FILM

As the 16th Encounters festival of short films muscles into town, Robin Askew has an email interview with one its star turns, the seemingly ubiquitous Andy Serkis.

He’s a busy chap, that Andy Serkis. Right now, you can see him on screen in ‘Burke and Hare’. Next year, he’ll be in two of 2011’s biggest blockbusters, playing Captain Haddock in Steven Spielberg’s ‘The Adventures of Tintin: The Rise of the Unicorn’ and Caesar in ‘Planet of the Apes’ prequel ‘Rise of the Apes’. Then he’s rumoured to be back in the performance capture outfit for his best known role as Gollum in Peter Jackson’s troubled ‘Hobbit’ two-parter. As if all that wasn’t enough, Serkis is planning to make his debut as a feature director with ‘Freezing Time’ – a biopic of pioneering photographer and convicted murderer Eadweard Muybridge. In advance of his appearance at this week’s Encounters short film festival, he found time to sit down for a swift email interview. In case you’re wondering, we did ask lots of questions about those high-profile projects, but he apologised that he’s contractually bound not to talk about them in any detail.

What are your thoughts the short film format? Making short films is an art. Many people approach it as they would a showreel, when in fact the art is in structuring it like a full length feature. It is important to embrace storytelling within this short time span.

Why do you think are short films so popular? People are passionate about film in this country and they’re making good use of developing digital technology, which is making it easier to produce good quality films without having to spend a fortune on celluloid. Digital technology should be embraced; it’s enabling a culture of homespun film making which is allowing our talent to shine through, and that has to be a good thing for the UK.

I thought your Ian Dury was your best performance to date. Do you agree, and what feedback did you get from people who knew him? It was a tremendous pleasure to work on ‘Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll’. It was hard work but so rewarding. It was a huge personal passion and endeavour and having the opportunity to work with his family and the Blockheads and to bring his music back into the public eye – but to make it not a museum piece but a living portrayal - well, it was one of the highlights of my career so far.

Are you doing ‘The Hobbit’? I hope so.

Won’t it entail spending an awfully long time away from home and your family again? That’s all part of the job.

‘Burke and Hare’ seems to be the first time you’ve done really broad comedy. How was it? Were you daunted? It’s not the first time – I previously filmed ‘The Cottage’ and have done comedy on stage. It was a satirical film rooted quite strongly in history so not just a broad comedy.

Do you get a lot of people going “Precioussss!” at you? No, I tend to get more people asking me to say it.

We’ll soon be seeing you back on screen with local lad Simon Pegg in ‘The Adventures of Tintin’. What’s he like to work with? Feel free to share some dirt. Simon is a wonderful chap to work with. We’re virtually neighbours, know each other well and have just filmed ‘Burke and Hare’ together which was great fun. To be honest, though, for 'Tintin' our characters didn’t feature on set together.

You’ve worked with everyone from Mike Leigh to Steven Spielberg. Is it a challenge to adjust to their very different processes? I always enjoy the challenge of working with new directors. It’s important as an actor to keep yourself open to learning new processes and methods from different people.

With ‘The Adventures of Tintin’ and ‘Rise of the Apes’, you’re involved in two more projects that run the risk of alienating enormous fan bases. Do you ever worry about that sort of thing, or just get on with it? As actors, we are just storytellers who set out to tell a tale, so I wouldn’t second guess an audience’s response.

What’s it like acting with (and, I believe, directing) the missus? I directed Lorraine [his wife, Lorraine Ashbourne] in a short film, ‘Snake’, and we’ve acted on stage together in several theatre productions. I think she’s an incredible actor and I’d love to do more work together in future.

What’s happening with ‘Freezing Time’? ‘Freezing Time’ is in development and we’re working on the final script at the moment. But for anyone who is interested, there is an exhibition at the Tate Modern gallery in London at the moment and I’m involved in a TV documentary about him produced by Alan Yentob for the Imagine series. It will be broadcast in the first week of November and I read some of his passages of writing.

Muybridge is an amazing character. Are you surprised that nobody else has thought of making a dramatic feature about him? Yes. So many people will recognise the early moving images of a horse, but so few will know his name. He was the godfather of cinema, a British man who made his fame in America and an incredible man of vision.

What are your views on the state of the British film industry? I think British film-making is in a very good place. There are a lot of diverse new directors coming forward, directors like Danny Boyle and Andrea Arnold, who inspire others. Directors are becoming more adventurous in their film-making, but we need to have faith in ourselves and the belief that we can create a film industry here in the UK. We treat our film industry like a cottage industry even though we have incredible talent, including our visual effects houses that finish many of the best Hollywood films. But we don’t believe we can create bigger films. Hopefully that is changing, with films like ‘Moon’ coming out last year.

Your father was born in Iraq and you spent some of your childhood there. Would you like to go back some day? Absolutely. I intend, in future, when it’s safe, to take my family so that I can show them where my father grew up. It is a great shame that in the past Baghdad had 64 cinemas but today it doesn’t even have one operating projector. It is my ambition that there should one day be a Baghdad Film Festival – but it will need to be instigated by people from Iraq if it is to work.

‘A Brief Encounter with Andy Serkis’ took place at the Watershed on Fri 19 Nov

 ENOUNTERS HIGHLIGHTS

The 16th annual six-day festival of international short film runs from Tue 16-Sun 21 at the Watershed, Arnolfini and Cube cinemas (see listings for full details). This year sees the relaunch of Animated Encounters and Brief Encounters as competitive strands, with the former mostly taking place at the Arnolfini. The festival also welcomes its first screening of 3D shorts and boasts the premiere of the animated feature ‘Flight Before Christmas’. Guests include comedian Tim Minchin, who unveils his ‘Desert Island Flicks’ as well as his own animated short film, ‘Storm’. As usual, there’s been massive interest in Encounters from film-makers around the world. The 200 films being screened were selected from 1600 submissions from 63 countries.

Once again, there’s plenty of local talent on display. The ‘Best of British: Made in the South West’ programme includes Michael Davies’s ‘Love at First Sight’, set in a residential home and starring veterans John Hurt and Phyllida Law. Encounters regulars and previous award-winners Richard Penfold and Samuel Hearn return with ‘Convicted’, a topical drama based on the true story of Andrew Ibrahim – the Muslim convert from Westbury-on-Trym who received an indeterminate prison sentence for preparing to commit a terrorist act.

The ‘Animation: Best of British – South West Showcase’ programme offers another opportunity to see Emma Lazenby’s BAFTA-winning ‘Mother of Many’, plus Sophie Klevenow’s ‘The Incredible Journey’, which tells the story of the salvage of the SS Great Britain. You’ll find plenty of other local talent dotted around Encounters. The ‘Canimation’ programme celebrating the crossover between graffiti and animation has footage purporting to show Banksy at work, while the splendidly blasphemous Finnish animation ‘Bloody Hands’, screening in the ‘Late Lounge’ selection of outrageous shorts, features a soundtrack by Bristol thrash metallers Onslaught.

ENCOUNTERS TOOK PLACE IN BRISTOL FROM TUE 16-SUN 21 NOV
 

Copyright Robin Askew 2010

Tweet