TRUMPED – For Nothing!

At the Sheffield Documentary Festival, on 10 June, I watched a 90 minute film called ‘You’ve Been Trumped’ about the so far successful attempts of the American property tycoon Donald Trump to construct two golf courses and associated housing on the wild Scottish coastline near Aberdeen, despite local opposition. The film maker, Anthony Baxter, who lives not far away, took the side of the protestors. It was a classic case of David versus Goliath: of powerless victims against a stonking rich bully with all the symbols of his power - helicopters, a fleet of Range Rovers and a team of sidekicks who looked like the cast of Reservoir Dogs. It was depressing to watch how power was able to buy over forces who should be neutral like the police and private security. At one stage ‘the Film Maker’ was arrested on a ‘trumped’ up charge (very appropriate word in this instance), handcuffed and gaoled for a few hours – only for the court to throw out the charge.

So far, so all too familiar we might say. But the sting in the tail of this story is that Anthony Baxter has made a Green  Award-winning film entirely at his own cost and so far without any TV showing. He has mortgaged his house, raised money by crowd-funding to edit his film and spent months hanging around the Trump landgrab without any reward. It’s not that he is an amateur documentary maker. He is a professional and his movie is in the public interest. An indignation-arousing, well-made, documentary is a powerful weapon – expect placard waving and protest when it is shown in Aberdeen soon – but why should  Anthony Baxter have to make it as a hobby?

Actually, this happens all too frequently these days in the documentary film world. The influence of  social issue docs is increasing, what with theatrical release and the global internet, but the money available is diminishing. It is common, even usual, for a producer/director to spend at least four times as much time raising money as making the film itself. Who would/could do that for a living?

Netaji

Those of you who read my article in History Today last November, [ilink url="http://hughpurcell.co.uk/?page_id-336"]The Afterlife of India’s Fascist Leader[/ilink], may be interested that the book The Search for Netaji: New Findings has arrived on my desk for a History Today review. The author, a distinguished Indian academic from Kolkata, Dr Purabi Roy, told me last year that she is convinced Netaji’s  (‘The Great Leader’) supposed death in an air crash in 1945 was faked and that he escaped to the Soviet Union, there to continue his fight for Indian independence. What’s more, she said, she knew there were documents in the Russian and Indian archives that proved this. Her new book, which was the result of years of research, would provide conclusive ‘new findings’. Already, she said, she had received death threats because Bose was an iconic figure in Bengal history. Any tinkering with his almost sacred image would cause offence among his followers. Now the book is out and we await a sensation. So far none has swept across the internet. Having glanced at the book I can see why. More to follow.

Perhaps as a spoiling operation, a more orthodox biography of Subhas Chandra Bose is due out this month (May 2011) written by one of his great nephews, Sugata Bose, who is a professor at Harvard University. I shall compare the two.

Bizarre

It does not happen often that my writing and my film teaching come together, but very recently they did – with a bizarre result. XaioXaio, a former film student from China, invited me to the launch of her new book, in a Chinese cocktail bar in London. I cannot tell you what the book is called as it is entirely in Chinese. I was surprised to see my photo in it and realise that I had a page to myself. Why? Peering at the page in the gloom of the bar I noticed among the Chinese script the following words in English; ‘(Regent’s Park) Primrose… Lewis Chess Set… Greenwich Naval Museum… Maida Vale… Ban Stretch Limos…….19’. Was this some kind of code? What complexity of the Chinese mind was connecting these translations? Then I realised that two years ago I had answered a questionnaire for XaioXaio and I remember saying that my wish for London was to ban stretch limos and my favourite museum exhibit was the Lewis Chess Set in the British Museum. But what the other questions were I have no idea. The only other non-Chinese guest was a glamorous cabaret singer, Lily Lowe Myers. She had answered the questionnaire too and included among her answers ‘Turbine hall’ and ‘Annie’s Vintage’?? On the way out I told her my wife and I were off to see the new film ‘Oranges and Sunshine’.  ‘Look out for my mother’, she said, ‘she’s a film star and has a good part in it’.  We were so overwhelmed by the film that we forgot to notice, but I thought on the bus home that these bizarre connections throughout the evening could only happen in London.

EsoDoc 2011

The first workshop of EsoDoc 2011 starts in Bucharest on 15 May. It is our eighth year of running three summer workshops to encourage young documentary filmmakers to work in the areas of human rights and environmental protection. www.Esodoc.eu is an EU Media initiative administered by Zelig Film School in Italy. As always, two questions about EsoDoc concern me. Why are so many of the applicants to EsoDoc young women? – over 50 of the 65 who initially applied this year. Try as we might, 16 of the 22 who are coming to Bucharest are female. This, of course, is pleasant for us males though a better sex ratio is always a good thing. I can only think that young women have more of a social conscience than young men. In the gap year before university, a girl is teaching at a Nepalese hill school while her brother is on the beach in Goa smoking ‘spliffs’.  There has to be a reason because, if anything, more men go into filmmaking than women. This year I shall carry out a survey of motivations.

The other question that embarrasses me is  why the poorer east European nations are keen to host [ilink url="www.esodoc.eu"]EsoDoc[/ilink] (and other EU Media projects) while the richer states, in particular the UK, are not interested?  The answer given is that the UK has plenty of film training courses already. Further, that UK politicians are anti-the EU and looking for every opportunity not to spend money. This may be so but it is short-sighted and mean. In point of fact, about half of the film projects that students bring to EsoDoc eventually get made, This  is surely good for the European film industry, in a small way, and each film  helps to make the world  a better place, even in a miniscule way: but thank God for something positive!