myDylarama

Q&A with Sema Basharan, director of The Branches are Hope; The Roots are Memory - Leeds award winner

Mydylarama team — 2021-11-21T20:30:58Z

Sema Basharan's short documentary explores the history of peace activism and grassroots resistance in Bradford and the way the city's religious diversity inspired movements towards peacebuilding, through a creative use of experimental art and visuals, archive footage and interviews.

What inspired you to make a documentary about Bradford? And why the specific focus on concepts like peace?

I'd previously made a film exploring Christian attitudes to war and peace through the story of some conscientious objectors in WW2, so it was a subject I'd been interested in for a while. I was really interested in how they saw peace through the lens of their faith, and the actions it led them to take as a result. In The Branches are Hope; The Roots are Memory I wanted to explore this topic further by looking at other faith groups and how faith and peace work together in people's lives to inspire them to act. Finding myself back in my home city of Bradford at this time felt like the perfect place to explore this idea. It's a city with a rich heritage of peace and is a melting pot of cultures, with a real independent spirit, so there was so much to dig into. It was also a chance for me to explore my own connection with the city after some time away, which was part of the journey of this film.

Can you tell us a bit more about the process? How did you choose the archives, the testimonies... Was there some level of collaboration with the Peace Museum?

The testimonies mostly came by recommendation, although I put out an open call looking for people to take part. A lot of the faith communities in Bradford are well connected, as are people involved in the peace movement, so most people were suggested to me by others I'd met, including by the Peace Museum. Bradford is full of people who would fit what I was looking for though, I could have spent a year interviewing people! I only had a month to fit in as many as I could. Choosing the archive was more tricky and there was a lot of experimentation, along with the other visuals, to weave the images and testimonies together and build up the picture bit by bit. I worked with the Yorkshire Film Archive for this who were really supportive in helping me find what I needed.

You integrated art and experimental imagery into the documentary. What's your background in fine arts?

I originally studied fine art, but couldn't really see myself working as an artist at that time, and didn't pursue my own creative practice until I started making documentaries ten years later. My first two documentaries were more of a mainstream style, but with this one I was feeling much more confident in developing my own voice that I wanted to revisit some of my past work. What's interesting is that I discovered the themes I was working with way back on my art foundation and undergraduate degree were the same themes I'm interested in now as a filmmaker, such as memory and identity. It felt so easy and natural to bring these together in this film.

You're primarily a documentary filmmaker. Are you looking to explore other formats? What would you like to work on in the near future?

Right now I'm sticking with documentary, although I wouldn't rule out other genres in future! This was the first film where I'd written something of a script, and it turns out I really enjoy writing, so I would like to explore that more for sure! I have a couple of other ideas in development right now, but with very film I make, I try to challenge myself to try something new, or tell the story differently, so that's on my mind now with the next one. I like to build on what I've learned but also to experiment where I can.

What have been your highlights from the film's festival run? Any comments or reactions that stood out?

The film premiered at Sheffield DocFest this year, so I have to say that was a definite highlight and
completely outdid my expectations. It was nominated for an award there too, so the whole experience was really amazing! Picking up an award at Leeds International Film Festival was the absolute icing on the cake, and I'm still a bit shocked that a film about peacemakers in Bradford would be of interest to other people! But people really seem to connect with the film, and I've had some great conversations with people who were really touched by it and have wanted to screen it at local community events, including an inter-faith group run by one of my contributors. For me that's one of the big successes of the film, that it doesn't just appeal to festival audiences. It is screening in the communities that it came out of and inspires further discussion on topics of faith and peace.

What best bits of advice would you have for aspiring documentary filmmakers?

Honestly, just make films. Do what you can with the resources you have. You can do so much with a smartphone and a laptop. It doesn't matter how big an audience you get just keep making and honing your skills. The other thing I'd say is find people you trust who can give you really honest, constructive feedback, even if it's hard to hear sometimes. Those people are vital for the process so seek them out and take them on the journey with you.

Find out more about Sema's work on her website.

Sheffield Documentary Film Festival 2016 - Thoughts and recap

Elizabeth Mizon — 2016-06-18T07:40:32Z

"In that silent room, I heard two sounds. One high, and one low. Afterward I asked the engineer in charge why, if the room was so silent, I had heard two sounds. He said: “Describe them.” I did. He said “The high one was your nervous system in operation. The low one was your blood in circulation.”

– John Cage, on his experience in Harvard's anechoic chamber

At this year's Sheffield Doc/Fest I saw Stefan Sagmeister's dick, live voguing, and more than one dead child. The massive range and power of documentary storytelling felt fully present at Doc/Fest 2016, and gripped me completely. I loved it for that. For everything that was explicitly communicated at SDF this year, however, there was something glaringly unspoken – at least in any public, panel-sanctioned forum.

The annual 5-day event is a massive undertaking, allowing the UK its (mostly) premiere glimpse of the crème de la crème of the year's international documentary films. The festival guide is a bloody tome, thicker than most bestselling paperbacks, containing 160 films, and such an array of talks, competitions and networking sessions it's impossible for anyone to experience the festival in its entirety. The films I chose to see were a mixture of what I thought would be moving or would be fun, and happened not to clash with others I thought would be movinger and funner.

Considering recent events, a huge amount of the programming this year was traumatic. I purposely bookended my schedule between A Happy Film and Michael Moore's Where To Invade Next? (which I'd argue is his best film since Bowling For Columbine.) As much as I appreciated the exquisite design of the former, its narrative choices are equally fascinating and questionable. I began my weekend leisurely, considering the merits, and lacking, of a story helmed by an eccentric and wealthy designer in tandem with two consecutive directors.

Special mention goes to Cameraperson, cinematographer Kirsten Johnson's feature montage of stunning offcuts from her career, during which time she's worked with Laura Poitras on CitizenFour, Michael Moore on Farenheit 9/11 and Kirby Dick on The Invisible War. The film begins with a statement describing the images included as those which have ‘marked' her.

Several of them – hearing off-camera surprise at capturing a bolt of lightning, followed by a pause, then a sneeze that rocks the frame; her mother, in the full throes of Alzheimers, standing physically sturdy yet mentally absent in an increasingly violent gale; a prosecutor describing images that he holds in his hand, but we never see, of the corpse of torture victim James Byrd Jr. – marked me also. I have not yet fully processed the combined experience of these story fractions; I felt genuine relief at being able to attend the Documentary and Trauma workshop the next day, secretly hoping, for the sake of all future Doc/Fest attendees, that it would run every year.

There is no doubt that this antidotal scheduling of experiences was a privilege. But then, the entire thing was a privilege. I was able to attend due to a grant scheme (and I'm not even that broke). For two days I, alongside others from the Radical Film Network - a nascent, international web for progressive filmmakers of whatever stripe – were gifted free accommodation and passes, due to the network being awarded development funding to provide costs for events such as this. This incubates it, fosters its growth and may help it become greater than the sum of its parts while it has no solid means of survival except its participants' need, and free labour.

How many of us can afford between £100 and £300 for a festival pass, a £400-ish hotel bill, probable £50+ travel and spare change for extras (like eating) for the best part of a week? Removing blame from any one door belonging to the festival, the government, the global economy for a moment – it was and is simply a rhetorical question; one that is way too old. It came up in conversation with other lucky SDF punters over and over again; not unlike the conversation I've had over and again in my hometown about prices at our primary arts centre. The £6.50 benefits concession might be a significant drop from the full price ticket, but it's still 10% of a weekly jobseekers allowance.

‘The arts' is currently confined to this cost/equal access paradox. It's become no one's fault but everyone's responsibility. Much of this decade's cultural conversation has foregrounded complaints about diminishing access to anything and everything, and the arts in particular, after comprehensive public funding cuts, attacks on schools' humanities syllabuses and the destruction of commons spaces by gentrification. And still, participation in events such as Doc/Fest is prohibitively expensive. The best I can say about a panel on diversity in filmmaking that potentially costs £700+ to get to is that it's… annoying.

I wish I could share the breadth and depth of narrative chunks I experienced first-hand. How saturated the programme was with stories about desperation, and dangerous migration, and torture and then, following a year of political moments, reflect together on the change (or not) at SDF 2017.

That only-those-wealthy-enough have full access to the cultural event of the year (in official documentary terms) - where they can bombard themselves with timeout that allows input, output and regeneration of ideas – is a truth perpetuated to the nth degree. It's my feeling that the cultural framework around documentary, as a stark and revelatory exercise, should be ‘better' than that.

The best documentary films tell true stories about change, and the best of those facilitate it. To fully recognise that, cultural infrastructure needs to cultivate transparency around its own journeys. I'd hope that the SDF team might launch itself into an explicit conversation, and find a workaround that guarantees wider participation in the near future.

My experience of Doc/Fest 2016 was maybe best captured by The Pursuit of Silence, as part of which composer John Cage describes entering an anechoic chamber, hearing nothing but the inside of his own body. Listening to his own nervous system work without realising it. To be able to communicate well we must be able to take time out of the lock-in of every day in a space dedicated to reflection, to hearing others in the world as well as ourselves in ways we didn't know were possible.

It needs to be less homogeneous if the field is to truly thrive. This is a bigger problem than one event, but the cultural fall-in-line is the silent support of these economic mechanisms. We all know this – if we would collectively and publicly and emphatically confront the reality of that narrative, we would more likely move towards actually changing it. Doc/Fest is a brilliant space – I want to be able to return, alongside a band of new bloods.

Elizabeth Mizon is Elizabeth Mizon is a staff writer at The Canary, the producer of media documentary The Fourth Estate and co-director of the Bristol Radical Film Festival.

Follow her at @elizabethethird
elizabeththethird.wordpress.com

How To Change The World: the birth of the modern eco-movement

Abla Kandalaft — 2015-09-07T08:27:49Z

The Sheffield Doc/Fest Environmental Award winner charts the early days of Greenpeace and the eco-movement, from its humble beginnings as a ragtag band of hippies attempting to stop a nuclear test to the establishment of a media savvy, international campaign group.

The starting point is 1971, when a small group of activists, including rookie journalist Robert Hunter, set sail from Vancouver to try and stop a US nuclear test in Amchtika, an island on the west coast of Alaska. The coverage the expedition received and the momentum it created encouraged the group to take action on other environmental issues. Hunter set his sights on whale hunting, and with a much bigger crew, camera in tow, he embarked on a trip round the Pacific to find and hault whaling ships. The activists failed to stop the killing but captured the crucial moment the whale was it on video. They released the footage to the media and created a “mindbomb”, a term coined by Hunter to mean a hard-hitting image that is widely circulated, sending shock waves around the world and spurring people on to take action; what we would today call “going viral”. The group clearly understood the power of images and the documentary reveals the strategic, meticulous planning that went into capturing them. The strategy paid off, the movement grew exponentially and rallied thousands of people to its cause.

The story is told by weaving together Hunter's own recollections and writings, narrated by actor Barry Pepper, previously unseen footage and iconic images, animation and interviews. The film is structured around the 5 steps it takes to create a movement to instigate social change, thereby providing a sort of anatomy of activism and raising a number of issues common to nearly all campaign groups: sustainability, momentum, organisation, funding and, of course, egos and personality clashes. For the uninitiated such as myself, the way their changing relationships unravel makes for surprising and gripping viewing. How To Change the World is a thoroughly enjoyable and engaging portrait of the movement's founders.

The film's launch in the UK and Ireland on 9 September will include an exclusive screening of the film followed by a satellite Q&A hosted by Mariella Frostrup.

The panel will feature fashion designer and Greenpeace supporter Vivienne Westwood, director Jerry Rothwell, Robert Hunter's daughter Emily Hunter and a number of special guests to be announced. The film will open nationwide on 11 September.

Tickets are available at http://howtochangetheworldfilm.com/

Tea Time - Sheffield Doc/Fest

Nisha Ramayya — 2015-06-26T09:14:28Z

Tea Time opens with painted half-smiles on porcelain dolls, mint green buttercream and sugar pearls, strawberries, cherries, and slices of lemon. Women wear floral blouses, tweed jackets, long gold chains strung with turquoise beads, crucifix pendants, and coral nail varnish. María Teresa – the narrator, and director Maite Alberdi's grandmother – introduces her best friends. The one who was denied higher education; the one who never married, and doesn't like talking about love; the one who looks conservative, but is the most surprising; the one who likes everything to be perfect; the one who says what she likes, because her friends are forgiving. The grandfather clock strikes 5pm, and the ceremony begins.

Tea Time is a fly-on-the-wall style documentary about a group of Chilean women who have been meeting for monthly tea parties since they left school, over 60 years ago. Taking turns to host, the women sit around tables laden with avocado sandwiches, fruit tarts, and chocolate cakes, and talk to each other over cups of tea and the odd glass of brandy. María Teresa, Ximena, Alicia, Angélica, and Nina pause to say grace, after which there are very few pauses. Conversations unfold as the women update each other about their present lives, and remind each other about the past.

Lessons in home economics (a good mother is prudent, zealous, and hygienic); a classmate who believed hand-holding resulted in pregnancy; modern women and their lavish lives, and Blue Is The Warmest Colour; an upcoming day trip to Palomar; the dangers of idealising dead husbands; whether or not to wear funny hats at the next tea party; chemotherapy, cataracts, and memory loss; Laurence Olivier saying the words: ‘Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.'

Tea Time takes pleasure in the listening as much as the talk: reacting faces, blank, sympathetic, impatient, open mouths, getting ready to laugh, or correct. It is not always clear who is speaking, and who is speaking over. The limitations of subtitles transcribe one voice at a time, leaving unrepresented the layers of conversations, the interruptions and echoes. The tea parties are intended to be elegant affairs – despite a few provocatively liberal opinions on sex and politics (María Teresa admits that she is left-wing to annoy her friends), and the occasional funny hat – and Alberdi emphasises the women's make-up and good manners.

The women stop talking when the bell rings and the Peruvian servants refill teapots and clear dirty plates. Apparently, the servants have a habit of entering the room at particularly awkward points in the conversation: the dangers to a child's happiness and well-being when left in the care of servants; the diminishing value of virginity, whorehouses, and the maid of the house; a football match between Chile and Peru, at the moment Chile scores. These cuts are too purposeful for objective observation, but too subtle to provide social critique.

However, in the Director's Statement, Alberdi indicates that her primary interest is in the tea parties as ‘a rite of friendship', which enables ‘a female private space, from which life is interpreted'. This is an invitation-only rite, an exclusive space, a perspective sustained by intimacy and privilege: ‘We should all be so lucky to have these rituals, and the relationships they foment, in our lives.' As Tea Time suggests, the privilege of the rite of friendship does not depend on the sumptuousness of tea parties, but on the plainness of dependability itself.

Dir: Maite Alberdi, 2014