Asif Kapadia
/In this post, there is a list of the advanced words and phrases from the BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs interview with Asif Kapadia - a successful British film director. Aggie and I are currently creating a podcast (in which we will explain some of the words). It will come out this Friday!
0:46 unpredictable as he is passionate
0:50 Broke through with an Indian epic based on a Japanese folk tale
Dark love story
Trilogy of award winning documentaries followed
Portrait of Amy Winehouse won him an Oscar
1:14 Despite the apparently disparate nature
1:16 There is a common thread
→ Interest in outsiders and what goes on around them
“The work is an excuse to spend time in different cultures. Each film is like a degree!”
WORLD CINEMA
Grown up with an Indian background but being a Londoner
Normal to be surrounded by people from different parts of the world
2:22 We as the audience only hear the interviews over the footage but don’t see them
Using his voice to tell his own life story (Senna - race driver)
3:06 Hundreds of hours of reels [LL]
SPOTTING WHAT YOU NEED
You can take your time
3:29 It happened to be his final lap just before he crashes
See something and just go “that’s gonna be in the movie”
FIRST DISC (AMY WINHOUSE)
Lucky enough to meet in a way by making this film, never met her when she was alive
4:05 In a perverse way
One of her cheerful ones
TRILOGY ABOUT CHILD GENIUSES AND FAME
5:12 They just have a presence and move people
5:22 Trying to make them more understandable and sympathetic and empathetic
5:27 So the audience can feel for these characters
Very easy to make fun of people, much more difficult to make difficult people understandable
Was an accident to make a trilogy
All the things I love about London (back in North London)
But also all the things I don’t like about society
6:08 Somebody who is obviously suffering and not well
6:14 You’re just going to exploit her again
Part of the challenge was winning the people who knew her over
PEOPLE DISAGREEING WITH YOUR TAKE
6:33 How do you deal when people disagree with your take
6:44 I make those films using archive
6:47 I’m not putting those words in your mouth
My job is to do my best version of what I had
SENNA’S FAMILY
7:13 It was really heavy
Often you’re showing people footage they haven’t seen of a loved one
7:25 It’s not easy dealing with what happens
MARADONA
Shown it to everybody in his life (family, ex wife…)
7:37 Everyone apart from the big man himself, didn’t come to Cannes!
Didn’t care! He’ll watch it at some point I’ll hear about it on Instagram
SECOND DISC (GOOD TIMES)
Dedicated to brother and 3 sisters
FILM ABOUT YOUR OWN LIFE
It would start in Hackney
Idea in 1980 to go to America
9:15 To just get settled and try again
Let’s go an be millionaires in America. Didn’t work, so came back
9:31 Sadly, the breakup of the family
9:37 And what was the impact of that fracture on you
Matured a bit quickly
MOTHER
9:45 My mum suffered from schizophrenia
Slight management, trying to look after her
3 sisters brought me up
10:11 So the dynamics were all changed
Didn’t talk about home at school, didn’t bring people home
10:28 leading this double life
10:30 at home speaking Urdu to my mum
And then going out and trying to figure out who you are, how British are you
10:46 classic Indian Muslim background of keeping it all quiet
LOOKING BACK AT THIS TIME
11:03 It’s partly getting to the time where you have midlife crises
11:30 Now people are more open to talk about mental illness
We haven’t really spoken much about it
Being asked to do this has made me contact my sisters
Now is the time to make those connections again
SUPPORT FROM OUTSIDE?
Whilst my GCSEs were going on, my mum was in hospital
12:23 having electric shock treatment
Realised I couldn’t care less about exams
12:36 I made a pact to myself saying I’d never sit an exam again
THIRD DISC (KABHI KABHI)
For my mother
CHILDHOOD HOBBIES? NOT FILMS!
Didn’t have the patience to sit down
Didn’t grow up in a
Wanted to run around
When people watched a movie I’d leave the house really
14:12 Or play cricket
I wasn’t a lover of movies
SCHOOL
14:25 Did anything there capture your imagination?
It was an incredibly rough tough place
Absolutely massive - 2000 boys
14:40 2 schools had merged
14:47 I had no idea we were minorities until I went to further education
15:01 It was character building
Just surviving the trip to school and back was a big thing
Talking about Thatcher times - shutting down mental hospitals
15:15 Had to get past all of these people who were obviously mentally unstable
15:20 Wasn’t unusual to have to get past someone with a hammer swinging at you
Great teachers, teachers who made us grow up
Something happened !
Never came home and told my parents
15:46 You switch into your other persona when you come home
Big part of it was becoming mentally strong
16:03 Either you’re tough or you have a big mouth
16:10 Youngest of 5 kids, you learn you have to use your wits to survive
16:13 It sounds like it was quite intense
BEGINNING TO WORK WITH FILM
16:18 Where were the spots of joy and happiness in your life?
16:26 Somebody asked me for a favour
Working carrying boxes on a student film
16:33 That was the escape
I was useful, part of a team, part of a family
Running away with the circus
Camera woman asked me to work on her film in Cornwall
Never been to Cornwall - I was terrified of silence!
16:54 Growing up in Stoke Newington you go to bed with sirens outside your window!
FOURTH DISC (REBEL WITHOUT A PAUSE)
The era of wearing my walkman
NEWPORT FILM SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER
18:06 Your graduation film won a prize and was shown on TV
18:16 Based on Indian superstitions
I collected 15
Tony (tutor) thought they were great
19:03 We shot this movie in our house
Nobody knew until they saw it on TV
RECOGNISING TALENT
19:20 Part of it was having an eye
Wanted to be a cinematographer but I have really bad eyesight, I thought I’m quite blind this probably isn’t going to work
19:27 Director became the back up option
You’ve gotta be the producer, writer, director - in control
Not interested in forced marriage etc etc
19:49 The cliches I grew up in
19:54 I wanted to tell stories about people who happen to be black or asian and actually their stories are just normal everyday stories
FIRST JOB IN TV
Got offered jobs as graduates
Youth TV at its best
20:22 Some people can just churn them out but I’m really bad
FIFTH DISC (THE PRODIGY)
Spent a year having a company car
Followed around Prodigy going to festivals
1995
21:32 Sounds like a pivotal year for you
21:39 Reason to do an MA to test yourself
Met wife
Got together when we graduated
Developed myself as a filmmaker
What makes me different, I am Asian but I’m European
Shot graduation film with street kids in India, won a prize at Cannes
First time visiting India, went with mother
I thought, this is amazing, I look like everyone around me
I could be standing still and they look at me like ‘you’re not from here’
Made it clear to me who I am -- a Londoner
Saw enough to see India is visually stunning
WHAT HE CHOOSES TO FILM AND HOW
23:04 You like to push yourself
The Sheep Thief shot in Hindi which you don’t speak that well?
23:22 The dialect everyone was speaking in I struggled with at the time
Using street children, non professional
23:35 You and the crew lived on a Russian icebreaker
I like old school filmmaking
Northernmost town in the world
23:51 There were polar bears out there
Wife was pregnant and she was the art director!
Last version of filmmaking like that
24:10 Stories which were quite art house films - Challenge was finding an audience
Opportunity to make Senna led to this switch in career (making documentaries)
→ If I’m going to put all this effort in then I at least want them to be seen
SIXTH DISC (MAN WITH A HARMONICA)
Tutor showed opening to movie, watch this to understand sound
I love Westerns
24:49 What I used to play when we were scouting
WINNING AN OSCAR FOR ‘AMY’
How did you feel when you were waiting to see whether you’d won an Oscar
45 seconds to give speech
Straight in front of you you’ve got this clock counting down
Great, exhausting
Loved the film Senna and love it just as much → doesn’t change you when you win something
FIT INTO INDUSTRY
Don’t feel in the centre of the business
26:44 Feel like a part of the UK Industry
To have a company, making movies, there aren’t many of us
When you go further and further in business you realise everyone’s from public school
Quite happy to be on the outside
27:32 It struck me revisiting your films
27:39 All about an individual who is at the mercy of the money making machine
27:45 Knowing a bit about your ambivalence towards the fit between the industry aspect of film and the artistic aspect of film
27:54 I didn’t connect the dots
28:08 Her words did stick with me
A tutor who said you write about outsiders, I’m writing about other people but also about me
NATIONAL THEATRE SCHOOL
Failed to get in there several times
I applied to every film school and I wouldn’t get in
28:37 Only got into Newport because somebody dropped out
28:44 Only studied because I got a grant
SEVENTH DISC (A MORTE)
28:52 They encompass all the other art forms
Take images and put music on (most beautiful time)
Used in the Senna film just after he died
Antonio wrote this piece just after his mother died
TALKING WITHIN FAMILY
Trying to be better at talking
It’s not easy
ADVICE TO ASPIRING FILMMAKERS
Director: What is it that makes you different? You are special and you have stories that are great stories. Don’t copy what other people are doing
Don’t quit!
EIGHTH DISC (RADIOHEAD)
TO THE ISLAND
Try and find the highest point to find out how big this place is
Book: the autobiography of Malcolm X
32:34 He’s a hustler
Luxury:
Kids and wife would say our Japanese toilet
It does everything!
33:06 For my mental health, a regular pilates class would be good
33:12 A really good polaroid camera
With unlimited film from the 70s
Chosen track: Man with a harmonica
We discuss these words/phrases in the podcast:
common thread
footage
reels
perverse
somebody’s take
a breakup
a double life
to capture somebody’s imagination
superstitions
to have an eye
ambivalence