. For those just starting, already full of self-doubt, worried about doing the wrong thing, and wrestling with the problems of making their first films, the thicket of moral dilemmas they were told they would face was a very destructive and non-creative influence. The debates about ethics paralysed some students from moving forward; they became so weighed down with theory and anxieties about abstract philosophical dilemmas that the very practical process of going out and actually making a film became too much to manage. They were unable to venture forth, take risks and make a film. Documentary film necessitates filmmakers dealing with real people and their lives. Each situation is so completely different that it has to be left to individual filmmakers to make the decisions and choices they feel appropriate. Difficult choices and ethical dilemmas come naturally when you’re dealing with real life. Particularly so with the way I work, because I tend to go into things without my mind made up. I’ll take on a subject which I’m interested in, but I’m interested in it partly because I want to learn about it, because I don’t have all the

9781784533946.indd 252

09/09/2015 15:16

Making Choices

253

answers. So the film for me is a process of discovery and gathering information, and eventually (probably) coming to some conclusions about why I think something is the way it is. You grapple with issues and choices and try and make a film, to the best of your ability, that reflects what you experienced. The fascinating thing about documentary is its ability to study the grey areas and get into the complexities of things. For me, the documentaries that work best are about showing the deeper story, which is often full of contradictions. People are rarely all good or all bad, and documentarians have the luxury of time to explore these things, hopefully producing a film that reflects what they noticed or felt in the process of making it. Over the years, I’ve developed a way of making films – following my own nose in an effort to get to the bottom of something – that incorporates the difficult choices and dilemmas that come up into the films themselves, rather than trying to hide them or smooth them away. Solving problems and wrestling with dilemmas can be compelling to watch. And often it’s these choices and dilemmas that make the film. In Kurt & Courtney I had originally set out to make a film about Kurt Cobain and his musical influences, but when Courtney Love tried to close the film down, the focus switched to her, and the wider subject of freedom of speech. The film reflected the dilemmas and shifts that occurred in the telling of Kurt’s story. Sometimes decisions you make as a filmmaker will be criticised, but that’s okay as long as you are clear about why you made them, and can justify them in the context of the full story. In Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, I had a difficult on-the‐spot choice to make about whether or not to film part of a conversation with Aileen Wuornos, who was on death row awaiting execution. It was a decision that would attract a lot of criticism when the film was released, and I remember very clearly making it. The moment was highly charged, and you see it unfold in the film. The key thing about Aileen Wuornos at that time was that she could no longer stand being on death row, and she had decided that she wanted to be executed. She knew she could never get off death row – that she was doomed. So she confessed to all the murders that she was accused of. But she’d always said before

9781784533946.indd 253

09/09/2015 15:16

254

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

that the first murder she’d committed, which was the murder of Richard Mallory, was done because he was torturing her. He had her handcuffed to the steering wheel of a car, and she was able to reach into her purse where she had a revolver, and she’d shot him in self‐defence. And her testimony had always been that this pushed her over the edge, and that had the incident with Richard Mallory not happened, she would never have killed anyone else. I believed that, and certainly her attorneys believed that. And I had been called as a witness to testify on her behalf by the defence, to try to prevent her execution. That meant I was no longer just an observer. Now I was very invested in working out the truth of the situation.

55. Aileen Wuornos. Photograph courtesy of Nick Broomfield / nickbroomfield.com

I stopped filming my conversation with Aileen to change a roll, and Aileen suddenly started telling me the truth, that she just couldn’t stand it any more, and that she’d confessed to all the murders because she wanted to die. I decided to press the record button on the camera without her knowing, and captured what she had to say. When the film came out, I was attacked for being underhand.

9781784533946.indd 254

09/09/2015 15:16

Making Choices

255

I knew, though, that that was the real Aileen, the Aileen who had killed people because she had discovered by accident that she could. Not the premeditated killer we were taught she was. For me personally, this was hugely important, as someone who had been called as a witness on her behalf by her defence team. This was the Aileen I had known and believed in, and it was of the utmost importance for me that she was portrayed that way in the film. I’ve always been interested in justice. Biggie and Tupac, Juvenile Liaison, Tattooed Tears, Kurt & Courtney and Tales of the Grim Sleeper are explicitly about justice, and struggles for justice. I studied law at university. But filmmaking choices like the one I made in the prison visiting room with Aileen Wuornos aren’t down to grand principles or professional training. They’re in‐the‐moment judgements, made under pressure, and they come down to instinct, often to do with whether you believe someone or not. You’re not remembering what someone told you. You’re being guided by your own set of values and your own moral compass, so that you’re ultimately able to live with yourself and stand by your actions. I apply something I like to refer to as ‘the pee principle’ to test the decisions and choices I am making. Early on in my career, I made a couple of films where I noticed that at a certain point in the viewings and screenings, I had a sudden and overwhelming urge to leave the room. I came to realise that this always occurred at the same point in the films concerned, as the same sequences played out – sequences which I felt were slightly inaccurate or unfair, or gave an inaccurate and incomplete picture of a particular person or event, and which therefore made me feel uncomfortable, and made me look for any excuse to leave the screening. The pee principle keeps me from putting things into films that I would find difficult to watch in the future.

9781784533946.indd 255

09/09/2015 15:16

Ind e x of Fi l m a nd T e l ev i si o n T i tl es

7/7: One Day in London (2012), 233 9/11 Liars, The (2006), 181 24 Hours in A&E (2011–), 3, 14, 67–8, 195, 219, 220–8 24 Hours in Police Custody (2014), 129, 130–1, 133 999: What’s Your Emergency? (2012), 69, 129 1900 House, The (1999), 201 1940s House, The (2001), 201

Biggie and Tupac (2002), 251, 255 Blackfish (2013*), 243 Black Sea (2014), xv Bobby Fischer Against the World (2011), 147, 243 Bowling for Columbine (2002), xvi Boys from the Brown Stuff (2007), 193 Boys Who Killed Stephen Lawrence, The (2006), 129 Brian’s Story (2001), 161, 162–71 Bridge, The (2007), 45, 46–53

A

C

*No official UK release date, original release date used.

Absolute Beginners (1986), 202 Act of Killing, The (2013), 29, 30, 32–3 Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003), 251, 253–5 American Dream (1990*), 173 American Family, An (1973*), 9 Armstrong Lie, The (2014), 17, 18 Artful Codgers, The (2008), 219

B

Battle for Haiti (2011*), 181 Battle for Marjah (2010), 153 Bedlam (2013), 69, 161, 219, 233, 234–42 Benefits Street (2014), 3, 4, 15–16, 35, 36–44, 61, 64, 69–70 Beryl’s Last Year (2007), 111 Big Lebowski, The (1998), 238

9781784533946.indd 257

Case Of India One, The (1993), 131 Celebrity Big Brother (2001–), 205 Children of the Tsunami (2012), 181 China’s Stolen Children (2007), 71 Chosen (2008), 71 Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (2011), 17, 19 Come Dine With Me (2005–), 15 Complaint of Rape, A (1982), 132 Connection, The (1997), 11 Coppers (2010), 129, 233, 237 Cruel Cut, The (2013), 35 Cutting Edge (1990–), 161, 162

D

Death of Klinghoffer, The (2003*), 135, 137

09/09/2015 15:16

258

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Diameter of the Bomb (2006), 243 Dinner Party, The (1997), 10 Dogging Tales (2013), 101, 102–10 Dreams of a Life (2011), 29, 30 Driving School (1997), 11 Dying Rooms, The (1995), 71, 72–80 Dying Rooms: A Patchwork of Lies, The (1995*), 78–9

Going to the Dogs (2014), 135, 136–46 Gogglebox (2013–), 68 Goodies, The (1970–1982), 203 Great Railway Journeys of the World (1980), 203 Grey Gardens (1975*), 3, 91, 92–4 Gypsy Blood (2012), 101, 103, 105–6

E

H

Eagle, The (2011), xv Educating the East End (2014), 195, 196 Educating Essex (2011), 14, 193, 195–200 Educating Yorkshire (2013), 193, 195 Edwardian Country House, The (2002), 201 End of the World Bus Tour, The (2008), 193 Enemies of the People (2010), 249 Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005*), 17, 18, 20 Execution of Wanda Jean, The (2002*), 147, 149–51

F

Family, The (2008), 3, 9–10, 193, 194, 197–200 Farm: Angola, USA, The (1998*), 147, 148–9 Feltham Sings (2002), 219 Fire in the Night (2013), 153 Fires Were Started (1943), 7 Fishing Party, The (1985), 10 Fried Chicken Shop, The (2013), 68

G

German Concentration Camps Factual Survey / Memory of the Camps (2014), 31 Gimme Shelter (1970), 91

9781784533946.indd 258

Harlan County, USA (1976*), 3, 8, 173, 174–80 Holby City (1999–), 202 Hoop Dreams (1995), 209, 210–13, 214

I

If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (2011*), 121, 128 I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! (2002–), 205 Immigration Street (2015), 41–4 India’s Daughter (2015), 243, 244–50 Interrupters,The (2011), 209 Into the Abyss (2012), 29 Into the Inferno (2011), 30

J

Jig (2011), 81 Juvenile Liaison (1976*), 255

K

Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day (2013), 219 Keeping Up With the Kardashians (2009–), 14 Kurt & Courtney (1998), 251, 253, 255

L

Last King of Scotland, The (2007), xv

09/09/2015 15:16

Index of Film and Television Titles

Last Nazis, The (2009), 111 Leader, His Driver, and the Driver’s Wife, The (1991*), 251 Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), 202 Life in a Day (2011), xv Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997*), 29 Look of Silence, The (2014*), 33–4 Looking for Dad (2008), 111 Love, Life and Death in a Day (2009), 81 Love, Marilyn (2013), 158

M

Made in Chelsea (2011–), 11 Make Bradford British (2012), 35 Malcolm and Barbara: A Love Story (1999), 10 Malcolm and Barbara: Love’s Farewell (2007), 10, 116–17 Man on Wire (2008), 23, 24, 25, 201, 243 Marley (2012), xv Mea Maxima Culpa (2012), 17, 18 Mistaken for Strangers (2014), 128 Mum & Me (2008), 81, 82–9 Mummifying Alan: Egypt’s Last Secret (2011), 64–7 My Afghanistan: Life in the Forbidden Zone (2012*), 249

259

One Mile Away (2013), 135 Only Way is Essex, The (2010), 11, 14 Osbournes, The (2002–2005), 14

P

Panorama (1953–), 131 Paedophile Hunter, The (2014), 181 Perfect Candidate, A (1996*), 122 Plane Crash, The (2012), 61, 62–3, 68 Point and Shoot (2015), 121 POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011), 229, 231 Poor Kids (2012*), 71 Prefontaine (1997*), 214 Primary (1960*), 122 Project Nim (2011), 23, 24–6

R

Nanook of the North (1922), 6–7 Night Will Fall (2014), 29, 30–4

Race and Intelligence: Science’s Last Taboo (2009), 61, 64 Racing Dreams (2011*), 121 Rain in My Heart (2006), 10–11 Real Lives: At the Edge of the Union (1985), 8–9 Return to the Dying Rooms (1996), 79 Right to Die? (2008), 112 Right to Reply (1982–2001), 77 Roger & Me (1990), 128 Rough Aunties (2008*), 14 Rough Justice (1982–2007), 130 Running from Crazy (2013*), 173

O

S

N

On Death Row (2012–13), 30 One Born Every Minute (2010–), 195 One Day in September (1999*), xv

9781784533946.indd 259

Salesman (1968*), 91 Searching for Sugar Man (2012), 243 Secret Policeman, The (2003), 129, 131–2

09/09/2015 15:16

260

ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Senna (2011), 95, 96–9 Sex Box (2015), 64 Shut Up and Sing (2007), 173 Skint (2013–14), 69 Springwatch (2005–), 203 State of Play (2009), xv Stevie (2002*), 209, 210, 213–17 Storyville (1997–), 243, 244 Street Fight (2005*), 121, 122–8 Super Size Me (2004), 128, 229, 230, 231 Surviving Gazza (2009), 193 Syria: Children on the Frontline (2014), 153

T

Tales of the Grim Sleeper (2015), 251, 255 Tattooed Tears (1979*), 255 Taxi to the Dark Side (2008), 17, 18, 19, 20, 243 Terror in Moscow (2003), 181 Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die (2011), 111, 112–19 Theory of Everything, The (2015), 23 Thin Blue Line, The (1989), xvi, 12 Tina Goes Shopping (1999), 135 To See If I’m Smiling (2008), 249

9781784533946.indd 260

Touching the Void (2003), xv Tower: A Tale of Two Cities, The (2007), 129, 153, 154–60

V

Valley, The (2000), 189–92

W

War Room, The (1993*), 122 Warrior, The (2002), 95 We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (2013), 17, 18, 21 We Went to War (2013), 30 Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? (2008), 229, 230, 231 Who Do You Think You Are? (2004–), 201, 202–8 Who Got Benny’s Millions? (2002), 203 Why Democracy? (2007), 249 Why Poverty? (2012), 249 Wisconsin Death Trip (1999*), 23 World in Action (1963–1998), 130

Y

Year the Town Hall Shrank, The (2012), 161, 233 Young Mum’s Mansion (2008– 09), 35

09/09/2015 15:16