52" - 60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero
It was just as I was coming close to finishing my segment "Paramaribo" for The ABCs of Death that I was invited to make a short film to celebrate, commemorate and close Tallinn as 2011's European Capital of Culture. The film was called 60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero and the idea was to invite 60 film-makers from all around the world to each make a 1 minute short film invoking the dying breaths of celluloid as an artistic medium and/or the related demise of independent film-making as an art.
My initial reaction was that I wouldn't have time to do justice to this ambitious project but even before finishing the invitation, I had an image of a man, an old man, waking up, eating breakfast, pottering around his house, reading the papers, readying himself to go out, walking down the street, catching a taxi, contemplating in said taxi, walking to a cinema, greeting a few people, entering the cinema which was full and then introducing the film. The film would be Performance or Don't Look Now, or The Devils or Gothic. The man would be Nicholas Roeg or Ken Russell; two directors who I think are criminally under-rated in film-making circles both in the UK and abroad. Tragically, (though maybe not surprisingly) Ken Russell died around this time and in reality, I didn't (don't) have connections with either. Added to this the idea of circumnavigating agents, aides, assistants, booking out cinemas, finding extras, booking and then showing one of the above films, etc, etc, it all seemed way too complicated for a minute short with no budget which had to be completed within a month during which I was finishing another film anyway.
Hmmmm...
I was bitten, however, by the purity of the idea and the anarchistic romanticism of the film's ultimate destiny. Three copies of the film were to be made on celluloid. The main one would be screened in Tallinn harbour on 22nd December at the end of which it and the equipment used to show it, including the screen, would be burnt and destroyed, never to be seen again. Well, not entirely true since the second copy of the film was to be stored for 75 years in a time vault to be shown to a future generation of Tallinn. The third and final copy was to be cut into 60 different sections, each of which was to be sent to the respective directors of each segment. Basically here was a film to be made for the sake of film and for the love of cinema, with no commercial constraints impinging upon the purity of its creation.
How could I not be involved in such an event? Was I a film-maker or just a man who made films...sometimes?
By this point, even though I wasn't sure what I'd do for my one minute film, I was sold. This will be the third anthology film I'll have been involved with in about 18 months. The first film, Little Deaths, had three directors, the second one, ABCs of Death, 26, and this one 60 - and what a list. As well as some more obscure experimental art type directors, it also includes two of my favourite Asian directors - Park Chan Wook and Kim Jee Woon (even if I've been constantly disappointed by their output since the early 2000s), so really, what kind of a loser would I have been to turn down such an opportunity to share credits with the director of Old Boy and the director of A Tale of Two Sisters?
The ironic thing about this celebration is that while celebrating and remembering celluloid, (the King is dead! Long live the King!), this project could not have happened without the advancement of technology. It was only when reading the small print that my idea really took shape - we could make our shorts on our mobile phones if we wanted.
And so it was that I found myself in good old Tunbridge Wells one Sunday afternoon a few months ago when the sun shone and the chill in the air bit but gently. From the age of about 5 to 18 I lived in two different villages around Tunbridge Wells and thus frequented Tunbridge Wells cinema as much as any cinematically enthused young man of his generation. I remember going there with my father's secretary (!?) when I was about 6 to see Disney's Robin Hood, I remember going there to see the Pink Panther films with my granny, I remember seeing Hooper there with my father (we arrived so early that we got to see the stunning and explosive ending twice), I remember seeing the poster for Apocalypse Now and thinking it looked pretty cool and being disappointed I was too young to see it, I remember seeing Absolute Beginners there and blaming its tepidity for a failed relationship which in reality had never even started. Etc, etc.
For the past thirteen years, more or less, the cinema has been closed and a multiplex has taken its place in an industrial complex in a nowhere part of the town. The cinema itself has been closed! For thirteen years! Opposite the town's Lloyds, the Church-turned-local-arts-centre and the town hall, it was a geographical mainstay of the Wells, let alone a cultural one so for it to be festering for such a long time in this financial day and entrepreneurial age, is quite astounding. In August however, plans were finally announced that it'd been purchased by some kind of property developers (who else?) and that, finally, the building will be demolished. This was my cue therefore to pay homage to the place that, even though I didn't know it at the time, helped make me the man I am today. My girlfriend filmed me while I stood across the road from the cinema trying to remember as many films as I could in such a short period of time - about 30 seconds after having contextualised what I was doing there...
Gremlins, Stand By Me, Blade Runner, Star Wars, Breakfast Club, Star Trek, ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Indiana Jones, Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Footloose, War Games, Blue Thunder, Red Dawn, Trading Places, Firefox, Flashdance, Back To The Future, Brazil, Can't Buy Me Love, A View To A Kill, First Blood, Rocky, Home Alone, Pretty In Pink, The Killing Fields, Chariots of Fire, Beverly Hills Cop, Birdy, Time Bandits, Clash of The Titans, Gandhi, Tron, Conan The Barbarian, Top Gun, 9 1/2 Weeks, etc, etc...
Yep, Tunbridge Wells didn't do foreign, it didn't do art house and it didn't do weird; it did Hollywood and occasionally British when British had a Hollywood crossover aesthetic but Hell it was my cinema when I grew up and I loved it; I loved the smell of slightly stale popcorn every time I went to see a film and I loved the Pearl and Dean theme tune - who didn't!? I loved walking past it every time I was in town to look at the posters and the stills of the stars that were displayed outside; in retrospect, I'm not sure there was anything about it I didn't love. It makes me sad that the cinema was closed down for such a long time and that, in fact, it was closed down at all but what makes me sadder is that this is a sight seen in ever city not only in England, Scotland or Wales, but pretty much the world over.
If I'm being honest, one of the other draws of the project was being flown to Tallinn to watch the film itself; one of my friend's described Tallinn as Penthouse in the snow which is an alluring image for any self-respecting (snow-loving) man. The trip was quick but sweet and about 22 directors from around the globe turned up to witness the city and the spectacle; not a bad collective effort 3 days before Christmas.
Call me an alcoholic but what I love about Eastern (and North Eastern) countries, especially it seems those with an affinity with Russia, is that they serve each and every meal with vodka and it is everyone's duty, guest or host, from my limited experience of these things, to finish the bottle of vodka by the end of the meal. Most things we drank therefore, in a public arena, were accompanied by shots of vodka, some sipped, some downed, some chilled, some warm, some infused, some straight and the Russian saying I learnt which the people of Tallinn are most excited about reciting is: a beer without vodka is like throwing money to the wind. I'll have a pint of beer and a shot of vodka then please!
It's not surprising therefore that after the 'directors' meal' in the heart of Tallinn's hopelessly romantic Old Town, where we eat traditional wild boar, after we go to a distinctly downmarket but characterful old man's pub where a fight almost breaks out, and after we go to a cinema to which one of the party has the keys, not only to the main arena, but also to the bar, it's not surprising then that vomit starts to fly (not mine I hasten to add), legs start to buckle and words begin to slur. In order to leave the cinema, you can't leave through the actual entrance, no, that would be too disingenuous in its mundanity; you have to leave through a magic door which opens up into one of Tallinn's hottest clubs. 20 Now That's What I Call The Best EuroCheese Choons Ever later, I make my way home, not as confused as I should be wandering around in a vodka induced haze, around a city I've never visited before. A nifty 20 minutes later I pat my geographically self-congratulatory self on the back and wait by the hotel lifts as one of the directors shouts at a young Acne girl who wasn't with him last time I looked "I don't care what your friend says!" He tries to ignore me as I wonder whether to hold the doors open or not and as the doors edge closer to each other, the Acne girl says well she cares what her friend thinks and she decides to leave.
One of the greatest things about film festivals is tasting even the slightest flavour of a foreign culture so when given the chance, I go on most tours that present themselves. I'm kinda peeved therefore that I completely miss out on the tour of Tallinn, not through laziness of hangover-iness but simply because I didn't know there was one. Not to be too discouraged, I spend half the afternoon writing in my now favourite Sushi restaurant in Tallinn, in a shopping mall across from the hotel, the other half walking around the Old Town, checking out the reindeer with only one horn and then, err, the final half reading Chuck Palahniuk's Rant which I bought back in '07 when it was published but realised that I'd OD'd on Palahniuk and was no longer interested. 4 years later, I'm coming to appreciate the man again which I'm glad about.
And so for the main event!
Everyone meets in the hotel at 6.30 and boards a local bus which takes us straight to the venue. No-one's sure how many people will turn up and estimates vary from 20 (a little pessimistic) to a few thousand. It turns out the latter is closer to the truth and the closer we get, the more people we pass on their way to the venue, so much so that, momentarily I feel like a rockstar on the way to a gig. Delusions of playing in front of 20,000 adoring fans soon dissipate as the icy cold air growls at my skin and the collective walks through the dockside arena to the boat from where we'll end up watching the film and from where the score, an intricate and surprisingly effective (given that it was composed completely independently of any of the visuals) mood piece by local hero Ulo Krigul, will be played live.
The film itself is amazing and captivating; a geographical and visual tour de force both melancholic and uplifting in its celebration of and affection for only celluloid but, by corollary, life itself. From abstraction to literalism, from narrative to documentary, from experimentation to formalism, everything is included. Of the better known directors, Kim Jee Woon's clip from A Bittersweet Life offers the most obvious but best metaphor for the evening's rationale and overall championship of celluloid; the lead character suited up, elegantly shadow boxing. Park Chan Wook takes an excerpt from his segment "Cut" in Three Extremes which seems less dynamic since all the characters just look miserable and upset (an apt emotion I suppose). I'm not sure which film Tom Tykwer also takes his footage from but it follows two people walking through an art museum, seemingly in sync with each other but ignorant of the other's presence.
My favourite piece looks Spanish and captures a Holiday celebration where men in traditional outfits form a human tower of about 20 metres high by standing on each others' shoulders before collapsing. Apart from this, corn fields are burnt, monkeys are hunted, babies are born, legs are sawn off, cow horns are buried, flowers are laid on graves, people eat, contemplate, sometimes run and sometimes walk. Of the few other directors I know or know of, Adam Wingard gives us some welcome nudity, Brian Yuzna has the curious distinction of having two shorts in the film, one of which is a very effective piece with a circus side show type Strong Man gurning and seemingly regurgitating something with horrific sound effects and Vimuktthi Jasasundara, a Camera D'Or winner from Sri Lanka, offers a more meditative offering of a lightbulb flickering in the darkness.
Before the film has really started, it has already finished and as this fact sinks in, a commotion from the projector (a large eyeball hanging from a crane) causes the audience to turn around and witness the eyeball explode into flames and fireworks. As if this wasn't enough, a man on fire (maybe the projectionist!?) runs along a harbour wall screaming and shouting - for a good 30 seconds or so - before someone else extinguishes him. People are appreciative but are really waiting for the ultimate sacrilege, the ultimate anarchy, the ultimate celebration of the night's once in a lifetime experience; the burning of the 20 odd metre screen...But this never happens and, bit by bit, people drift off.
Apparently, during the precise logistics involved in such a feat, one of the truck drivers was too zealous in his desire to get the party started and did his job too effectively, causing the connections required to burn the screen to blow out and malfunction. In the end, a lonesome man with a firethrower on his back incinerates the film negative as our ship floats into the soporific and calm North Sea to Tallin's European Capital of Culture's closing night party.
None of the directors are quite sure what we're doing here as it seems more like a party for politicians and their admittedly often beautiful companions rather than creatives who've just witnessed a unique cinematic event. The building is excessive in size, at least a football pitch or two in length, and the ceremony (A Circque Du Soleil visual extravaganza) takes place purely in Estonian (not too surprisingly) but in spite of people flying through the sky pretending to be birds or fish, and in spite of 20 person choirs appearing and vanishing into enclaves of pitch blackness, the most surreal moment arrives when I've been standing in the building for 20 minutes and think 'Fuck me! There's a submarine!' And indeed, there is a lengthy submarine hanging in the middle of the building, something explained, upon further research, by the fact that the ceremony is in fact taking place in a Naval museum.
Of course, there's more than one party going on and, it seems, much more preferable for most directors is the next one in a large empty warehouse building where Tarkovsky shot some scenes from Stalker. With DJs on each of the three floors plus a bunch of live bands, the event seems less full of politicians but more full of their beautiful companions or their beautiful daughters which is obviously preferable. The rest of the night therefore is spent enjoyably following the Russian tradition of not throwing money to the wind when drinking beer (ie by drinking vodka and beer).
At 4 o'clock, I leave for the hotel where I pack and catch a taxi with a couple of other directors to the airport. Just before getting on the plane, I manage to get us into an airport lounge where I have a final vodka (slightly subverting the previous maxim by replacing beer with orange) and discuss with one of the directors (Mark Boswell), his next project: the KGB infiltration of Walt Disney's brain. An excellent end to an excellent event and one I'm very proud to have been a part of.
[Our thanks to Simon Rumley for sharing his experience.]