A screening of Brassed Off, starring Ewan McGregor, Pete Postlethwaite and Tara Fitzgerald, and a Q&A with director Mark Herman has been announced as one of the highlights of Hull’s UNTHINKABLE festival.
The event, which will take place at Middleton Hall at the University of Hull on Wednesday 8th October, is part of an exciting line-up of film screenings, film-making and music workshops, industry professional masterclasses and mentorships, arts exhibitions and live music at the festival which takes place from 1st to 12th October and is now in its 3rd year.
Mark Herman, the Bridlington-born director and screenwriter best known for box-office hits such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Little Voice and Brassed Off, said: “Bringing Brassed Off to new audiences – particularly new generations– is a real pleasure. Destruction of a community, hope and injustice are at the heart of the film – which I think are timeless themes and still have resonance today.”
Mark, who frequently shines a light on injustice, the vulnerable or the underdog in his films, was inspired to write Brassed Off following a setback which encouraged him to look at film-making in a different way: “My first feature film had been savaged by the critics, and the commercial scripts I was writing weren’t getting any takers. It was a difficult time, and the advice to me at the time, and advice I still try and follow, was ‘forget about bums on seats and trying to write some big hit, just write about something you care about’. Something from the heart, that even if nobody else goes to see it, you’d like to see it yourself.
“It took me some time to find something I really cared about, but on one roadworks diversion that took me through the South Yorkshire mining villages (in which in an earlier life I worked as a sales rep for Danish bacon), and I saw the devastation of the once-thriving communities, it sparked an idea enough to start sketching out an outline.
“It was all a bit dour and linear, though until, on another car journey, I heard on the radio about a brass band in Newcastle that was having to shut down because nobody could afford the subs, and I married two threads together to form the embryo of what was to become the first draft of the screenplay.
“We’ve had quite a few screenings recently where young audiences have seen it for the first time and their reaction has been very rewarding. We had a screening at the Albert Hall, with the band playing live to the film, and I think about a third of the 5,000 audience hadn’t seen it before and they loved it.
“So many teens and twenty somethings always come up and say they were surprised how such an ‘oldie’ film could move them so much. So many people realise it’s still so pertinent.”
As patron of the festival, Mark is delighted about UNTHINKABLE’s success: “Any short film festival is great, but for it to continue year on year, and indeed grow, as UNTHINKABLE now has, is a significant achievement. I’ve nothing but respect for people who can make that work, because I know how very difficult it is to organise and keep fresh.”
He is keen to emphasise the importance of short film and encourage other new film-makers to explore the short format: “There was one short film, in particular – my graduation film – which was hugely important to me personally. It won a student Oscar and opened the doors through which I got my whole career off the ground. But even before that, when I very first got into film as a BA student, I was making (very) short films, and even if nobody saw them it was so useful just as a learning curve, just in that ‘practice, practice, practice’ way, you may not know it but you’re getting better all the time.
“A lot of people dismiss ‘short films’ as trivial and lacking weight but I’ve often found the opposite to be true. I’ve seen short films that say a lot more than some of the three-hour marathons I see in the cinema these days.
“My first professional film was a short – an 11-minute film for Channel Four – and I found writing for 11 minutes a real challenge – perhaps even more difficult than some full screenplays I’ve written. Weirdly, writing a 30-second ad or a two-hour film can be easier than writing an 11-minute piece. Just structurally it’s difficult, you just get going and you have to wind it up.”
The festival provides a platform for grassroots artists in Hull through curating film and other creative events that converge with cinema to support the future of film and visual arts in Hull.
Keaton B McD, Creative Director of the festival, said: “Our films are selected based on their originality, in how far they are able to push the boundaries of the medium.
“As well as film greats like Mark we are keen to showcase the work of grass roots, up and coming film-makers. This year, we’ve already had double the amount of submissions from the previous years – and I know this year’s content will be something more UNTHINKABLE then the last.”
Tickets for Brassed Off and Q&A with Mark Herman: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/middleton-hall
Tickets are priced at £7, with £4 concession for students, disabled persons, and the disabled person’s support/carer. The screening and Q&A will take place at Middleton Hall at 7:30pm. (The Arts Cafe will be open for refreshments beforehand).
For more information on all things UNTHINKABLE Film Festival, visit https://unthinkablefilmfestival.com and keep up-to-date through following their social media channels at @unthinkable.hull
Q&A with film director Mark Herman
What advice do you have for anyone who has a passion for film and would like to pursue it as a career?
“I think it’s still the case that if you want to get into the industry at top creative level, directing, camera, sound etc., going the film school route is a good one, though it’s crowded and can be pretty expensive. Having said that, I’ve seen many young people just dive straight in, green, without that training, work as runners or assistants and actually climb that ladder to those higher positions just as quickly simply by constantly working. I think, for life in the industry, the most valuable asset is a thick skin. Certainly as a screenwriter you need to get used to rejection and learn and accept that the knock-backs aren’t personal … usually.”
Were there any barriers that you faced yourself?
“I suppose, first time out, back at film school, when I came to make my graduation film, the main barrier was that I was trained (and was sort of still training) as an animator. This was the first live action film I’d ever made, first time writing and directing anything, I just emerged from the ‘animation cupboard’ with having spent a single second officially being taught live action film-making, so was justifiably treated with some scepticism, so it was a bit of a hurdle to ride. It was interesting, though, and didn’t take that long, to realise that actually the animation training was hugely useful when becoming a writer director, and still is. Possibly more so than any amount of any live action ‘workshops’.”
What was your inspiration for Brassed Off?
“I’d done my first feature, for Disney, which, although it made its money back was a bit of a critical disaster and in the aftermath I wrote a few what I thought were commercially attractive scripts, but because of the horrendous reviews, I really couldn’t get arrested, nobody would touch me, or anything I had written, with a barge-pole.
“After the battering from the critics it took me some time to find something I really cared about.
“When I witnessed the pit closures in South Yorkshire and then heard about a brass band in Newcastle that was having to shut down because nobody could afford the subs – that was my inspiration.
“Even when it first came out in 1996 – it was set in the past – so whether we are looking back 10 years or 30 or 40 it doesn’t make much difference. There are always stories about disenfranchised people, destruction of communities and political chicanery – and sadly there always will be, so films like this never really grow old. Although it was a very ‘local film, it was actually a surprisingly global subject. It could have been any industry, car manufacture in Detroit, steel industry somewhere else. The trampling of community didn’t just happen in South Yorkshire in the 90s – it happens everywhere.”
* UNTHINKABLE is a Hull-based film festival which was set up as a CIO charity. It works with a number of venues in the city including Hull Truck Theatre, Humber Street Gallery, The Polar Bear and the University of Hull. The festival is sponsored by Wykeland and welcomes other sponsors to get in touch.