Interview with director Jerry Rothwell on Donor Unknown

This is the full transcript of the interview I did with documentary maker Jerry Rothwell for Don’t Panic, very nice man he was too and a very good film which should definitely be seen:

JoEllen Marsh, Jerry Rothwell and Danielle Pagano at the Tribeca premiere of Donor Unknown.

Jerry Rothwell has previously brought us such critically acclaimed documentaries as Heavy Load and Deep Water. His new documentary looks at donor conception through the quest JoEllen Marsh initiates to find out about her donor, known to her as Donor 150. Along the way she discovers a website which connects her  to 13 siblings from the same donor across America, the first connection resulting in a  New York Times article. An article their unconventional donor, Jeffrey Harrison- a hippy living on Venice beach in a dilapidated RV with his coterie of animals- sees and which prompts him to give up his anonymity and forge new relationships with his biological children. The result is a film that highlights contemporary issues of genetics, identity, family and the ethics of sperm donation, and is genuinely insightful, funny and touching. Don’t Panic talks to director Jerry Rothwell  about the issues the film raises and his approach  to the story.

What first drew you to filming this story?

I’m  always looking for a very specific situation but one which might throw light on much bigger issues. What I was really interested in was a how a group of people were trying to find a new set of relationships, brought about by technology-the ability to contact each other over the internet, but also by the technology of reproduction. There’s a very a tight story around wonder and the offspring that come about because of [Jeffrey’s] donations.

 How did you convince the producer, Hilary Durman, that it could be made as a film when it was originally going to be a radio documentary?

I think the difficultly she worried about is the issue of privacy and the question of whose story is it? The story probably belongs to about 30 people, and how do you get consent from all those people for a film to be made, which gets into some quite private issues. Then we started talking to the different families and they started talking to each-other  and then that was the really the way we got it going.

What were the siblings reactions to having a documentary made about them?

They’d  done a certain amount of media before because, they did the New York Times article. And I think  JoEllen’s motivation for doing it was to raise awareness about donor conception, that her story is like a lot of other people’s stories and to encourage people to look for their donor if they wanted  too, that it was possible and it wasn’t necessarily scary.

 

London Spanish Film Festival, Spring Weekend: Agnosia, Dir. Eugenio Mira (2011)

Bàrbara Goenaga as the vulnerable and beautiful Joana who suffers from the rare condition of agnosia, leaving her virtually blind, and Eduardo Noriega as her dutiful and protective fiancé Carles.

Rating: 5/10

Directed by Eugenio Mira and co-written by The Devil’s Backbone writer Antonio Trashorras, this period gothic romance/thriller is an intriguing genre-defying prospect . Set in Spain in the early 1900s, it tells the story of  Joana Prats (Bàrbara Goenaga) a woman suffering from a rare condition, agnosia, which impairs her sensory input, leaving her severely visually impaired (which we see frequently through manipulated and distorted point of view shots).

Her father Artur (Sergi Mateu) is a lens-maker who early on in the film creates a magnifying lens which is powerfully accurate when used in rifles. However he decides to abandon it when he realises just how dangerous it’s use is. This leads to him being ruthlessly pursued by another rival lens maker, the determined Prevert (Martina Gedeck of The Lives Of Others and Baader-Meinhof Complex fame) who will do anything to get the formula for the lucrative lens. Wherein comes the espionage thriller element of the film, but what of the gothic romance part? Well, after Artur dies Joana is the vulnerable vehicle through which Prevert decides to get the formula and she uses Vicent (Félix Gómez ) (as well as other devices, but I won’t reveal them here), a doppelganger to Joana’s fiancé Carles (Eduardo Noriega) to infiltrate Joana’s fortress-like home.

Submarine, Dir. Richard Ayoade (2010)

Oliver (Craig Roberts) and Jordana (Yasmin paige) experience growing pains in a small town in South Wales.

Richard ‘Moss’ Ayoade  directing and writing his first film could go either way: self indulgent vanity project or quirky off-beat gem. Thankfully this film is the latter. Submarine, based on the book by Joe Dunthorne, charts the story of 15 year-old Oliver Tate (19 year-old Craig Roberts), a geeky loner growing up in South Wales in the 80s. Oliver falls desperately in love with a girl at his school, the cynical and disdainful Jordana (Yasmin Paige), and plots to charm her into bed with him (losing your virginity, as countless films show, being the most important thing for any teenage boy). He also has to deal with the problems of his very middle-class and prudish parents Jill and Lloyd (Sally Hawkins-who is unrecognisable from previous roles -and Noah Taylor). Lloyd, a marine biologist, suffers from manic depression and often sits staring into space; while Jill, a frustrated office administrator, is having an affair with their next door neighbour Graham (Paddy Considine), an arrogant spiritual guru with one of the most ridiculous mullets in cinema’s history. An affair which Oliver suspects and brings upon himself to investigate.

The cast are brilliant without exception, and the film is peopled with great and memorable characters. Roberts as Oliver portrays well the insular melodramatic angst of an unpopular teenager trying his best fit in and find an identity for himself, which involves things like phases of only listening to French singers. His rushed breathless recitation of facts also suggesting autistic tendencies. His awkward and nervous attempts at seducing Jordana, including taking Jordana to an industrial site after she tells him how much she dislikes romance, are touching and funny. As are his desperate and obvious attempts to keep his parents together by such methods as inventing  a seductive letter from Lloyd. Jordana, meanwhile, could’ve been a very dislikeable character, she is sarcastic and joins in bullying an overweight girl at school; but there is a vulnerability underneath her casual carelessness, and her behaviour is made clear when we learn her mother has a terminal illness. The scene where we witness Jordana’s disappointment as she realises Oliver is not going to come to see her mother in hospital (Oliver still investigating with her is particularly poignant.

The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Dir. Ernst Lubitsch

Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart, as shop workers Klara and Alfred, are a perfect pairing.

 

Rating: 10/10

So this is what they mean by the Lubitsch touch. This masterpiece leaves me wondering why rom-coms are just bloody awful nowadays, especially when compared to the classics of the 30′s and 40′s (maybe all the possibly interesting story-lines have been done too well already). The remake of this film the dreadful You’ve Got Mail (how dated it already seems) is a case in point.

This film set in  depression era Budapest, follows the workers of a leather goods shop the Matuschek and Company store, and is based a lot on Lubitsch’s own personal knowledge of the family-run retail business having come from a family that ran a tailor’s shop which he had helped out in.  The engaging cast of characters include the lonely and authoritarian shop owner Mr. Hugo Matuschek (Frank Morgan aka the wizard in Wizard of Oz), the hard working, cultured and intelligent salesman and bachelor Alfred (the wonderful James Stewart) who has slowly worked his way up the shop’s hierarch. Then there is the humble, knowing and affable clerk Ferencz Vadas (Joseph Schildkraut) who acts as Alfred’s confidante, the pretentious, obsequious and manipulative Pirovitch who slyly solicits favour from Matuschek’s wife and the wisecracking, savvy and ambitious errands boy Pepi (William Tracy).Finally there’s Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan), the love interest and ambitious and clever saleswoman who is at first Alfred’s arch nemesis. Little do Klara and Alfred that they while they are exchanging witty barbs (such as this brilliant perfectly-timed exchange: Alfred Kralik: There might be a lot we don’t know about each other. You know, people seldom go to the trouble of scratching the surface of things to find the inner truth. Klara Novak (Miss Novak): Well I really wouldn’t care to scratch your surface, Mr. Kralik, because I know exactly what I’d find. Instead of a heart, a hand-bag. Instead of a soul, a suitcase. And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter… which doesn’t work.) they are falling in love with each other via anonymous correspondence.

Pete Postlethwaite Tribute (1946-2011)

I was very saddened and shocked to hear of such a great actor’s demise, having not even known he was ill, he apparently kept it from a lot of people. He was an excellent Shakespearian and character  actor (and with such a memorable unusual face how could you forget his roles), able to really own his large variety of characters, imbuing his roles with pathos, humour and intelligence. I really have to see more of his films now but here of some of my fave performances out of the ones I have seen. RIP Pete:

1. The Usual Suspects (1994)

2. Romeo + Juliet  (1996)

3. Brassed Off  (1996)

4. The Constant Gardener (2005)

5. Criminal Justice (TV) (2008)

6. Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)

7. Amistad (1997)

Films I must see of his:

1. In The Name of the Father (1993)

2. Last of the Mohicans (1992)

3. The Town (2010)

4. Killing Bono (2011)

 

Another Year, Dir. Mike Leigh (2010)

Tom (Jim Broadbent), Gerri (Ruth Sheen) and Joe (Oliver Maltman), the model middle-class family.

 

Rating: 9/10

Definitely one of my favourite films of the year, and up there with Topsy Turvy and Happy Go-lucky as one of my favourite Mike Leigh films so far (have yet to see his other renowned films such as Secrets & Lies or Vera Drake). The film follows the lives, through the seasons, of happy middle-class married couple Tom, an engineer,  and Gerri, a therapist,  played by Leigh veterans Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen. They live a contented and model  life attending to their allotment and catching up with their equally contented son Joe, (Oliver Maltman), a solicitor.

But they are anchors in a storm that surrounds them (let’s face it something had to disrupt their lives otherwise it would all be boring and undramatic) as their comfortable life is frequently disrupted by friends and family, such as Gerri’s co-worker Mary (Lesley Manville), who is a seething torrent of emotion, insecurity and neediness; a middle-aged woman, unlucky in love, who feels desperately lonely,  and clings onto Tom and Mary for respite and solace. Or the overweight  and also lonely Ken (Peter Wright) who like Mary is prone to bouts of depression after one too many drinks, and makes desperate passes at Mary, obviously sensing her loneliness. And then there’s Tom’s brother the monosyllabic Ronnie (David Bradley) who is lost and lonely (yes that word again) and when his wife die and who comes to stay with Tom and Gerri to recuperate.  He also has to deal with an ungrateful, rude and angry son (Martin Savage).

Mary who is used to dealing with depressed people in her job nevertheless has

In Our Name, Dir. Brian Welsh (2010)

Rating: 6/10

This highly-researched feature debut  from British director Brian Welsh examines the effects of post-traumatic stress on female soldier Suzy (Joanne Froggatt). When Suzy returns home to Newcastle to rejoin her husband Mark  (Mel Raido), also a soldier, and eight year-old daughter Cass (Chloe Jayne Wilkinson) after having served a tour of duty  in Iraq, she struggles to adjust to civilian life and her family notice how distant she is. This particularly frustrates Mark (an alpha-male if there ever was one) who begins to suspect that Suzy has cheated on him with Paul (Andrew Knott), a soldier in her company, when she refuses to have sex with him.

Interview with director Brian Welsh

This was meant to be for Little White Lies’ website  but it doesn’t seem they’ve published it yet (annoyingly) so thought I’d post it here as well:

Brian Welsh started off working in Glasgow as an editor on social documentaries, and then trained as an editor at The National Film and Television School. He wrote and directed his first micro-budget feature film Kin-about a guy who is separated from his family and is looked after by a care worker-between projects. His second feature In Our Name explores the plight of a female soldier Suzy, who returns home to her family mentally scarred from what she has witnessed during her time in Iraq.

Did working on documentaries  with social issues, did this inform the way you conceived of In Our Name?

I worked up in Glasgow as an editor with a company called Autonomi cutting a lot of films about things that were going on in the city, like we made a film [Good Cop] about a Race Relations copper and gang fighting problems. The film’s [also] about the Choker murder inquiry which was Glasgow’s Stephen Lawrence, if you like, with this young Sikh guy being killed. I’ve always been interested in films and stories about real people as opposed to mindless escapism, you know, cinema that really has something to say about the world around us and society. So that was my editing background and that overspilled into the stories I wanted to tell when it came to writing my own scripts.

How difficult was it to make that transition from editing documentaries to directing a feature film?

I was very fortunate, because I’d studied editing at The National Film School and the types of films or projects that I was excited about becoming involved in- the main reason for coming down there- weren’t really materialising. So I decided that given the fact that I had all of these resources and all of these very talented people I met, that it would be  a great idea to try my hand at directing something that I wanted to talk about. So I made a really low-budget film there, and luckily that was seen by Artificial Eye, and then they asked me if I’d like to submit a script for this new scheme that they were running, and that was In Our Name.

The London Korean Film Festival 2010:Secret Reunion (2010), Dir. Hun Jang

Ji-won (Dong Won-kan) and Han-kyu (Kang Ho-Song) form a tense but later rewarding partnership.

 

Rating: 8.5/10

Hun Jang’s second film is a detective film which combines comedy with social commentary on the ongoing tensions between North and South Korea. The film pairs a South Korean ex-police detective turned private detective Lee Han-kyu (Kang-ho Song recognisable from his roles in the excellent Thirst (2009) and Memories Of Murder (2003)) with North Korean spy and hit-man Song Ji-won (Dong-won Kang).

The film starts off as a serious action thriller detailing a North Korean operation, involving Ji-won under the command of the ruthless assassin Shadow (Gook-hwan Jeon), to track down and kill North Korean defectors. When Song refuses to kill a child he is named a traitor and banished to South Korea, meanwhile Han-kyu starts a deadly gun battle with the spies and is fired as a result.

54th BFI London Film Festival-Shungu: The Resilience Of A People (2009), Dir. Saki Mafundikwa

Rating: 4/10

Shungu is the first feature documentary by Saki Mafundikwa; a renowned Zimbabwean graphic designer and educator. The film came out of frustration with Zimbabwe’s terrible economic situation and a desire to show the world what exactly is happening in Zimbabwe, now that the mainstream media seems to have lost interest. Thus the film sets out to show the aftermath of the long queues for bread, empty shelves and political violence, and show Zimbabwe’s long term suffering.

This is done by focusing on the stories of people in Zimababwe who represent the struggle, frustration and determination of the Zimbabwean people, embodying the title Shungu which means all these things. So we learn about the lives of a 30-something metalsmith and opposition supporter trying to keep his business going amidst government supporters attacking and threatening him and his family, and people stealing his equipment or not paying him.