5:14pm Tuesday 2nd February 2010
By Tristan Kirk
AN award-winning director famed for his films of gritty realism visited Stanmore today to meet with budding film students.
Pupils at Stanmore College fired questions at British director Mike Leigh about his creative process, how he makes his films, and his take on the film industry across the world.
Mr Leigh, whose major works include Oscar-nominated 1996 film Secrets and Lies and 2004 hit Vera Drake, did not hold back in his answers, deriding the Hollywood film industry as “irrelevant” and lambasting current blockbuster Avatar.
The Salford-born director revealed what has inspired his style of films, which centre heavily on social realism and the relationship between characters.
He said: “I am always wanting to capture life, and the great thing about film is you can do that.
“The cameras can help you capture people, places, weather, violence, love, cars, animals, whatever – you name it, it's out there.
“When I was 12 and my granddad died, at the funeral – a very snowy day in Manchester – I was thinking 'this would make a great film'”.
Mr Leigh's films famously begin without a script, and the characters are developed over weeks of improvisation sessions before the camera starts rolling.
He told the students: “You can't act – and a lot of people do this – by just trying to please, you can't act on the basis of how you make the audience like you.
“You have to find the inner truth, and you have to remind yourself you are not the character, because quite often people get into a mess because they forget they are not the character.”
The question and answer session at the college, in Elm Park, was organised by FILMCLUB, which is a network of after-school clubs to encourage pupils across the country to discuss and analyse films in an informal setting.
Some of the questions to Mr Leigh focused on the Hollywood film industry, and he did not shy away from giving his views on an industry he has studiously avoided throughout his career because of the constraints on the creative process.
He said: “Hollywood movies are only a tiny slice out of the whole experience worldwide.
“It's only because Hollywood, by the same notion as Coca Cola and McDonalds, they throw the funds at it and everyone has a warped view on cinema.”
And on Oscar front-running film Avatar, which has been hailed as a major technological step forward for film making, Mr Leigh said it was an “amazing achievement” and said he would not mind having the same budget for one of his own films.
But he cuttingly added: “However, the story is insultingly and embarrassingly puerile, and it's probably subconsciously racist.”
If you are interested in launching a film club in your school, you can visit www.filmclub.org
© Copyright 2001-2012 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.harrowtimes.co.uk/trade_directory/