The self concious film-maker

“Luv'in the Black Country” is very close to completion so I thought I should try and break it down a little from a personal point of view.

Firstly I want to say I'm still learning a hell of a lot about cinema and I'm still trying to find myself in it. I feel as a person I'm in a self expressive stage of my life (and have been for the last three years). I feel before I can really find my own path in cinema I have to get a lot of personal things off my chest. However due to the fact film is the only way I've been able to successfully express myself (so far anyway) it's only natural that its going to take time.

The last three “video poems” I made about the Black Country were very personal so when I had the idea for “Luv'in the Black Country” I thought it was a great chance to make a film about the Black Country and NOT uncover so much about myself in it. It wasn't until I saw the last edit did it dawn on me how naïve I was about this and how in a sense this film exposed more of me than anything I've done before.

The Black Country Canals to me have always been a place I've walked for contemplation (I'm sure if I lived anywhere else I would have found an alternative place to reflect, so I'm not suggesting there is anything significantly contemplative about the canals in the Black Country).

I'd often walk my dog or take a detour from work and stroll down the tow-path around the Wednsebury/Stone Cross area. I'd walk for long periods of time, passing different areas, with different characteristics. The West Midlands canal routes are one of the few places you can walk for ten minutes and it seems like you have walked into a different county. From the industrial graveyards, the floral meadows to the graffiti masked suburbia. I think this may have been a result of how secluded the old Black Country towns used to be, they developed different characteristics … but im not sure.

After walking for about 30 minutes in contemplation you would meet with a random stranger, say hello, nod your head … sometimes even have a conversation. Then you carry on walking, possibly never seeing them again … back to your own thoughts.

This is what I wanted to create in this film and it at the moment it seems to be the most effective part of it.

Don't get me wrong originally I wanted to use it more as a narrative tool than an atmospheric property and in a minor sense it was successful at this too.

My original aim was to show in a romantic/poetic way how much the Black Country is changing (Culturally and environmentally). I knew how important “first love” is to people in terms of place and time. Usually when a person reflects on their first love, the time and place it was in become an important part of the memory … it's as much about “the place you were in at that point in your life” than it is about the person you were in love with.

So I knew by showing older peoples and younger peoples first love stories their generations will automatically be exposed. My theory was their generations will contrast showing how much has changed … if I'm honest this wasn't as successful as I anticipated, a contrast is definitely clear but not a distinctive as I hoped.

I'm not smart enough to articulate it any better im afraid. I still have a lot to learn and there are still many uncertainties in my mind in regards to film-making.

The only thing I'm certain about is the approach … Hou Hsiao-hsien once said something that articulates this approach much better than I think I ever could. This was more or less the approach I attempted with “Luv'in the Black Country”

“Before making Fengkuei my ideas about cinema were very simple: narrative, to tell the story in the script. Later on I met some filmmakers who had returned to Taiwan from abroad. They had a lot of theories about cinema, which got me all confused. I was puzzled; the script was finished but I didn’t know how to give it form. After listening to me, my scriptwriter Zhu Tianwen showed me a book called Autobiography of Shen Congwen. After reading the book I discovered Shen’s point of view was somewhat like looking down from above. Like natural laws, it has no joy and no sorrow. That I found to be very close to me. It doesn’t matter if he’s describing a brutal military crackdown or various kinds of death; life for him is a river, which flows and flows but is without sorrow or joy. The result is a... certain breadth of mind, or a certain perspective that is very moving. Because of this, it produces a generosity of viewpoint. I decided to adopt this angle. The problem was how to transplant it to film. I didn’t really have a solution but I discovered a simple device, and that was to constantly tell the cinematographer, ‘keep a distance, and be cooler.’ It allowed certain real situations to naturally unfold themselves. The camera just stayed at a distance and quietly watched over them.”

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Early memories

My dad lost his licence

so my mum drove him to work

having no one to watch me at 5am

they took me with them

rapped me up in my bed sheets

the restful sound of them whispering around me

the cold breeze on my face as they take me out to the car

I soon fall back to sleep

to the lullaby of the car engine

Production Dates Confirmed

We are a month over due, but finally we start shooting Luv'in The Black Country on the 9/6/2010 (next Wednesday). Shooting was delayed due to most of the Executive Producers (Dan from Screen West Midlands & Jude from the UK Film Council) attending Cannes this year. Also I just want to express how happy I am for Apichatpong Weerasethakul taking the Palm d'or this year, It's great to see one of my heros being so well received on such a huge scale (Syndromes and a Century is within my top ten favourite films all time). But yes, now the Executive producers are back we can move foreward to the shoot. We are shooting the first part of the film around the Halesowen canal route.



Below are some stills that were taken when location scouting early this year

Luv'in the black country

The last month or so I've been scouting for locations around, guess where? ... Yes the black country canals (how surprising). This time it's for my first funded documentary (Screen West Midlands & The UK Film Council).


http://www.screenwm.co.uk/news/detail/868/final_selection_made_for_digishorts_2010/


For anyone that has seen any of my other work (or Vlogs) they may have noticed I have a rather subtle obsession with the canals in the black country. As I've stressed in my earlier shorts I feel the canals are the only inanimate part of the black countries industrial identity that still stand. So to me shooting a film that is aiming to capture the cultural transition that is happening in the Black Country at the moment, the most appropriate (or dare I say romantic) setting would be that of the canals.

I really didn't want to follow the conventional route when getting information from the local black country people. If I make a film that travels down the canals asking people along the way how they feel about the changes in the black country, I feel it would be too much of a social statement for my liking (or too obvious of one anyway).

I'm such an admirer of Humphrey Jennings, his ability to embrace what was going on in the war in such a poetic and subtle way, is something I've always aspired to do. Also watching Jia Zhangke' 24 city and Bing Wang' West Of The Tracks ... both portraying a similar fading industrial identity in subtle and personal ways. I really feel at this point in time many countries are going through similar changes in their vintage industrial communities, and a new generation has alternative idea to what "work" should be.

I found by asking people a question as simple as "Tell me the story of when you first fell in love?" not only do many people have touching and interesting stories (shown nicely on the back drop of the canals) but due to the fact different generations have very different ideas on love, their stories have a great sense of time. There was a strong contrast between the older generations and the younger generations stories.

Most of the older generations stories are told with strong black country dialects, working class frame of minds and a deep bitterness towards the industrial collapse. Yet the younger generations stories are usually told with a more neutral dialect, Middle class/office job frame of mind and an optimistic view towards the local industrial collapse.


I start shooting next month

A Black Country Verse

A Black Country Verse from Black-Country Cinema on Vimeo.

I shot this a while ago, but I was so unhappy I made a Vlog out of the footage instead. Just under a year later I've come back to the footage and stripped it down (using about 30% of the actual footage shot). The film was originally meant to run about 10 minutes and I think this was the problem I was having. My minimalist routes came out again and it seemed the less I used the better it came out.




A visual adaptation of an old saying by the American consul to Birmingham Elihu Burritt, he famously said “The Black Country is black by day and red by night”. The Black Country which is located in the middle of the West Midlands (England) was once the industrial heart of the United Kingdom and was famous for the black smoke produced from the factories that filled the streets in a dark haze. Then as the sun set when the foundry furnaces were opened the sky would light up in crimson red. This film was shot on one of the many Black Country canal routes, which used to be the primary method of transportation for the factory goods and furnace coal. The Canals are one of the few inanimate parts of the Black Countries industrial identity that still stand. After the lorries and the rejuvenated rail routes became the preferred method of product transportation by local companies, the canals became futile. Like the Black Countries industrial Identity the canals stand as a shadow of what they used to be. If it was not for it simply being too expensive to remove the canals there would be no reason to keep them, they stand in a state of nostalgic limbo.

Charles Bukowski

I've always liked this poem!

Yasujirō Ozu

When ever my films are shown, people often ask me about Ozu.

"Your obviously influenced by him, but what makes such a young person so interested in him?"

"Ozu portrays a culture that's so different from your own, how can you relate to his work?"

...Etc...

I've always struggled to answer these kind of questions, I think it may have something to do with my general lack of cinematic intellect. I seem to love the same kind of cinema intelligent people love, but due to the fact I'm not an intellectual myself...I find it hard to verbally articulate my appreciation for the films I'm so influenced by...More so with Ozu for some reason

Maybe when I'm older I'll be able to answer these questions more conventionally, but until then the only way I've been able to express my love for Ozu is through video.

I guess its kind of like a baby painting a picture of his mum and dad before actually being able to say "mum" or "dad".

There's always a bit (or a lot) of Ozu in all my vlogs and films...but these two vlogs I made especially to convey my admiration for him.

Whenever I see an Ozu film I experience a kind of phantom nostalgia...Like viewing a past memory I forgot. Ozu made films how I see my everyday life...my earliest memories have always played back in my mind as if they were painted by Ozu himself.

Winter Dreams out of failed films

I was trying to put together a film about the black country canals (stone cross to west brom) but at the moment it seems like it was a bit of a failure. As a result I used some of the footage to make a vlog called "winter dreams". Its not so much that it was based on a dream, but more on a "nut shell" vision I had for the original film.



The original film was meant to be a narrative, but due to my vlogs usually being visual poems I cut out the footage that I felt was "not pretty". This left the vlog making little sense in terms of narrative, however I felt it created a nice cinematic portrait of the black country canals.



The only reason I wanted to make the original film in the first place was to give me an excuse to capture the poetic beauty of the canals. So all in all I guess it worked out fine...