CLIO BARNARD: THE ARBOR & THE SELFISH GIANT

Clio Barnard is a filmmaker with only two full length films behind here but her creativity and ingenuity. She comes from the theatre back ground and this shows with her ability to get strong performance out of her cast. Her ability to get under the skin of her topic, empathise and find an inner beauty in the everyday and harshness of the environments and characters in which her work is set been something that I greatly admire. Her films have a message but it is a subtle slow burning one handled with care and empathy. She never forces the message and ideologies of her films down your throat and always leaves plenty of time for the audience to find their own path through them.

In my work I can be a little heavy handed where hers is deft and often light of touch and often subversive. She manages to get naturalistic performances out of her actors that at times claw at you with their awkward realism and at others have a raw power and energy that leaves you floored. I am looking to try and get this rawness in my Global Warmning installation piece especially from the documentaries which I want to feel as raw, edgy and at times awkward as her work. I decided to look again at the documentary The Arbor (2010) and her first feature film The Selfish Giant(2013)

The Selfish Giant (2013)
At Canne's in 2013 Clio Barnard's film The Selfish Giant was described as "hauntingly perfect" and "jaggedly moving" by critics as it premieres in the Director's Fortnight section of the film festival, with the director herself hailed as a significant new voice in British cinema. She comes from a tradition of filmmakers working around the fringes of society and the marginalised and is proud to cite Alan Clarke, Penny Woolcock, Ken Loach, Lynne Ramsay and Andrea Arnold as inspirations and influences.

The Selfish Giant is much less formally experimental than The Arbor, at least superficially. Itn her own words she "wanted to make a feature film with a very clear narrative and to not question the filmmaking form as The Arbor did. It tells the story of two boys, Arbor and Swifty, who are drawn into "scrapping" – collecting scrap metal with horse and cart, in the loose employ of a charismatic, shady and enigmatic figure known ironically as Kitten, the story's "selfish giant". It follows their ups and downs, trials and tribulations at the fringes of society that does not want them and for the large part of it they can see no place within.

The naming of Arbor is a nod to her previous film: the idea for The Selfish Giant came from Barnard's encountering a young lad at a school workshop while making the documentary. Through him, Barnard learned about the culture of keeping horses and trading in scrap metal on some of the city's estates – a tradition originating in, though not confined to, the settled traveller community.

The film has a gritty feel but bubbling underneath the surface is a fairytale-like, Wilde-influenced narrative the film contains a passionate political subtext. The setting of the film is a post-industrial landscape of looming pylons, barely functioning estates and gloomy semi-rural wastelands where the spectre of unemployment and poverty glowers over the children. However where Ken Loach would have shot these straight Barnard finds a bleak beauty in them. They are not the mist swept dales and moors of classical literature but they capture this same poetic quality. Electricity pylons and expansed of desolate waste lane on the edge of towns have never looked more moody and beautiful. The BFI's Jonathan Romney describes it as an "essay in lyrical realism belongs in a very familiar British tradition that connects such films as Kes (1969), Ratcatcher (1999), Sweet Sixteen (2002) and Fish Tank (2009) – depictions of the immediate conditions of social deprivation from the point of view of children and teenagers." This is an interesting list of works especially for me as it just about nails all of my favourite British films and directors.

Barnard has stated that there was a strong social-realist imperative behind the film: "This economy is declining and there are not many opportunities for these boys and I guess I find that upsetting. The 'selfish giant' of my film is a selfish ideology. I liked Glenda Jackson's speech [in the House of Commons after the death of Lady Thatcher] when she said that under Thatcher selfishness and greed had become virtues. The film is about what got lost. And what we need to value and hold on to. It's a fable about that as much as about an intimate and loving friendship and about loss." Barnard is not afraid to wear her politics on her sleeve as I mentioned earlier but it is the characters, narrative and performances that drive the film and story not the politics.

One of the most striking things about the film is the performances Barnard draws from her two young stars, who were cast after holding auditions in local schools. Conner Chapman, the 13-year-old who plays Arbor, is from Bradford's Buttershaw estate and Shaun Thomas, 15, lives on the Holm Wood estate; the latter is a veteran of scrapping himself. They bring an edge, passion and raw energy to the film never overplaying and there is a definite chemistry between them on screen. Conner especially is a continually ball of pent up energy, frustration and angst and lights up the screen.



The Arbor (2010)

The Arbor” is a mesmerizing and beautiful documentary fusing narrative and documentary on the tragic playwright Andrea Dunbar. It’s cinematography is stunning very cinematic in places and it also uses scenes from Dunbars’ own semi-autobiographical plays to help tell passages of her story. These are performed by actors on a stage set in the middle of a green on the estate she is so intrinsically linked to and the current residents watch on as the scenes play out adding another dynamic to the piece.

The technique that really inspired me however was the use of frank and honest recorded audio to get a real intimacy and honesty from the subjects largely her emotionally scarred daughters. What Barnard then does though is to employ actors to lip synch to this dialogue and also use some beautiful cinematography. Whilst not wishing to replicate this recording lots of audio only first and then creating the visuals around it was also employed to great effect in “The Possibilities are endless”. Perhaps employing it creates a truth to the documentary whilst at the same time allowing for interpretations and a poetic quality through the visuals to accompany it. This is a definite way forward for me for my piece "Poetic Love" where my Grandma has said she does not really want to have filmed interviews but is happy and more comfortable recording audio interviews and I feel she will be more frank and open with these more conversational interviews with me.

However a technique is just that unless it serves a purpose and with further research I found some enlightening interviews with Clio Barnard and agree with her sentiments. She states “Cameras change the relationship between interviewer and interviewee. I think the interviews were intimate because there was no camera, no lights… I want the technique to raise questions about the relationship between fiction and documentary – to acknowledge that documentaries, more often than not, have the same narrative structure as fiction. I want the audience to be aware that they are watching material that has been mediated. It is a distancing technique, a form of direct address. I think that it is important to be reminded of this, particularly when the subject matter is so emotive.”

Barnards Influence on my Work

I find Barnards films fascinating and especially her playfulness with representation and thoughts on the "truth" and "authenticity" In the clip below Barnard describes some of her working methods and the notion of authenticity and truth in documentary and feature film making. This is something that I strive to do in my work.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/video/video-clio-barnard-selfish-giant

Barnard candidly lets us into her thoughts on this issue saying "My work is probably borne out of thinking about representation itself and thinking about why their is this desire to close the gap between what is real and what is represented. I do not believe in this idea of documentaries ability to tell the truth and I do not believe in any real idea of authenticity in a style of filmmaking, no matter what the subject matter is. Thats what The Arbor in some ways was exploring it was a critique in some ways of social realism, direct cinema and verbatim theatre."

• Working with real people form those locations to get a feel for them and their stories and to help create a realism for the performers.
• Finding real people form those locations to be the performers. Make sure they have the character somewhere within them.
• There is beauty in even the bleakest landscape. I love the work of Loach but there is no reason why social realist cinema cannot have some beauty too.
• It is fine to play with truth and authenticity and film form to use these to the benefit of the material.
• The political element of work can be woven within fabric of the film, characters and narrative the film but it is best as nothing more than a sub-text working between the lines and not being them.