10 May 2017


‘I hope they don’t throw me to the lions’


Director Michael Radford discusses his ‘biopic’ of Andrea Bocelli


BY WILLIAM PEAKIN


It’s 9pm in Rome and I’m keeping Michael Radford from dinner with his editing team. “I’m knackered, to put it mildly,” says the Oscar nominated writer/director (Nineteen Eighty-Four, Il Postino, The Merchant of Venice), via FaceTime. Radford has been working on The Music of Silence, a ‘biopic’ of the tenor Andrea Bocelli, who was born with glaucoma and lost his sight completely, aged 12, when he suffered a brain haem- orrhage after being hit by a football. Last August, Radford was in Tuscany,


where Bocelli grew up, working on the script with Anna Pavignano, his collaborator on Il Postino, before switching to Rome for pre-production and then filming in November and December. Post-production took up the early months of this year and now he is looking forward to a short break before aiming to complete the film by June. “It’s been quite an experience,” said Radford, who took several attempts at persuasion by the producer to direct the film. “The problem with biopics is that a


good film is not shaped in the clear, lin- ear way life unfolds. And particularly if the subject is still alive there is the danger they will say: ‘That didn’t hap- pen,’ if you use some dramatic device to help convey the story. “But I think it works; it’s a powerful


story about a kid who was born nearly blind, then goes completely blind, but who had this ambition and kind of went off the rails because he thought it wasn’t going to happen. And then, rela- tively late in life, becomes this global phenomenon. I like the people in the film; I like their humanity.” It stars Toby Sebastian (Game


of Thrones) as Bocelli and Antonio Banderas (One Upon a Time in Mexico) as his mentor. Luisa Ranieri (Letters to Juliet) will plays his mother and Ennio Fantastichini (Open Doors) his uncle. Radford said: “We used mostly


Italian actors, but speaking English – which I wondered about initially, but it actually feels very authentic.” The film was a challenge technically, he added, “a lot of extremely difficult sound stuff, and a lot of visual effects as there always seems to be in films these days.” The irony is not lost on Radford whose Nineteen Eighty-Four was lauded for its visual effects, when in fact there weren’t any. “Everything was shot for real. There


were 2,000 extras. What was playing on the television screens was shot on film, not added afterwards, so when you did close-ups you had to make sure you had the right thing playing on the screen behind. All of that was very com- plicated,” he said. “But it was fabulous to do, it was a fantastic moment in my life – I was just a kid when I made it –


and I’m just so pleased people haven’t forgotten about it!” Earlier this year, more than 200 independent cinemas across America – and some in Europe – held a screening day for Nineteen Eighty-Four in protest at Donald Trump’s presidency. “It’s still being shown in some places,” said Radford, who shot a new introduction and interview for the occasion. In it, Radford speaks about how he


had just made Another Time, Another Place – the story of a Scottish housewife during World War Two who has an affair with an Italian prisoner of war. “It had some critical and cultural


success and they started talking about the ‘new British cinema’, of which I appeared to be a part, and I spoke to my producer Simon Perry and said: ‘Look, no-one’s making Nineteen Eighty-Four and we are nearly in 1984, it’s October 1983; why not? “We got in touch with the person who held the rights to the book, a Chi- cago lawyer called Marvin Rosenblum and Simon said: ‘Look, we don’t have any money, but Michael is prepared to write the script and I’ll go out and raise some money.’ And we promised to do this by 1 January 1984.” Ensconced in a room in Paris, Rad-


ford wrote the script in three weeks. Perry approached Richard Branson, who put up the funding. They began pre-production on 1 January, shooting in April and the film was released in September 1984. With Suzannah Hamilton cast as


Julia and John Hurt as Winston, they were having problems with who to play O’Brien. “We were looking around and kind of trying to ignore Richard Burton, because of his reputation [as a drinker]. But he made a promise to himself that he was going to do this. “He had this little ritual every morn-


ing. His friend Brooky would turn up with an already opened can of Diet Coke and give it to Richard who would look at it and then hand it to me and ask: ‘Would you like a sip?’. And I’d sip it, and there would be no alcohol in it. But nobody would say anything. That was it, ‘Would you like a sip?’, every single day. “He was amazing. After we finished,


he gave me a picture of ourselves together, with a note that said: ‘Of the 72 directors I have worked with only eight have given me a new dimen- sion, and you are one of them.’ It went straight to my head of course!” It was an endorsement early in his


career that Radford could add to those from Jean-Luc Godard and Bernardo Bertolucci, who had both written to him in praise of Another Time, Another Place.


He is hoping for a similarly positive


reaction to The Music of Silence: “When it comes out, I am due to appear at the Colosseum with Andrea to talk with him about the film; I just hope they don’t throw me to the lions.”


‘A Masterclass with Film Director Michael Radford’, La Scala Cinema, Inverness, 11.15am, 8 June.


Filmmaking, alive and well


in the Highlands and Islands Two new documentaries partly set in Africa, but that is where the comparison ends


BY JAN PATIENCE


There’s a lot of shooting going on in the Highlands. But unless you count the gun-toting central character of David Graham Scott’s strangely poignant documentary The End of the Game, it is all of a filmic nature. At this year’s XpoNorth, two documentary feature films which have been made by filmmakers based in the Highlands will receive special screenings at on both days of the festival at Eden Court. Both films are set partly in Africa but there, the comparisons end. In Scott’s film, he follows in footsteps


of a mutton-chopped old colonial called Guy Wallace as he takes off in what will be his last Cape Buffalo hunt in South Africa. Scott, a strict vegan since boyhood, is the auteur foil. Tristan Aitchison’s documentary, Sidney & Friends, shot over a period of four years, follows the story of Sidney, who grew up intersex in rural western Kenya, one of the world’s least tolerant regions towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and/or intersex (LGBTI) rights. The fact that both documentary


features are screening at XpoNorth tells a story in itself. That filmmaking is alive and well in the Highlands and Islands and that filmmakers are look- ing outwards every day. Tristan Aitchison, who is from the


Black Isle, near Inverness, graduated from Screen Academy Scotland in Edin- burgh in 2010. He met Amanda Millen, who heads the screen and broadcast support network, ScreenHI, not long after he graduated. Millen offered him support to make his first short film, CARE, a psychological drama about the abuse of the elderly in the care system, which was shown as part of XpoNorth’s film showcase in 2014. According to Aitchison, happen- stance led to the making of Sidney & Friends. “It really was an organised


accident,” he explains. “My sister got married to a Kenyan man in Scotland and there was meant to be a second wedding in Kenya which never hap- pened. “I had booked my ticket anyway so I packed my camera and my mic just in case, thinking that I might make a ten minute short film. As it turned out, what he stumbled upon, set the course for the next four years of his life. He met Guillit, a gender minority activist and ‘transboi’, who told him about the plight of trans- gender and intersex Kenyans living in Nairobi. “Awareness of these issues has increased since 2013. Initially I showed it to a few people and they said, ‘what’s that?’ Now, there is even a transgender actor in Eastenders, which shows how much it has entered into the main- stream.


“It has taken a lot longer than I ever thought it would to complete Sidney & Friends but it has allowed the issues to become current and the story of Sidney and the other contributors have also moved on in a way which I could never have imagined. We show all this in the film.” Showing Sidney & Friends in


Inverness at this special screening is very apt, says Aitchison, who helped establish and heads up the BFI Film Academy Highlands and Islands. “It has been produced in Highlands with support from ScreenHI and XpoNorth. Amanda Millen is the person who has contributed most to our journey.” The film’s original soundtrack is


provided by composer Paul Terry (an IMA-nominated artist), and features


vocal performances by Kenyan singer Silas Miami and The Voice South Africa 2016 finalist, Lana Crowster. Both Miami and Crowster will make a special appearance at XpoNorth. Caithness-based David Graham


Scott’s critically-acclaimed The End Of The Game, tells the story of his bizarre journey from Caithness to Africa made in the company of ex-big game hunter Guy Wallace. “There is so much more to this film than vegan versus hunter,” says Scott. “It’s about an old man in decline and there’s also the side-story of the complicity of the director - ie. me! It starts with him swearing at me and ends with him swearing at me. “I met him when I was making a short film called Arcadia with the Scot- tish Documentary Institute in 2008 which was based around a hunting estate in Caithness. He was living on the estate in his in own little farm. I knew that he would be a good subject for a documentary and came back to him eventually. He has left Caithness now.” This road trip with a difference


“There is so much more to this film than vegan versus hunter“ David Graham Scott


could have gone horribly wrong, but according to one film critic who saw The End of the Game at Glasgow Film Festival, “Scott’s camera looks hard and finds the good.” Now working as a news reporter with the John O’Groats Journal in his native Caithness, Scott is delighted that his film will receive a special screening in the Highlands. He has a strong track record as a documentary maker going back to the mid 1990s. His documentary films has docu- mented his fascination for people on the margins of society through works such as the BAFTA-nominated Little Criminals, Celtic Media Festival- nominated WireBurners, and New York Film Festival winner, Detox or Die, which Broadcast as part of BBC1’s ONE life strand. His previous feature film, Iboga Nights, was voted Best UK documentary at the Open City Docs Fest in London (2014).


The End of the Game, 3pm Wednesday 7 June, and Sydney & Friends (cast and crew screening) 3pm Thursday 8 June - Eden Court, Inverness


SCREENING XPONORTH


‘Mutton-chopped old colonial’ Guy Wallace


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