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