Download - University of Kent

STAFF PROFILE
University of Kent / ARTS STUDIO
CLIO BARNARD
Clio Barnard’s work has screened in galleries including Tate Modern, London
and MOMA, New York. Her critically acclaimed debut feature film, The Arbor,
won awards at festivals around the world; she was also nominated for the
BAFTA Outstanding Debut Award in 2011. Here, she tells us why she
became a filmmaker and why she enjoys teaching at Kent.
When did you first get
interested in film?
The film that really got me thinking
was Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei
Rublev. I remember thinking that
here was the ultimate art form,
because you could work with
sound, moving image and words.
I saw the film at an impressionable
age and was really blown away
by it.
Your first degree was in fine art;
when did you focus on film?
I was doing big charcoal drawings
and to make a record of how they
progressed and changed, I set up a
Bolex 16mm hand-wound camera
so that I could take single frames of
the drawings. This then turned into
an animation. I got excited by the
magic of film and started shooting
live-action 16mm and Super 8
footage. I forgot about the other
things I was doing; I was really
seduced by film.
I then took a postgraduate course
and immersed myself in making my
own work. I made a piece of video
art called Dirty Science, which was
selected by Tilda Swinton for an ICA
show. It was very early in my career
and it felt great that somebody else
had chosen my film and that lots of
people would now see it. I then got
a job producing motion graphics
and title sequences for MTV, Film 4
and Channel 4, which supported
me and allowed me to continue
making my own work.
When did you move into
teaching?
I was invited to work at the
University for the Creative Arts
(UCA) which has a very good
experimental film and video
course. I enjoyed teaching
because I had to engage with
ideas in a way that I hadn’t had to
doing commercial work. I found
teaching very intellectually
stimulating. Seeing students’
individual voices emerge is very
exciting.
Do you think teaching and
filmmaking work well together?
I think they have a very positive
effect on each other. While I was
teaching here and at UCA, I made
a gallery installation called Road
Race, which was inspired by many
of the things I was engaging with in
my teaching – such as ideas around
documentary and the impossibility
of recording the real.
The film department here has a long
history and an excellent reputation.
Combining that with our recent
move into a new building, which has
excellent technical facilities, means
that students get the best of both
worlds. I feel very fortunate to be
able to combine teaching and
filmmaking and I think being taught
by practising filmmakers has a
hugely positive impact on the
students.
Your most recent film,
The Arbor, has been very
successful. What attracted
you to this story?
I started thinking about it in 2006;
my interest grew out of my
admiration for the work of
playwright, Andrea Dunbar and film
director Alan Clarke, and from my
ongoing fascination with the
relationship between documentary
and film. Andrea wrote her plays in
the 1980s and died in 1990. Max
Stafford-Clark, who directed her
work, returned to Buttershaw, the
place where Andrea was from and
where the plays were set, a decade
after her death to see how it had
changed. The outcome was a piece
of verbatim theatre, A State Affair.
I was interested in the idea that a
play or a film shapes an ending but
that the place doesn’t end. So, I
went back to Buttershaw to see how
it had changed and also to reflect
on the previous representations. In
making The Arbor, I felt it was vital
that people were reminded that
what they were watching was a
retelling of a true story. Actors
lip-synch the words of the people I
interviewed, which I think acts as a
distancing device and draws your
attention to the illusion.
The film is award-winning and
people’s responses to it have
been very positive. How did
that make you feel?
When you make a film, you have no
idea how people are going to
respond to it. At the end of the
filmmaking process, you are
necessarily involved in the
Recommendations
minutiae, looking at whether it is
bright enough or dark enough, or
whether the sound should include
a creak or not, so you begin to lose
sight of the bigger picture. When
the first reviews started coming in it
was very rewarding. At the heart of
the film is a very tragic set of
circumstances and, in the making
of it, I formed real bonds with the
people involved. The fact that they
also felt rewarded by its success
meant a lot to me.
A film to see before you come to Kent
It is different for everybody, and of course part of what
inspires you is discovering something yourself, but having
said that, two films that inspired me before I went into
further education were Rashomon by Kurosawa and
Performance by Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg
9