Posts tagged interviews

Interview: North Sea Texas - Part two

Why call it North Sea Texas? What does the cafe (called Texas) represent?

B: It’s a symbol of the outside world. There’s only one scene where he wants to go the City and he end up back at his home, he doesn’t dare to cross the border. And I think Texas is the only place in the film where the rest of the world is a bit more intimate. There’s scenes where the men in the pub are a bit more negative, are like ‘where’s your girlfriend’?

Y: The ‘north sea’, all the nature and the sea, all the landscapes are commenting on the story, but are supportive of what’s happening, whereas in Texas, in the cafe you have more like Bavo says, the outside world that kind of comments on his status. Like there’s this one scene in the middle of the film where they start asking ‘don’t you have a girlfriend yet? If you don’t have a girlfriend you can choose one of us.’ it’s like these two different outside things that are contrary - nature and culture.

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Interview: North Sea Texas - Part one

We sat down with Director, Bavo Defurne, producer, Yves Verbaeken and cast members Eva van der Gucht and Jelle Florizoone to discuss their new film North Sea Texas.

Bavo Defurne: A lot of people related the story of the film to their own youth and their first love and their imaginary first love. There was a man who came to me who said he had his first sexual experience when he was 25, and he was grateful and he cried seeing this story about first love. He said he was so moved by a youth that he had never had. It was very heartbreaking. That’s what we experienced last night (at a showing at London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival). A lot of people related to the film in ways that we would not have expected them to. That is what we discovered, that people from all walks of life were moved and had to cry.

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Interview with Simon Oakes: President & CEO of Hammer and Vice Chairman of Exclusive Media

Originally founded in 1934, legendary British film studio Hammer has delivered a hugely successful run of films over the years including Dracula, Frankenstein Created Woman, One Million Years B.C. and The Vampire Lovers. Not in production since the 1980s, Hammer marked their return to features in 2010 with the release of the critically acclaimed Let Me In. In 2011, Hammer released Antti Jokinen’s The Resident starring Hilary Swank, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Hammer legend Sir Christopher Lee. Today sees the UK release of The Woman in Black starring Daniel Radcliffe.

Simon Oakes took the time to sit down with Cinetalk in a roundtable discussion to talk about the future of Hammer, the possible re-boot of The Quatermass Experiment and the making of The Woman in Black.

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Interview: Ryoo Seung-wan

Korean Director Ryoo Seung-Wan was recently in the UK for the London Korean Film Festival hosting a retrospective of his work. His debut film Die Bad was released in 2000 and it commented on gang violence and the repercussions in society. The fight scenes are pretty gripping and it was a promising debut film. Since then Ryoo Seung-Wan has released six films, all showing off his technical ability and flair for great action sequences.  His newest film, The Unjust is a tense thriller that delves into the dark world of police and courtroom corruption stemming from a spree of schoolgirl murders.

We had a chat with the man dubbed the “action kid” and here is what he had to say:

The London Korean Film Festival screened your films as part of a retrospective. Which of your films was the most satisfying to make?

That is a very difficult choice to make, except when I look at all my films I can always think of a way to improve them apart from Die Bad. I don’t think I could make it any better now. Technically, yes it could be improved and it is slightly embarrassing when I look back on it now, but it wasn’t built on techniques. I had invested my twenties and youth entirely on that film so I don’t think I could make it with the same energy again. But that’s not to say I love this film any more than the others!

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Interview: Justin Mitchell

Director Justin Mitchell took the time to have a chat with me about the making of his surf documentary, Rio Breaks.

What drew you to Rio?

I actually had a lot of draw to Rio growing up, my dad is a cameraman and he had done a piece for 60 Minutes down in Rio in the 70s so I had kind of always heard reference to this place. As a kid, I thought I gotta get there somehow! My professor at University, Roberto da Matta, is a Brazilian anthropologist, he was the coolest guy. He told me “You are gonna make a film in Brazil, I can just tell.”

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Interview : Gareth Edwards - Part 2

The only early piece of work I could find of yours was the Atilla the Hun episode you did for the BBC, what was the point when you said “Now is the time to make a feature film?”

Every year I said that to myself. Every year and I failed. I was trying to do that with Atilla if I’m honest. I was trying to make a great film and I felt like I had both arms tied behind my back because I’m making television and even more so you’re making factual TV, it was for the history department. So anytime there was a discussion about what we could prove really happened or what would be really cool, we had to go with what really happened. You couldn’t invent anything, so story wise it was a complete nightmare because there wasn’t really anything to tell, it was just a random series of events. Anyway, it’s all my fault, and thats what got me really frustrated because I wanted to do this and that and then have a shot where this happens to someone, but when we came to actually shooting it, I just didn’t feel it. I was definitely frustrated with that. It gets to the point where you are embarrassed by that, but it wasn’t anyones fault but mine. It was just the process of having to decide thing days ahead of time and you are making decisions about things you can’t see yet and then when you get to that point in time, and you see whats in front of you, you might want to change things up a bit. The moment you want to change something, the script has to change and I didn’t have the authority to do that. I would have gotten into trouble if I had just said “Can we not say that line” or “Can we have them in silence here” every few minutes, it would have gotten out of control. I just thought that there has got to be a better way of making a film than like this and so when it was over, I was so disheartened. I was trying to make a little Lord of the Rings and it took a year of my life and it didn’t even blip on the radar and once you spend that amount of time on anything and it doesn’t get noticed you kind of think to yourself, why bother.
To be fair, the factual department, especially Matthew and Mark who worked on that gave me an opportunity that the drama department would never have given me and I tried many times and they were like forget it. The documentary department were more willing to take the risk because they have a history with CGI, way more than drama and right about the time that these drama-docs started taking off I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time and get the chance to direct some of them.

I know that when you went to shoot Monsters that you used a Sony Ex-3 with an adapter for a SLR lens to be attached, what was the reason to use that camera and the adapter for the SLR lens?

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Interview : Gareth Edwards - Part 1

This is another interview done earlier in the year that I have just moved over to the new site.

This is a large interview so I have split it up into parts (2 or 3) to make it easily digestible.

I’ve just come away from an Interview with filmmaker Gareth Edwards and couldn’t be happier. One of the most genuine nicest people I have ever met, and not just in the realms of filmmakers in general, just a really cool, genuine person who is happy to talk about anything. Spielberg, Star Wars, The Twilight Zone and storytelling, all tied up with some nice little analogies he has to explain his thought process. Skip back 80 minutes and we can start at the beginning.

I walk into the coffee bar / restaurant where we have agreed to meet and Gareth has just sat down with a coffee. He looks up and see’s me and smiles. We had met very briefly twice before. Once at the Empire Movie-con III in August 2010 and the second time at FrightFest London the same year. At Movie-con III Gareth had come to share a little bit of footage from his film, Monsters and do a little Q&A about the film. At the break I had managed to catch up with him and talk a bit about the film and the making of it, but mostly we had a quick chat about movies in general. I said that I was heading to FrightFest a few weeks later and look forward to seeing the film and would tell him what I thought about the film as soon as it was over. FrightFest came and went, as did the film, and I loved it. I met Gareth as he was being mobbed outside of the screening to sign various posters and quickly told him that I loved the film and thought he did a great job, he mentioned he was worried about how the audience would take the film, but they seemed to like it. Half a year later we get to the point where we can really sit down and talk properly.

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Interview : Andrei Konchalovsky

This interview was done at the beginning of the year and was on our old site - I have bought it over here for you all to enjoy.

I must admit, I was nervous about interviewing Andrei Konchalovsky. With Oscar nominated films such as Runaway Train under his belt and a plethora of Russian films that explore Soviet ideology and the work of Anton Chekhov I was sure his intellect would overwhelm me. On walking into the library of Pushkin House I am presented with a friendly, welcoming face. He pats the seat next to him on the sofa and tells me to sit down. “Are you comfortable?” he asks with a genuine smile. I am at ease already. The interview flows more like a conversation as we skip from light subject matter to the deeper issues of good, evil and the mystery of human life in the blink of an eye. We begin by talking about the films that will be shown at the Barbican as part of a retrospective of his work.

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Interview : Hauer talks Hobo

Q: The reaction to Hobo With A Shotgun has been nothing short of phenomenal – and rightly so.

RUTGER HAUER: I’m pleasantly shocked at how well the film’s been received, because I really didn’t see that coming. I knew that there was quite a following, but the fact that part of the [movie] establishment also came on board and were so friendly, rather than being upset and pissed off, is great. I guess the film is very clear about what it promises to tell you.

You know, not since the first test screening of The Hitcher in 1985 have I seen [one of my movies] get such a great audience reaction as Hobo’ has. It’s the only time that I’ve experienced watching a film with an audience where they know exactly what it is, and what you’re doing, and they know how to appreciate it – it was lovely.

Q: Hobo With A Shotgun doesn’t seem like a project that many established actors would voluntarily sign on to. How did you get involved with it, and what attracted you to the project? 

RH. I’d say that about one third of my work involves projects I think I should gamble with, and the more I do them, the more pleasure I get out of them, because you discover things. The script [for Hobo With A Shotgun] was a bit loud and flat, so I wasn’t sure if there was more to tell, or if maybe I hadn’t read it correctly. But once I connected with the director [Jason Eisener] on Skype for an hour – I was shooting a film in Cape Town [South Africa] and he was in Halifax [USA] – I knew I had to work with him because it would be fun. Going into it, I felt like I was making a dirty, naughty film, with no holding back: I understood what the game was and I enjoyed it.

The first thing in our discussion was that we needed to try and layer the characters so we could add more depth to them.

Q. So you did have input into the Hobo character and the script?

RH. Yeah. Jason [Eisener] had very specific ideas about the character, because the whole story was based on Dave Brunt, who is a real person walking around in Halifax with his own story – he was the inspiration. Jason wanted me to hang on to that, so my task was to see if I could bring the real character into my movie character. So I studied Dave. He was there [on set] most of the time, and he was very supportive of me playing him. He was very proud that I was pretending to be him.

Q: What is Dave Brunt’s story?

RH. He’s a damaged person basically, because he was disabled when a truck drove into him. He settled for a couple of thousand dollars or something, but a big part of his life was ruined. So he became somewhat of an outcast I would think; but he’s also a very pure character who loves nature and knows all about any wild animal you can think of.

Q: The movie is extremely violent, but also totally over-the-top ridiculous. Did you have trouble playing it ‘straight’?

RH. Jason felt that I shouldn’t play it for jokes; that I should be deadly serious and try and deal with the simplicity of his [the Hobo’s] own mind, his sense of pride and honour and purpose. My task was to be deadly serious, because Dave [Brunt] is also very serious about this stuff: you can’t fool around with honour and pride, and sensibility.

Q: Because things get so crazy, did you find it hard keeping a straight face during the really insane scenes?

RH. Every scene became such an over-the-top soap opera that it was a pure joy to see how everything developed into such ridiculous, crazy stuff – but of course it was my job to stay in character. Naturally though, after Jason said ‘cut’ you would piss yourself, because of all that had happened during the scene. It’s hard, sure, but I had a lot of fun shooting this movie because it was so wild, so creative, and everyone involved has a love for making movies.

Q: You’ve played some very extreme characters during your career. But were there ever moments while filming particularly insane scenes in Hobo’ when you actually questioned if it was too crazy even for you?

RH. Not really. I just thought that I had to pick my own moments of craziness, so it doesn’t repeat itself, so that it becomes part of the acceleration of shit, so to speak. In a story, you can only burn and kill so many people before it gets boring – you have to be creative. I think that’s what the audience was expecting also. We had to make a movie out of the original trailer and top it, because the expectations were so very high.

Q&A : Attack the Block

Last week Joe Cornish’s directorial debut, Attack the Block was released and I was lucky enough to go along to a Q&A session with the cast and Director at Stratford Picturehouse.

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