Tilda Swinton

Tilda Swinton (1960-)

Tilda Swinton My Space: The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams &  Tilda Swinton.net

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Introduction

I returned from holiday on Aug 16th which coincidently is the day that actor Tilda Swinton, along with Mark Cousins a  curator of the Edinburgh Film Festival have started their own film festival in Nairn a small town in Scotland where she lives called Cinema of Dreams. Tilda Swinton is undoubtedly one of the most interesting actresses working mainly in Britain since the early 1980s. In the last few years she has taken on work in mainstream cinema as well as working with independent film makers  who are politically and aesthetically more cutting edge and avante garde. This has helped her to broaden her approach to film-making rather then compromise her more rebellious attitudes to the dominant political and aesthetic norms. This year she became an Oscar winner, she is also patron of the Edinburgh Film Festival and has sat on the jury at Cannes. 

Starting a new small scale festival is an exciting departure and chimes brilliantly with some of my own thoughts  about the need to create policy initiatives which encourage and develop  audiences  and a  love  of  cinema  in which cinema going is deemed as an important cultural activity as it is in much of mainland Europe. All too often the festivals which get covered in the media are primarily market mechanisms rather than an expression of the love of film itself.  In the 1980s and 1990s Swinton was very much associated with the politically and artistically radical sections of theatre, film and TV. Swinton has often chosen to work with directors in Germany and France and has been openly critical of the British cinema as it has dveloped under New Labour which she sees as trying to emphasise an industrial agenda rather than one driven by the aesthetic and critical desires of audineces and those who wish to work outside of the mainstream.

In recent years it has been somewhat of a surprise for many to see her playing a role in the screen adaptations of the C. S. Lewis Narnia novels. Swinton is asked about this in a BBC interview, her response focuses upon the different styles of creativity between a blockbuster and smaller independent films. The Observer Know your Narnia Books glossary describes Tilda Swinton's Jadis as follows:

T is for Tilda Swinton

Whose extraordinary face makes her perfect for the White Witch, and yet there's something oddly missing. Usually an evil woman in myth has a dangerously sexual element to her power. But since her adversaries are children and animals, that sexual weapon becomes redundant, and the result is a little bland

YouTube interview with Tilda Swinton on winning an Oscar for best supporting actress in Michael Clayton:

Profile Summary

Coming from a well off background Tilda Swinton attended had a privately funded education as a child. She gained four A levels and had an interest in theatre and performance. she went to Africa for two years after leaving . She then attended New Hall, Cambridge, a women's, college from 1980 to 1983, studying social and political science and English Literature. At university she became involved in more politically oriented and punk influenced productions. After leaving university this experience helped her to join the RSC where she played in 4 minor roles. This type of institution didn't suit her radicalised approach at the time and she left  returning to Edinburgh to  join the Traverse Theatre which was and is primarily concerned with contemporary plays.  She played in The White Rose a politically oriented play about the role of women in the Soviet Union and their resistance to the Nazis. Here she first met her future husband John Byrne. At the time Byrne was a set designer for White Rose being a talented playwrite and painter.

By the mid-1980s she started to work with Derek Jarman who made many of the most challenging of British films at the time such as Sebastiane taking on issues of homosexual desire, he also made Jubilee as a punk take on the Queeen's 25th anniversary celebratory year.  Swinton first worked with him on Caravaggio and later worked on most of the rest of Jarman's films such a The Last of England an excoriating examination of Britain under Thatcher and also The Garden, Wittgenstein (1993) and then Edward II and providing the narration for Blue. She also worked with Sally Potter as the lead in Orlando (1992) based upon the book by Virginia Wolff.

Swinton has also had a good working relationship with John Maybury appearing in both his screen adaptation for TV of Man to Man which Swinton had starred in as a stage play. Much later she would apear in Maybury's Love is the Devil (1998) a controversial film produced by the BBC and part funded by the National Lottery about the life of painter Francis Bacon.

Swinton increasingly took up work in the USA and appeared in films such as The Beach and Vanilla Sky becoming more familiar to American audiences. This undoubtedly helped her chances of being offered the role of Jadis in the Chronicles of Narnia series. 2008 can be seen as  Tilda Swinton's most successful year in terms of international recognition when she won a BAFTA in February  2008 for her  role in Michael Clayton a role in which she also gained an Oscar for best supporting actress. See Tom Brook's BBC America interview with Tilda Swinton.

There has been an ongoing committment to helping to develop Scottish cinema in the films she has acted in such as the low budget thriller The Young Adam alongside Scottish actor Ewan McGregor and directed by Scottish director David Mackenzie set amongst the Glasgow barge community, and written by the avante-garde Scottish author Alexander Trocchi  her patronage of the Edinburgh International Film Festival  and now her  new  festival project in Nairn the Cinema of Dreams. On the Young Adam link in the filmography there is a downloadable interview with her about developments in Scottish Cinema.

Tilda Swinton in the video installation Sleepwalkers

Swinton's interviews make interesting viewing for she is happy to give the interviewer's a hard time rather than rolling over for an imagined adoring audience. Often she will throw interviewer's sometimes sycophantic questions back at them. She has well thought out views, principles and perspectives and is following a career path which has now diversified into a rich and multilayered one going well beyond acting itself. She likes working with artists on moving image work rather than straightforward films. This was shown in her long collaboration with Derek Jarman as well as work with Sally Potter and then taking a role in the Maybury film about Francis Bacon. One of her most recent collaborations with an artist was on the video installation Sleepwalkers by Doug Aitken. Tilda Swinton is determined to set new challenges for herself and her audiences and dalliances with the mainstream appear to enhance her radical positions rather than compromise them.

Filmography

Webliography

Swinton takes on Cannes with cup cakes and Scottish rain By Jonathan Brown Independent Saturday, 16 August 2008

Peter Ross The Scotsman chatting with Tilda Swinton Aug 2008 at The Cinema of Dreams

BBC on Tilda Swinton's Oscar Nomination for her role in  Michael  Clayton.

Screenonline Tilda Swinton Profile

Tiscali Biography of Tilda Swinton

Presskit from Sony for The Young Adam

Guardian review of Young Adam and associated pages

Sight & Sound review of The Young Adam

Bibliography

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: 17 Aug 2008 13:24 |  Tags: Ballerina Ballroom Cinema Of Dreams Chronicles Of Narnia Derek Jarman John Maybury Love Love Is The Devil Orlando Sally Potter Sleepwalkers Video Installation Tilda Swinton |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Sally Potter Webliography

Sally Potter Independent Film Maker

Who is Sally Potter Video 

Introduction

Along with many other British director entries this entry is 'work in progress' nevertheless it will provide a basic signposting to other available resources on the web in the first instance until I'm able to make a fuller evaluation.

Pause for reflection 

I think I may have had one of those epiphanic moments caused (surprisingly) by reading a recent book on Feminist Film Studies (McCabe 2004) which I will review shortly. Covering  the developments and twists and turns in feminist film theory over the last 40 years I found it clear, fascinating and informative. But it also started to trigger cultural memory. Remembering back to the 1970s the desire of many of those involved in alternative politics including the Women's movement was the desire to have alternative representations made by people themselves, allied to alternative distribution systems and different spaces to experience these alternatives. Elsewhere on this blog I have listed the women filmmakers in the history of the UK that I could find any reference to. The list is gradually developing links to entries about these filmmakers. The list is pitifully short!

Whilst not decrying the importance of criticism and theory it is interesting that a body of theory which  was  politically motivated in a non-party way has so signally failed to develop through Feminist Films Studies a deeper engagement with production. Yet as a lecturer in a tertiary college the Media Studies course promotes production.  In the AS level it has been interesting over a few years to see what women students have chosen to  make an advertising campaign about. Some have certainly expressed concerns which young women in social reality face such as drink spiking and harrassement through mobile phones. What will the young women do for their Advanced  Production Unit which is moving image based? This unit provides opportunities for young women to become more involved in the production side thus challenging the predominance of having men behind the camera.  At a rhetorical level what happens to these young women film makers, because there are still very few out there making it? This posting will start to create a virtual hub from what is available on the web dealing with this gap between women film makers and feminist film studies. At the end of the day it is the current industrial and institutional structures which need to be taken on and a different policy framework created if the situation is going to change. Sally Potter's enthusiasm energy and committment provide a beacon but she can also be seen as  an exception which proves the rule.    

In her conclusion Janet McCabe makes a swift reference to German women film makers in the early 1970s. Although she doesn't dwell on this I had remembered earlier whilst reading her book how dynamic that period of New German Cinema had been. Julia Knight has written a good book about the period and the sudden emergence of women filmmakers often theoretically well informed. Sadly the films are currently unavailable in the UK. The role of TV as a commissioning body was important in ennabling this upsurge of women's film making to develop. There are lessons there for Feminist Film Studies which sadly seems only tangentially engaged in the important area of film policy which is where much of the power lies. 

Sally Potter  is the UKs most well known woman film maker and what follows is a webliography. When time allows more analytic and critical discussion about her work will be posted.

Sally Potter Webliography 

Sally Potter Official Website

Wikipedia Sally Potter entry

Kristy Mckim Senses of Cinema article 

The Tango Lesson (Sony site)

Yes (Sony site) 

Sally Potter's own notes on her adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Orlando

Sally Potter directs Carmen. Here Sally Potter is directing Carmen with English National Opera. The facts that Potter moves across different performance genres is rather like Visconti. Admirable!

Interview by Sophie Mayer with Sally Potter on Carmen. (Please note Mayer is bringing out a book on sally Potter with Wallflower Press in 2008)

BBC Review of The Man Who Cried

BBC Interview with Sally Potter

Rose Capp Senses of Cinema article on The Man Who Cried

Film Freak Central Interview with Sally Potter

Reverse Shot interview with Potter on Yes

: 09 Sep 2007 08:56 |  Tags: European Cinema A Level Media Studies Art Cinema British Cinema European Cinema European Directors European Film Studies History Of Kinoeye Sally Potter Women And Film |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Directors for Contemporary British Cinema

British Directors in Contemporary British Cinema

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All active links lead to in house pages on the specific director. Some are still under construction and may not be currently accessible. Please try again soon.

Each page will have a specific webliography and will also have both internal and external links to a range of their films. Obviously this is a major development undertaking and there are currently 30 directors listed below with some more who need to be added. 

Apologies for any shortcomings. British contemporary cinema is going to be a key development area in the coming weeks as many visitors are likely to be having an exam on it in the summer. It is recommended that you vist the relevant pages reasonably frequently as there will be quite a lot of change. Pages will be opened as soon as possible and the priority will be to provide a range of the best possible current web links which are considered as good quality.  

I hope you will find the system useful.  

Introduction

This posting is aimed at the interested general viewer in keeping up to date with British Films and film makers. It also functions as a core resource for the current OCR A2 Unit on Contemporary British Cinema.

Please note the term British Cinema is not the same as British Films. Cinema refers to the industrial systems of production, distribution, and exhibition as a whole. It can also refer to the criticics and reviewers who are employed at any given moment. Directors and the films they make here are only a small part of the industry as a whole.

The list below is primarily taken from the BFI Screenonline Directors on British and Irish Cinema.  There are a couple of inclusions of directors who don't really make films in the UK or about the UK. Sir Ridley Scott being one of these and Sir Alan Parker being another. They tend to prove the rule that Hollywood is the global centre of filmmaking which is both American and yet has an extra dimension to it which proves highly attractive to the most successful filmmakers in the world in terms of gaining audiences at least. There are some surprising omissions from the Screenonline listings such as Paul Greengrass. Here I have linked to Wikipedia in the first instance.

List of Contemporary British Directors

Arnold Andrea (1961 -).

Attenborough, Richard (Lord) (1923 - ) 

Bird, Antonia (1959 - ) 

Boyle, Danny (1956-) 

Branagh Kenneth (1960 -) 

Broomfield, Nick (1948 -) 

Chadha, Gurinder (1960 - )

Corbijn Anton

Dibb Saul (?) 

Daldry, Stephen (1961 - )

Davies, Terence (1945 - )

Figgis Mike (1948 -)

Forsyth, Bill (1946 -) 

Frears, Stephen (1941 -) 

Gavron, Sarah (    ) 

Gilliam, Terry (1940 - ) 

Greenaway, Peter (1942 -)

Greengrass, Paul (1955 - )

Hodges, Mike (1932 - )

Herman, Mark (1954-)

Joffe Roland (1945 - ) 

Jordan, Neill (1950 -) 

Julien, Isaac (1960 - )

Kapur, Shekah (  )

Leigh, Mike (1943 - )

Loach, Ken (1936 - ) 

Madden, John (1949- )

Meadows, Shane (1973 -) 

Minghella, Anthony (1954-2008)

Parker, Alan (Sir) (1944-) 

Pawlikowski Pawel (?)

Poliakoff Stephen (1952-)

Potter, Sally (1949 -) 

Ramsay Lynne (1969 -)

Ritchie Guy (1968 - )

Scott, Ridley (Sir) (1939 -) 

Williams Paul Andrew (?) 

Winterbottom, Michael (1961 - ) 

Wright Edgar (1974 -   ) 

Wright Joe (1972- )

TO VIEW OTHER CINEMA DEVELOPMENTS IN BRITAIN AND EUROPE PLEASE GO TO THE CHRONOLGY OF EUROPEAN CINEMA HUB PAGE

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: 16 Jun 2007 07:43 |  Tags: Andrea Arnold British Cinema From 1990 British Film Directors Contemporary British Cinema Contemporary British Directors Hub Danny Boyle Gurinder Chadha Guy Ritchie Hub Page Ken Loach Kinoeye Lynne Ramsay Michael Winterbottom Mike Figgis Mike Leigh Nick Broomfield Ocr Media Studies Ors Paul Greengrass Peter Greenaway Sally Potter Sarah Gavron Shane Meadows Stephen Frears |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

British Women Film directors

British Women Film Directors

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Introduction

Whilst of general interest to those dealing with issues of gender and cinema this posting should prove useful to those studying Women and Film within the current OCR specification.

Given the large number of British films and the very small number of Women directors the average rocket scientist can swiftly work out that there is a serious gender imbalance within the industry in the UK.  

The Directors

This list of directors is taken from the BFI list of Directors in British and Irish Cinema
plus some additions. Sue Clayton isn't in the list although appears elsewhereon the site. Nor does Andrea Arnold feature in the list. Arnold recently made the film Red Road (2006) and has won at the Oscars and at Cannes. The list amounts to 11 women film directors in the history of British cinema. Not a good record over the last 100 years. Of these several are active film makers and can be included in the specification for OCR Contemporary British Cinema. Of these 11 directors five are currently active and include: Andrea Arnold, Antonia Bird, Gurinder Chadha, Sally Potter, Lynne Ramsey.

Adler, Carine (1948-)

Arnold Andrea (1961 -)

Bird, Antonia (1959 -)

Box Muriel (1905 - 1991) 

Chadha, Gurinder (1960 -)

Clayton Sue (? )

Craigie, Jill (1911 - 1999)

Grierson, Ruby (1904-1940) 

Mander, Kay (1915 - ) 

Mulvey, Laura (1941 - )

Potter, Sally (1949 - ) 

Ramsey Lynne ( 1969 -)

Toye, Wendy (1917 - )

Webliography

Guardian feature on the 'Celluloid Ceiling'

Kate Kellaway Guardian blog: Why is that film-making continues to be the most gender inequitable career in the arts?

Rachel Millward Guardian blog: Kate Kellaway asked what could be done to encourage more women into film-making. Here are my suggestions.

Rachel Millward is the organiser for the Bird's Eye View Women's Film Festival. It is solely to celebrate women film makers and started in 2005 in venues across London.

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: 16 Jun 2007 06:59 |  Tags: A Level Film Studies A Level Media Studies Antonia Bird British Women Directors Gurinder Chadha Kinoeye Laura Mulvey Lynne Ramsey Sally Potter Women And Film |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem