Light Shining in Buckinghamshire

'Light Shining in Buckinghamshire' was a bit of an odd one for me. It was hard to allow myself into a character's life when the character kept changing from preacher to parliamentarian, from army man to squire and landowner. With a sizeable cast there was absolutely no need to multirole, which confused the audience, amidst middle English language and inconsistent costume. 

nationaltheatre.org.uk - photo by Marc Brenner

nationaltheatre.org.uk - photo by Marc Brenner

The set was interesting, I'll give it merit where due. The elaborate royalist banquet table, complete with candelabras and fresh flowers in one scene. Wooden floored manor house the next. Earthy common land by the end. Regardless of whether its symbolism was intended, it represented for me, the fall of the royalist system, into parliamentary England absent of feudalism, for a time. It showed men working the land as men continue to work away at the very foundations of our country's leadership - particularly of late.

marcbrenner.co.uk

londonist.com

But props and costume were odd for me. I was always told if you're going to go period, you need to do it wholeheartedly. And I believe that's right. It's confusing and off-putting for characters to be wearing roughs, sacks and rags within the same scene as PVC raincoats and hoodies. The same inconsistency was apparent in the prop selection. Wooden crates and quills one minute, flasks and plastic cups the next. Which period are we in - or was that the point? Perhaps the choice was a conscious one, to include these modern reminders to drive the message home that the politics of change are ever constant, particularly after the recent election. I just thought that it wasn't particularly well executed and it instead came across as a lax attempt from the costume and prop designer. I found myself noticing how a red plastic crate didn't belong in the scene and it was off-putting enough to draw me away from the dialogue.

nationaltheatre.org.uk - photo by Marc Brenner

The cast was filled with strong onscreen characters, who thankfully claim the same calibre of talent onstage. Leo Bill, Adelle Leonce and Joe Caffrey were characters to highlight with a challenge coming form younger cast member Joshua James, whose energy may have convinced a passionate atheist that god was within. His command of the stage was wonderful to watch. I'll also give particular mention to Ashley McGuire who managed to evoke tears within herself, amidst a rather frantic scene. There was certainly some good inner character work going on in that head of hers. But despite our characters best efforts, we were still lost in a slightly aimless narrative of middle English parliament, telling of rebellion, rather than enacting it.

nationaltheatre.org.uk - photo by Marc Brenner

I also noticed that on stage right (and more than once) did the gathering of cast members appear on a single level, in a straight line - not nearly the calibre of positioning seen before at the Lyttleton. But it was the script I felt that let us down the most. The cast did their best with what they had and poor production choices in multi-rolling and inconsistent aesthetic, just made for a more average NT production than the stage is used to. It gained something back from me with some fantastically arranged choral music, with additional original musical-glas FX from Helen Chadwick and I wholeheartedly stand by for Joshua James' next stage appearance.

'Days of Hope'

Days of Hope follows the stories of many who are waiting to cross from Africa to Europe for work as well as some who have already made it across, only to find it is not quite as blissful as they'd imagined.

Ditte - dfi.dk

Director Ditte Haarløv Jensen manages to capture some extremely intimate moments with her contributors, aided by the stunning quality of some close range cinematography from Minka Jakerson. The two ladies really know how to identify with what makes us human, focussing on the face, the eyes, the stories. The shots linger long enough for us to find meaning in everything, whether it be a phone call where all parties insist that they are fine or when a young girl prays for her mother's happiness. This clarity in pacing I suppose is an additional bonus considering that there is no voiceover to help us along.

I do have one negative thing to say in that, I found it difficult to keep up with the contributors as we switched from location to location. I actually lost track of how many there were which makes me feel almost guilty that I too am forgetting them. But due to the fact that I was reading the subtitles, I sometimes failed to really take in the face, which meant that it became difficult to sometimes tell who was who.

However, there are moments within the film that really stand out and will consider to swim in my mind for some time. The first, is the mobile phone footage of the washed up bodies of those who didn't make the crossing across the ocean. The person operating the camera is not shy of going too close and so we are faced with some horrific images that really drive home the feeling of desperation.

Thelma - serenoregis.org

The second moment, is when Thelma prays so devoutly for the well-being and happiness of her mother. The camera is invisible to her. She is alone, with Go and we very much feel the intensity of her faith as an audience. 

The third moment is the celebration of a birthday within the immigration centre. It is touching to see so many men wishing another well at a time when all of them, fear for their futures and need nothing more than to find work for themselves. And yet they share their wishes and they play music and they sing happy birthday. That for me really showed the spirit of these young men that make the journey to Europe for work.

Harouna - bullittfilm.dk

And so, we see the horror, the desperation, the faith and courage and we see the relentless spirit that these men and women carry forward throughout their lives, despite such endless hardship, to provide for their families.

A really great film about an issue I know very little about but have always wished to learn. I look forward to seeing some of Ditte's other works in the future.

To read the Q&A with director Ditte, click here: http://watchinabitotheatrenstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/days-of-hope-q.html

Days of Hope + Q&A

'Days of Hope' & Q&A with Director Ditte Haarløv Jensen

The Frontline Club

Monday 26^th January

twitter.com/frontlineclub

Q) How did the film come together, walk us through the process. How many hours did you shoot…?

It was a long journey. I mean it took 3 years, with shooting on and off. To Mauretania I went twice, Italy I went once, only two weeks actually so that was really compressed, having to find a place and people and shoot within that time span. Copenhagen I had a lot of time because that’s where I’m based obviously. And it was also the most difficult place to film. All in all I don’t even know how many (aside) do you know? My producer is here by the way

Producer: Many hours.

Many hours in languages I did not understand. So there was a long editing process first off, of getting things translated and then of course, trying to narrow down, finding out what is the story here.

bullittfilm.dk

Q) What did you have in mind when you first started? What was the idea that led to the making of the film?

The idea actually came to me many years before I started the film. The idea started when I met a guy just after I finished at the Danish Film School. This was in 2007. He told me how he had come to Europe across the sea and through the city of Nouadhibou where I later went. His last job in Nouadhibou had been as a grave digger at the catholic cemetery where he would dig the graves for the people who had not made it across the sea right, so his friends who had rolled ashore, dead corpses. He would dig their grave and make money to make the journey himself. So when he told me that story I thought wow, this is, that would be a wild way to make a film and to tell the story without having to be on the boat yourself and having to be very specific and very hardcore.

Meanwhile I started making another film and many years passed. So when I came back to this story which had stayed on with me, the reality was different. So, the sea had sort of closed, because the Spanish coastguard had started patrolling and all that. So, reality was different.

I off-tracked a little bit maybe but that was how it started anyways.

(Sorry I’m a little bit tired because I travelled from Copenhagen today with my son who woke up at 7o’clock this morning and slept whilst you were starting to see this film.)

Q) It was a really beautiful film, it was amazing. Loads of questions but I’ll try and limit it to 2. The first is just, what’s happened to them all? Second is, one of things I really find amazing is just how it was cinematic in the sense that no-one seemed particularly aware of the camera , but you must have been pretty close. I mean, I’ve worked in those kind of places before and did you have to talk them through that? How did that work, did you have to say hey don’t talk to me? And, look sad… how did that evolve?

Of course, it took a lot of time being with people. I mean, as I said filmed a lot right. So, there is a lot that isn’t in the movie. But I do spend a lot of time with the people I film. I mean they are my friends right and that’s why also they’re not aware of the camera because they’re speaking to me there with them. Although there is also a cinematographer in the room, who is incredibly gifted yes she’s a very good maker.

So what happened, Harouna, he actually went to Morocco and he tried twice to cross the ocean. The first time they were stopped before getting into the borders and the second time he actually came into a boat but it capsized. Luckily he had a life vest on because he doesn’t know how to swim. So he came back onto some rocks and was hanging there and the police took him to jail and beat him up and then he was out again. And now he’s actually back in Mali. For one month he’s been back in Mali. 6.33

In Italy I, I don’t know where they are. Many of them are still in Italy though, that’s what I know. Without documents. What happens is they get a resident’s permit for a year, so they’re out of the camp and when that expires they just keep on hanging in as long as they can really.

Austin, the bottle collector in Copenhagen, he’s in Sweden with the woman you saw him with, who is his wife. He’s still waiting for his papers. You might sort of, doubt, that he will get them but hopefully.

And then there is Thelma, the young girl in the film, whose mother is a prostitute, I made another film about. She is luckily out of the brothel where she was living with her mother and now she, she’s studying, which is very good. And her mother is also, she moved away from that place to another, still going through a lot of hardship but managing. Yep.

Q) What was it like filming in Mauretania, did you have any security issues, did you have to prepare much in advance before you went there to film? What was it like? 

It was a little bit rock and roll like. It’s kind of like the wild west. But it was also, yes there were security issues in the sense that they don’t like people filming there. I was called to the police station many times just for taking the camera out in public. So I had to film within the people’s homes as you saw in the film, that’s where most of it is recorded right. I had a paper from some, ministry of cultural affairs but it didn’t really help me at all whilst I was in Nouadhibou because the ministry of culture was in the capital city so that was too far away and in Nouadhibou it was the sheriff of Nouadhibou who was ruling so.

But I was very lucky that I had been in touch with the catholic priest, and told I met the guy that told me that initial story and he was the one who told me, just come, come there’s plenty of stories to tell even though the sea is closed. So, he also invited me to stay at the catholic mission when I was there. When I arrived we went out for dinner and we found out that his sister was teaching my little sister at the boarding school in Swaziland where she was studying. So his sister, was Nigerian, so this Nigerian woman was teaching my Danish little sister who lived in Mozambique and was studying in Swaziland. So, that was a nice connection to make.

So the first sermon I went to, where he was preaching, the whole migrant community in Nouadhibou, this is Ditte, she might be white on the outside but she’s black on the inside. Talk to her and tell her your story. So, I was very lucky in that sense that he really opened up the migrant community for me.

Q) How common is women in effect falling into prostitution because it was, there was clearly a lot of implication in that in several telephone calls, that that was the hint behind it? Secondly, in Mauretania is there any indication of economic trends which have made the migration need worse or probably not better. I say that because there have been reports for many years of the fishing being decimated, particularly like in Somalia by offshore industrials and also, whether you heard anything, amidst allegations made by a major representative of a major European country that certain countries in Europe are in effect, bribing officials in the transit countries to block sailings. Did you ever hear anything of that? 

serenoregis.org

I’m going to take the last one first. No, I did not hear about anything like that directly but for sure, there was a deportation centre that was funded by Spain probably in co-operation with the EU. That was not a secret, that was very obvious. That was how it was. And for it to look good, the Mauretanian government authority needed to have migrants there of course. So that was how that worked.

In regards to the economic situation with the fishing being emptied out for the little everyday guy, fisherman, I mean that is what happens all along the African coast no? There aren’t many possibilities of making a living as an ordinary normal human being. So, so that makes people want to travel more, obviously. I mean many of the captains, they made a living by actually taking people over to the other side right, whilst fishing.

And in regards to prostitution yes that was mainly how the women would get by, I mean there wasn’t another way for a woman really. And in Mauretania, in Italy and in Denmark yes.

Q) How did you find your contributors and are there any that didn’t make the cut who also have quite interesting stories?

The stories outside the film are always so much more interesting than what you see here. I mean reality far surpasses anything that I could ever show in a film. It’s a crazy world. I have many more characters but I ended up with these because they were the ones that were closest to my heart. So I suppose in that sense I feel I have represented my experience as good as I could.

How did I find them, I mean, through the priest, father Jerome. Just through walking the streets basically a lot. Harouna was actually from just walking around and yeh meeting him. And then in Italy, that’s actually a pretty crazy story, in Italy I wanted to go to Lampedusa but Berlusconi he had closed it down, and declared a state of emergency at that point because so many people were arriving with the boats. So, no journalism affiliated people could go there. Instead, I had to go to Sicily and Sicily just privatised the whole businem, asylum centres. So what happened is I found this place and it was a mafia boss who had gotten it. And the mafia boss, he didn’t really care about the place, he just cared about the…money that he could get per person that was in there. So, I was in a really weird way, was free to walk in and start filming and nobody asked me any questions. So that’s what I did.

cphdox.dk

And in Copenhagen, that was the hardest place which is really a contradiction in terms of, because I had, before that I’d made a film about homeless people in Greenland which used to be a Danish colony as you might know, living in the streets of Copenhagen. So I had a lot of knowledge about street life, homeless life. I’d also made a film about this Nigerian woman that you meet in the movie who was a prostitute in Copenhagen so I felt I knew the whole area. I was really looking forward to make the story in Copenhagen but there it turned out it was difficult because the men, the homeless men, living in the streets and collecting bottles, they were so ashamed and so angry at the same time that it was just really difficult to approach them and get them to tell their story. That’s one of the characters that’s actually is edited out. A guy that I ended up paying because I thought ok, I’m taking your time, so I have to pay you. And it just ended up really badly because then he was just saying things he thought I wanted him to say so.

No I met Austin also in the street and I think he agreed to participate because he had that wife in Sweden, so he was in a way, a little more home safe than the other guys after all.

dfi.dk

Q) You mentioned the 2 week very compressed filming time and I was wondering if that was a decision on your part or whether it was the authorities that restricted you to 2 weeks?

No that was the financial restriction. I went with my cinematographer and we needed a place to stay and all that.

Q) Who did you have in mind when you started making this movie? Did you have policy makers in mind? What’s the influence really that you want to have?

I really do not think so far. I don’t know if that’s good or bad but I always start a film by being touched myself by somebody’s story and then I take it from there. I guess deep down, I am a human being that sort of feels there’s a huge injustice in this world that I would like maybe make my little part in shifting a little bit. So, that’s my indictment if you call it like that, I don’t really know.

rotaserituais.com

Q) Thanks for the movie. Big question but from what you hear, what do you think is the solution to this? Do people tell them it’s not good over here?

I think the people that travel, they know that it’s not as good as, they know there’s a financial crisis in Europe, they know it’s not paradise on Earth. They have to, they just need to dream, to believe that they can make it, that they can have a better life because what they have behind them carrying on their back is, is heavy duty no? They need to give their family, their children a future.

What I believe is that we should share the wealth of this world a little more equally right then I don’t think people would have to risk their lives like they do crossing the ocean for a, for life as a prostitute or a bottle collector.

How that wealth is to be distributed, I don’t know, I’m not totally sure.

Q) As Franz Fanon said many, many years ago, ‘the only feeling of certainty for a black body is the feeling of uncertainty’ and I think you really showed it in your movie. You answered many questions I wanted to ask but one was also, did you speak to anyone staff that was receiving the people, that was hosting the people or did you just speak to the immigrants?

I mean I was in the centre right, right in the asylum centre and I spoke to the people there but they were not really receiving, they were just there.

I mean, they’re just doing their job, they don’t have any broader, broader feeling or experience of the whole interconnectedness of it all. They’re just happy they have a job in a country that is in a recession right.

Q) I really loved the film, I thought it was beautiful. One of the things that I found really moving were the little conversations back home to children and there were lots of references to children who were being left behind. I just wondered if you spoke to any of those children or any of the partners that were left behind. Because you kind of picked up a lot of resentment and anger with a couple of the women. But I just wonder, the effect that was having on the children and how much they understood and could comprehend.

Yeh, no I did not speak… I did not speak with the family, families, left behind but it was very important for me to have that there of course, because that’s what it’s all about. That’s why these people are moving right. But I felt that Thelma, the young girl you see in Copenhagen, is sort of the living picture of all those left behind. That’s why you see the consequences that it has even when you succeed in getting your child to Europe, it might not be just as blissful as you thought.

Q) Thank you for the film it was very powerful. I just wondered if it was difficult to get funding for something of this subject? And what the obstacles were and whether people were very happy to get involved.

Ditte: Maybe that’s a question for my producer

Prod: (INAUDIBLE)…..  No Microphone.

This scheme, was a scheme where we could work quite freely. We already have television on board and the Danish film institute came onboard in sort of a package that is all about, trying to walk new ways. So, people who were very preoccupied with trying to find other ways of describing this situation rather than n an anonymous journalistic way. So we had, we didn’t have a lot of money but  we had a great amount of freedom in making the film as we wanted to make it, you could say.

youtube.com

Q) What do you think the motivations were for those who chose to participate in your film?

Really I think most of all, they just wanted to hang out with me. I mean I make it very clearly when I film that I’m not going to give them a ticket to Europe. I can’t help in that way. I do not pay, the one time I did it turned out really badly. So it’s a matter of a hard feeling right, I mean, it’s a matter of meeting somebody where you feel ok here’s a connection, somebody I really want to spend some time with.

Then of course, I do help as much as I can right, as the person I am. For Lisa the prostitute, the mother of Thelma, who’s been living in ??London?? for many years, I’ve always been helping her with her connections with the authorities and things like that. Where I can help, I, I try to be as good as a social worker can be.

But that is it. I mean, I do make it very clear that I cannot, give them something.

Q) How did you feel when you saw the goat? And it looked like some sort of witch doctor where they were praying using the body parts, so I was just curious.

That was it, it was sort of a sacrifice no? For his journey to go well. And I felt absolutely fine, filming that goat. Because it was really, it was a sacrifice and the whole deal was that the meat of course also is being sacrificed to the people in the community so it came of good use.

And it works beautifully. Of course, it has a bit of a shock effect in the film but that’s obviously the intention since it’s so difficult to create any drama in a film about people waiting. That was the hugest challenge in this film, you know nothing happens, people are just waiting, so at least I got a goat.

Q) Thanks very much it was a wonderful film. I think as a black person, as an African, for us, the only solution we have is to completely and utterly leave Europe, go back to Africa and build our own continent. That’s the only solution we have. There’s no other solution and I think people are prepared to die for that. When we looked at the colour valley incident in France, I think as you can see, some of us have just lost hope completely, where they kill, they leave and then they come back to die. I feel you’re going to get two strains. One, where we say we need to leave, we need to get out of this hellhole and the other one is, well we’re going to take as many people as we can with us. I think that, that’s the way it is. Thank You.

That is, yeh, that’s a way to see it.

Q) What kind of structure did you have in mind and how did it come together in the end? Did you have any storytelling technique that helped you get, move the story along?

Totally just by doing. It was really difficult actually to create the story. It was created in the editing. I did have an idea of free independent rules so to say, but that didn’t work out at all. So, it just happened because that was the way the story wanted to be told. The sort of intertwining of the different places.

Q) How did you decide on the order?

Maybe because that’s the order that I visited the different places. And moving back and forth made sense, because they were all sort of reflecting back on one another. Like, the characters are also reflecting back on one another.

grundtvigs.dk

Q) Thank you. My question is regarding your experiences and perhaps what you didn’t film. Did you experience amongst the refugees in Europe, significant resentment towards Europeans for the situation they were in? Also, one of your contributors said the only work was selling drugs or having sex. He viewed it as morally wrong, or at least bad. Did you come across anyone who cared less about the morality and was keen to just work regardless? If so, did you chose not to include them for any reason?

No I don’t have really any moral restrictions when I’m filming. I tried that once and it really didn’t work because good and bad are so much, intertwined.

I mean, as I said before, in Copenhagen it was difficult because people were so disillusioned and they spent so many years in Europe and had gotten nowhere basically, except from the street right. So for me coming with a camera, that was of course, a little privileged white woman, coming there to make it big in Hollywood as they saw it. Which was not really the case but I can understand their point of view. And that’s what I had to sort of, fight with or put up with. So, understandably enough, that was a resentment. They were just trying to survive. And it wasn’t easy.

Otherwise no, I think, no resentment except from the Mauritanian government because they were so racist towards the black African community. So they sort of felt that I was doing something with them and they were very scared that I would point the finger at the Mauretanian government.

HOST: Thank you so much for being here and sharing so much information about the making of the film. If anyone wants to find more information about the film you can visit the bullet film website, is that the best place?

Yeh or just write me an email if there’s any questions you forgot.

Visit the bullitt film website here: http://bullittfilm.dk/
And for Ditte's own website here: http://www.dihajo.com/
And for more about the Frontline Club here: http://www.frontlineclub.com/

‘The Eichmann Show’ Q&A

‘The Eichmann Show’
Q&A at the Ritzy Cinema, 20^th Jan 2015
Director Paul Williams, Writer Simon Block and Producers Ken Marshall and Laurence Bowen.
Hosted by Jay Glennie.

Q&A at The Ritzy

Jay: Why this particular story, to draw us into the holocaust, why the story of Eichmann?

LAURENCE: Well I'd always known a little bit about Eichmann myself but not a lot really. When I was growing up as a child in London, he was still the sort of bogeyman figure in the playground and I can just remember his name. I think most people don't really know who he was today. So, I was just doing a little bit of research into it and I thought it was interesting, that people just didn’t know who he was….he disappeared from culture.

And I stumbled across the story of the producer Milton Fruchtman, who Martin Freeman plays, by accident really. Because you don’t really think of the people who film these trials, you really just think about the content, what's on the screen. The more I sort of looked into him and the less I could find online, the more intriguing he became and the more excited I became about telling the story through his and the director’s point of view.

haaretz.com - The control room

I discovered quite early on that he was still alive which was wonderful, he was 88 and living in California and still producing, amazingly. So I made contact with him and we spent 6 months talking about the trial and details of it and he told me the extraordinary story of how he’d hired Leo Hurwitz, who was played by Anthony LaPaglia and how, Leo had been blacklisted for 11years in America and had had his passport confiscated. But before that, had been America’s top documentary filmmaker. He’d been the most celebrated film-maker in America but because he was a communist, he had been deprived of his living and could only work unofficially. And this was his first job for 11 years and the first time he’d ever left the country because he’d had no passport. So he flew into Jerusalem with those 11 years of unemployment behind him and I just thought well that’s just such a great, dramatic beginning for a film.

And then the other thing that was really important was watching a lot of the witness testimonies on YouTube and I’d never seen them before, and they were quite the most emotionally effecting thing I’d ever seen about the holocaust, which I thought I knew about. But it’s only really watching the testimonies that I realized that I’d intellectually understood it, but not emotionally. So I was very keen to find a way to represent those testimonies on screen, and started working with Simon Block, very closely, who I sort of passed the baton over to really and you went to America to do the research didn’t you?

continuo.wordpress.com - Leo Hurwitz

Jay: I believe you spent time with Leo’s family?
SIMON: I spoke to Milton with Laurence on the telephone a couple of times…but Laurence spoke to him mainly.

Leo, as you saw, has one son and I went to America for 10 days to read all of his letters that he wrote, from Jerusalem, back home, more or less every day. Separate letters to his wife and son, almost every day. And we spent, I went with my wife and we spent, I think a whole day with Tom, basically trying to get him to tell us all about his father.  We obviously knew about his work coz we could look that up but we didn’t know about the man. We wanted to try and get as accurate as possible.

Jay: What did he say his father was like? I mean I’ve tried to find out about him and there’s not a lot out there is there?

SIMON: There’s not a huge amount I mean there’s a lot about his work, he’s very celebrated. But the thing about Leo is that he was incredibly bright. He won a scholarship to Harvard, to do philosophy and came top of his year when he got his degree and he was a perfectionist as a film-maker and, quite a difficult character in his own right. BUT Tom had a huge amount of evidence for him and said he was a very, very good father just very difficult to work with. He tried to work for him and then he lasted around a week. He just drove everyone, very very hard.

raindance.org

Jay: His son’s now a cameraman?

His son’s now a very celebrated cinematographer yeh.

Jay: When did Paul and Ken come into play?

LAURENCE: Paul. I’d seen Paul’s first feature film called ‘London to Brighton’ which I thought was one of the best films I’d ever seen. And secretly I wanted to work with him for some time

PAUL: Ten years, my life

LAURENCE: Yes, all his life. And I’d never met him. So, I sent the script to his agent and then literally the next morning, Paul called and was heading off for holiday that afternoon and we met very quickly didn’t we. What do you, what you thought, when you saw the script?

PAUL: Erm, when I read the script, I sort of had always been fascinated by, as ever, most people are I think, my generation. Certainly in this event. So as soon as I saw the title, I was already interested. Before I even read a page I was like, get me a meeting tomorrow. I can’t remember what I was doing but I’d only managed to read half of it by the time I got there and just thought about how I would do it and thought about the different formats and how we could make it work, to make the footage that was already there, and the stories, that people wouldn’t really want to watch and pictures that they wouldn’t want to see, to make them more accessible by making them part of a drama by making them feel, hopefully, as seamless as possible, in the actual production.

Martin & Director Paul

Jay: So with your previous films, you’d written the screenplay. So what was it like working with someone to write it?

PAUL: To be fair, it was already written, it was already there so I didn’t, I mean we had meetings. This is the second film really, I’ve done, that someone else has written. And you know, you look at it and there’s no way I’d ever be able to do, all the research and stuff that goes on in writing a script like that, it would kill me. So in a way it was very lucky to come on board to such a, rounded project.

Jay: Simon, when and how did you decide to put the witness testimonies in? Which ones did you leave out and why?

SIMON: Well there are 112, as you saw on the screen. It’s a really good question. I mean, we didn’t watch 112 testimonies, but we had to make a decision on which ones to use and with Laurence, and then I think with Ken and Paul, we chose them. I s’pose you could say we chose stand-out witnesses, they’re all stand out witnesses in their own right but we chose witnesses that would each tell a different part of the story of what happened. We knew we couldn’t put tens of witnesses on the screen so we had to try and make sure that the witnesses we did put on screen, delivered in terms of story and gave different aspects of drama.

It was just a long discussion about the ones we felt were what we needed to be included in the story.

yadvashem.org - Zivia Lubetkin gives evidence

The crew on set - Ken right

Jay: Ken, When did you come on board? You and Paul have worked together many times. When did the BBC come on board?

KEN: Well the BBC came onboard with Laurence because I think Laurence basically pitched them the idea to begin with, didn’t you, so once commissioned, had to pull together a script very quickly.

LAURENCE: Yeh, the BBC came on board quite early but they only gave us half of the money so it took quite a long time to raise the rest of it. And then when ken joined me to set the production up we weren’t quite sure where to film it. We had location managers in England, in Malta, in Lithuania, in Jerusalem and Northern Ireland, looking for this courtroom. Because, without the courtroom as a location, we wouldn’t really be able to make the film.  We obviously looked at the real courtroom that still exists in Jerusalem, but it’s now a community centre and you know, they didn’t really want us to take it over for 5 weeks. 

cbc.ca - The Courtroom

So it was a nerve-wracking period but in filming in Lithuania, because it was occupied by Russia, the soviet republic, there were lots these big soviet, imperial concrete, huge architectural structures that had been set up as sports palaces or culture palaces. And this particular building that we found the courtroom in was an old soviet party cinema where they used to screen propaganda films. Weirdly, the interior was almost identical to the real courtroom. So when we found that, we decided we should go there. Then Paul and Ken and I, met lots of Lithuanian crew to try and create a mixture of British DOPs and Lithuanian DOPs and we were just bowled over by how good it was to work there. I mean genuinely because some people go there for tax credit because it can be cheaper to work there  but actually all of our HODs and crew there were, were brilliant weren’t they. What did you both think?

PAUL: Brilliant, just a bit cheaper. Yeh no, they were great.

Jay: So what parts were shot in Malta?

PAUL: The hot parts.

KEN: Mainly, A lot of the exteriors accept for exterior of the courtroom. But anything that looked sunny and yeh.

PAUL: Malta’s still such a beautiful place and the architecture there is great. And Lithuania was, so much of it was, what one would imagine Israel to look like.

www.kinfoapdovanojimai.lt

Jay: We must touch on the cast. How did you find Adolf Eichmann?

PAUL: He does parties. (laughter) Basically, we were sent, there was a casting director out there and she sent photos and he was one of them,

KEN: He’s like the most, the best actor in Lithuania.

LAURENCE: He’s actually a very famous actor in Lithuania, who’s celebrated for his theatre work and we were just very lucky that he happened to look identical to Adolf Eichmann. It was one of those extraordinary coincidences.

But Paul and Simon both, you know, we didn’t really want to do a drama about a fictional Eichmann. It really was, Eichmann in the film is essentially the archive, the real Eichmann. And then we just wanted to glimpse bits of colour Eichmann around the real Eichmann to give him this feeling of existing in the present day when you’re watching the film. It brings him to life a little bit. So, we were just very lucky to have a really good actor doing essentially a lookalike part but the bits that he did do were really strong. We were lucky with that weren’t we.

Jay: And Martin and Anthony, how did they come in?

Well we made some lists didn’t we, about who we’d want to be in it and Martin was very much at the top. We were just lucky in that Martin a) was really interested in the subject matter, b) had seven weeks free, literally in 5 years, in the middle of his 5yr kind of plan. He had a few weeks free. And, he was really keen to work with Paul. So literally, three boxes that had to be empty and ticked, we were just very lucky. And in the end he really liked the script. And so he came on board.

Anthony I think was Ken’s idea originally, and he was working in Australia. He was what’s called in the trade, a long shot, but I knew some agents who worked at his agency and they read it and they loved the script. So they sent it to him in Australia and he’d been planning to come home and see his family and his daughter in Los Angeles for ages. So when he started reading the script he was actually praying that it wouldn’t be very good because he really didn’t want to let them down. And he cursed us didn’t he, when he read the script because he just thought, he had to do it. So we were just very lucky, very lucky indeed.

KEN: He actually got permission from his daughter though when she found out he was acting opposite the hobbit. She forgave him.

LAURENCE: So we were lucky, we were lucky.

bbc.co.uk - Anthony & Martin keeping warm on location

Jay: There was a screening at BAFTA last night, first time Martin had ever seen the film. And he came onstage physically shaking for the Q&A didn’t he.

LAURENCE: Yeh, no. I think, all credit to the script and to Paul but I think the performances are really tremendous in it. And I think, none of quite realized when we were making it, when you break it down and you shoot different bits on different days, how the relationship would work between Martin and Leo, between Milton and Anthony… between the two central characters. When you’re shooting and breaking down, you don’t really know if the chemistry is really there. And it was only really when we started cutting it together that, began to take shape and to manifest itself.

It’s interesting watching it. We only finished the film 10 days ago, so it’s interesting watching it with audiences because the two of them together, take in a life of their own that we weren’t completely aware of when we were filming it. And again we were lucky that worked because neither of them had worked together before, so you don’t know. I mean they’re both good actors but you have no idea how good actors individually will be together.

KEN: It was challenging because you know, normally you get a bit of rehearsal time and Paul would get to spend time with the actors but, Martin spent a little bit of time with him but Anthony was kinda like Leo. He flew from Australia to LA to see his family for 10hours and then flew to Hamburg, and flew to Vilnius. We had him for about a day before he had to be on set pretty much. It was interesting.

bbc.co.uk - Paul & Martin

Jay: How long was the shoot. It was a short shoot wasn’t it?

LAURENCE: Yh it was. I mean it’s a BBC television budget and all of us are essentially trying to make a feature film on the budget. It’s tough. I mean we were helped by the fact that it’s quite specific to certain locations but you know. I just think how it plays and looks visually is way above the money that we had to spend on it. And, this is something that Paul brought to it, but the way that our archive is intercut with our drama footage and we had this sneaky little extra layer between the real archive and the drama which is our created archive, which we shot on 16mm and on a few different mediums. We shot that in colour and in black and white and that was completely Paul wanting to find a glue that could really bind the drama to the archive and made the archive feel that it was really embedded in the drama. That all came as we were filming. But it was tough wasn’t it Paul. It was tough.

PAUL: Yeh, 23 days. So it was, that’s a short shoot on anything. But doing period and with non-English speaking extras and crew, being a bast*** cold.

KEN: I mean the post-production was almost more challenging. You know, we wrapped on this on November 7^th so pretty much two months, and then having the Christmas period in there.

PAUL: I mean everyone who worked on it, really put a maximum amount of effort in and you know, it’s one of those jobs where all the way through you’re like, I am never doing this schedule again, until next time.

radiotimes.com

Jay: Were there any influences from other films?

PAUL: I always get scared of saying influences because when you say them, they’re like it was nowhere near as good as that, and you’re like, yeh. But yeh there’s lots, anything that uses archive footage, is, is an influence. Anything that’s ever been made that does that kind of stuff. But, you know, I’m a really big fan of JFK for example, and when you realise that they had like 4 months to edit the first 12minutes, just to edit it, there’s no way you can possibly match that.

But it’s one of those things that you do with everything you’ve got, do the best you can and you know, hope that it hits an audience, that some people like it.

LAURENCE: We knew when we were starting production, that we had to get it finished in time for holocaust memorial day, which is next week. For a season that the BBC were planning. They commissioned it for, so there was no flexibility was there. Weirdly, although this might be post-rationalization, there’s something also quite positive about knowing you have to hit a deadline. Because the opposite can be equally stressful, where you’re simply in a place with no end in sight. So, there was a coming together around that, you know, deadline and crew and the way it worked in Lithuania, although it was painful and faster than you’d wanted, there was a shared goal there, which was good in some ways, even if it may not have felt like it at the time.

bbc.co.uk - Character Mrs Landau

Jay: Rebecca’s character. She spoke last night about that tattoo. Tell us about that.

LAURENCE: I mean well, Simon you wrote those scenes for that character didn’t you and they’re interesting. Because Rebecca’s character is not in it that much but she kind of frames the whole film. And the scene at the end where she talks to Leo and helps explain to him that he has done something good. We originally had it at the very end of the film but Paul tried out putting it slightly earlier, where it is now, after you’ve seen Eichmann in his cell and it just felt, so good to have there. But it’s amazing how much that scene does for just one scene. What were you thinking when you wrote it Simon? What was the aim for that scene?

SIMON: Just to reinforce and really bring home, the effect televising the trial had on the people who, who were there. I think, Leo was so obsessed with his pursuit of Eichmann, he took his eye off, to some extent, the effect it was having outside of his control room. And so his interaction with somebody who, it was based on his real landlady in Jerusalem. She was very similar to Mrs. Landau. In his letters he would write about being served dinner by her. She was quite an austere character. She would dump the food in front of him and sort of, strolled off. So, it just became interesting to try and put some scenes outside of the courtroom to reflect his growing sense of awareness of the impact his work was having worldwide.

Jay: You mentioned the word impact last night. Rebecca sad that when she got back to her trailer, she realized she still had her tattoo on her arm and scrubbed it off immediately with horror, coz it was still on her arm, which was pretty… well it shook me when I heard that.

Has Milton seen the film yet?

LAURENCE: He sees it tomorrow morning. He didn’t want to see it until it was finished. He was great actually. I think because he’s a filmmaker himself he gave us all lots of material and information about the story and the trial but he purposefully didn’t want to be too hands on. So I got an email from him saying he’s going to watch it with his wife and grandchildren tomorrow (21^st Jan) in Los Angeles. So, that’ll be interesting.

yadvashem.org - Audience member at the trial

Jay: Has anybody else got a question?

Audience: How did it affect you emotionally when you’re making it, knowing that this was real?

SIMON: From a writing point of view, you’re just aware that they’re all real so you just have a responsibility to make it as true their experiences as you can. That’s the biggest sense really, of responsibility.

PAUL: I think, obviously it affects you at times but you’ve watched it so many times as a film and I’ve seen a lot of the footage in a lot of documentaries, in my life. But every now and again it catches you. Mainly when you see kids to be honest. I think that, that’s the worst bit. But yeh, it’s undoubtedly horrific to watch. You know, it sneaks up on you at times.

Host: Ken you spoke about being moved to tears.

KEN: Well, you know, I still think it’s quite a powerful watch but as we were making it, I mean it’s different. Mainly, I guess when we were filming the scenes in the control room and in the courtroom you get a sense of recreating history and then, seeing the footage, everyone, the cast and crew seen the footage briefly before the scenes and it’s horrific. And it’s very emotional but I think over the course of making the film you realise you’re just trying to make something that’s important and will hopefully stand against the time as a significant, about a significant piece of history. The edit was probably harder to watch in places than actually physically making it.

Audience: Bit of praise really and more of a comment than a question, I think that the connection between the archive and the drama was sublime. And I suppose it was there in the script, it was there in the shooting and it was there particularly in the edit. I thought that the inter-cutting between the Jewish children, and the German children dancing around was absolutely masterful. And, that’s it. Well done.

yadvashem.org - The Press Room

Audience: What do you know about the logistical task of getting the trial to 27 countries by the next day?

LAURENCE: It was the first time that anyone had ever televised a trial. It was the first time anyone in the world had heard these stories. And television was banned in Israel, so you know, quite a few problems. And really it was Milton who had to doggedly go around the world and one by one got countries to agree to show it. And once he’d got a certain number he went back to Israel, who'd said no to televising the trial originally and said, look I've got all these letters, particularly from Germany. Every broadcaster in Germany and they said they'd show it every day. And then Israel kind of had to give in and say well if that's going to happen, we'll let you film it. But they then had to work out how to transport it internationally and I think it was complicated. There were about 7 or 8 runners who would come to control room at the end of every day and there was one who was shared by all of the American networks and he was unite a shadowy figure, who I think no-one in the control room really liked because he’d occasionally have notes and things and they really didn't want his notes. So he would take a compilation of each day’s trial and that compilation would be made by an editor, in the back room we see briefly, essentially made with a razor blade and selotape, 1 inch tape. So they’d literally cut it and then selotaped it together and then copied it and sent it around the world. So, it was a big operation.

ynetnews.com - Eichmann's box

Audience: Why now, why is 2015 a good time to broadcast THIS film in particular?

PAUL: Well I mean, the thing is. That I think all time’s a good time to, to serve as a reminder. But not you know, it’s a reminder to times gone by but also, it happens now, you know. It’s not sort of, unique to one period in history. So I think that it’s something very important to sort of, show the generations as they, I mean people my age still didn’t know who Eichmann was. They didn’t know about the holocaust but when you say, he orchestrated the final solution… to what, people still say. You know, still don’t know. And obviously the genocide and racism and fascism and persecution and horrors like you saw in the film, continue to go on. And you know, they probably will continue to go on forever but I think it’s important to show the world, you know show everyone what we’re all capable of as Leo says. You know, in different periods, in different times and yeh. That’s why I think it’s relevant to be made, all times.

bbc.co.uk

Jay: Just to touch on that, the end part came very late?

LAURENCE: Yes, the last 30seconds, we put on after it was locked because we wanted to try and find one final full stop at the end that somehow philosophically sums up what the film is about. And I think our editor, we had an amazing archive researcher who you know, found all the archive for us but, I think our editor had seen it first and had sort of put it in a secret part  of his avid, which I certainly hadn’t seen before but it was really expensive to buy it basically. So we didn’t have much money. But at the very end once we’d finished that, we thought what we had was good. We thought well, we’ll just ask the BBC for a little bit more money to pay for that last piece of archive because the last piece of archive essentially, is that reporter outside the box tying in what we’ve just seen, not simply to the holocaust and the Second World War but to humanity. And of course Eichmann was convicted for crimes against humanity and in the end that feels very relevant to today with what’s happening in Paris and all around the world. So, that gives it, for me, that’s what makes it contemporary.