magazine - Somerville College - University of Oxford

More documents

Recommendations

Info

24 | Somerville Magzine The Invisible Film Star Tessa Ross (1980, Oriental Studies), Controller Film and Drama, Channel 4 – and now CBE, has had a hand in most notable British films of recent years, including The Last King of Scotland and Slumdog Millionaire. Though she herself avoids the limelight, the woman dubbed ‘the godmother of British film’ was delighted to answer Somerville Magazine’s questions…
Somerville Magzine | 25 by SARA KALIM (1990, Classics) What went through your head when you first heard you were receiving your CBE? I had to hide the letter because I thought someone was playing a joke on me. When I started to believe in it, I decided it was like being made a school monitor. I thought, “Oh good, they think I’m good enough!” What memories do you have of your time at Somerville and at Oxford? I came up as a Classicist and changed to Chinese. I remember the Principal at the time, Daphne Park, whom I really admired, asking me to join her to meet a Chinese Delegation. My Chinese was rubbish, but they were typically polite and told her how good it was. I felt like a fraud. I was a theatre buff so I went to theatre every night, directed plays and ran OUDS. I left Oxford having learnt a lot of things, though maybe not enough Chinese! To learn what you love is a brilliant first step, isn’t it? I knew I wanted to be involved in writing and storytelling. At what point did you decide to pursue a career in film? I worked in a literary agency where I was given pretty much free rein to train and fi nd writing talent. What I loved was sitting on the fl oor with the writers, working on scripts. I wasn’t a deal maker, I was a script editor. You are Channel 4’s Controller of Film and Drama. What does that entail? ‘Anti-controller’ is probably the right term for me. I’m not interested in stopping other people making what they want. I spend a lot of my time meeting writers and directors and working with a tiny team, so I can do eight fi lms at any one time. I engage in whatever creative conversations and processes are needed to create the right team for each project. What film commission for Film4 are you proudest of? I’m proud of them all but can only talk about the ones people know: working with Shane Meadows on This Is England and with Kevin Macdonald on The Last King of Scotland, now on The Eagle of the Ninth. Kevin combines huge integrity with an appetite for a huge audience. Working on Slumdog Millionaire with Danny Boyle: he was both hugely intellectual and big-hearted – a hero. Miranda July, who made Me and You and Everyone We Know: her detailed, feminine, incredibly astute view of the world is very unusual. And has there ever been a project that you regret turning down? Red Road by Andrea Arnold. We’d made Wasp, her short fi lm that won an Oscar. We turned down Red Road on the basis of a diffi cult script. It’s taken me until now to work with her again. She’s directing Wuthering Heights this spring, and has made Film4 her home for now – and I hope for the future. How would an aspiring screenwriter get his or her script on your desk? It’s difficult. We never look at unsolicited manuscripts. But I work lots with young theatre writers to develop new screenplays. It’s about finding your voice. I’m not sure to what extent the film writer is in control. Martin McDonagh has control because he’s a successful enough playwright to direct a movie (In Bruges). If you’re a writer and you’re interested in the film industry because you’re excited by the way directors work then it’s about how technical you can be, how adaptable, and you need a producer to understand that. Finding your voice is possibly better done in other ways in the early stages. It seems to be true that, while women are television directors and producers, they are underrepresented in features. Do you have an insight into why that is? The fi lm world is still hugely chauvinistic and the systems in place are very male-skewed. Making a fi lm is like leading an army. The brilliant directors are obsessed to the point where they see nothing other than how good their fi lm can be. It’s a diffi cult thing to direct a fi lm. And what do you predict for the British film industry in the coming years? We need to protect our public service telly, at Channel 4 and the BBC, where we can still fight for quality above all else. If this ecology is sustained within the broadcasting industry, then the small investment in film from both will continue to reflect the priorities of both – different yet complementary. We need to continue to protect talent, support new and unknown voices and be led by the ideas of those we trust and admire rather than prescribing where it is we want to go. This is a time of great change – hence an opportunity to tell stories differently, at a different cost. Our greatest successes have always come from the most surprising and least derivative ideas. If you had the chance to go back and talk to yourself as a young undergraduate, what golden advice would you give yourself? I would say to myself, what I say to young people now, that the more true to ourselves we are – particularly as women – the more we can go to bed and sleep easy at night. If we’re good at being ourselves, then we’re better at what we do. ■ Sara Kalim originally trained as an actress but then went behind the camera to work in television documentaries and current affairs. She started in BBC Documentaries and moved on to the independent sector to work as Head of Development at Landmark Films and at Quicksilver Media. She lives in Oxford with her husband and two children.
Page 1 and 2: Two faces of 18 24 32 35 Afghanista
Page 3 and 4: Somerville Magzine | 3 Principal’
Page 5 and 6: Somerville Magzine | 5 Commemoratin
Page 7 and 8: Somerville Magzine | 7 On taking th
Page 9 and 10: Somerville Magzine | 9 When Thilo
Page 11 and 12: Somerville Magzine | 11 Val Malone
Page 13 and 14: Somerville Magzine | 13 & War Crime
Page 15 and 16: Inset: Sarah at the Great Wall of C
Page 17 and 18: Somerville Magzine | 17 A quick ste
Page 19 and 20: Somerville Magzine | 19 Mountains P
Page 21 and 22: Somerville Magzine | 21 Earning fro
Page 23: Somerville Magzine | 23 A philosoph
Page 27 and 28: Somerville Magzine | 27 in a premat
Page 29 and 30: Somerville Magzine | 29 the electri
Page 31 and 32: Somerville Magzine | 31 The Caldico
Page 33 and 34: Somerville Magzine | 33 There has,
Page 35 and 36: Somerville Magzine | 35 The gift of

magazine - Somerville College - University of Oxford

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?