magazine - Somerville College - University of Oxford

Somerville Magzine | 25
by SARA KALIM
(1990, Classics)
What went through your
head when you first heard you
were receiving your CBE?
I had to hide the letter because I thought
someone was playing a joke on me. When I
started to believe in it, I decided it was like
being made a school monitor. I thought, “Oh
good, they think I’m good enough!”
What memories do you have
of your time at Somerville and
at Oxford?
I came up as a Classicist and changed to
Chinese. I remember the Principal at the time,
Daphne Park, whom I really admired, asking
me to join her to meet a Chinese Delegation.
My Chinese was rubbish, but they were
typically polite and told her how good it was.
I felt like a fraud.
I was a theatre buff so I went to theatre every
night, directed plays and ran OUDS. I left
Oxford having learnt a lot of things, though
maybe not enough Chinese! To learn what
you love is a brilliant first step, isn’t it? I
knew I wanted to be involved in writing and
storytelling.
At what point did you decide to
pursue a career in film?
I worked in a literary agency where I was given
pretty much free rein to train and fi nd writing
talent. What I loved was sitting on the fl oor
with the writers, working on scripts. I wasn’t a
deal maker, I was a script editor.
You are Channel 4’s Controller
of Film and Drama. What does
that entail?
‘Anti-controller’ is probably the right term
for me. I’m not interested in stopping other
people making what they want. I spend a
lot of my time meeting writers and directors
and working with a tiny team, so I can do
eight fi lms at any one time. I engage
in whatever creative conversations and
processes are needed to create the right
team for each project.
What film commission for
Film4 are you proudest of?
I’m proud of them all but can only talk about
the ones people know: working with Shane
Meadows on This Is England and with Kevin
Macdonald on The Last King of Scotland, now
on The Eagle of the Ninth. Kevin combines
huge integrity with an appetite for a huge
audience. Working on Slumdog Millionaire
with Danny Boyle: he was both hugely
intellectual and big-hearted – a hero. Miranda
July, who made Me and You and Everyone We
Know: her detailed, feminine, incredibly astute
view of the world is very unusual.
And has there ever been a project
that you regret turning down?
Red Road by Andrea Arnold. We’d made
Wasp, her short fi lm that won an Oscar. We
turned down Red Road on the basis of a
diffi cult script. It’s taken me until now to work
with her again. She’s directing Wuthering
Heights this spring, and has made Film4 her
home for now – and I hope for the future.
How would an aspiring
screenwriter get his or her
script on your desk?
It’s difficult. We never look at unsolicited
manuscripts. But I work lots with young theatre
writers to develop new screenplays. It’s about
finding your voice. I’m not sure to what extent
the film writer is in control. Martin McDonagh
has control because he’s a successful enough
playwright to direct a movie (In Bruges). If
you’re a writer and you’re interested in the film
industry because you’re excited by the way
directors work then it’s about how technical
you can be, how adaptable, and you need
a producer to understand that. Finding your
voice is possibly better done in other ways in
the early stages.
It seems to be true that, while
women are television directors
and producers, they are underrepresented
in features. Do you
have an insight into why that is?
The fi lm world is still hugely chauvinistic and
the systems in place are very male-skewed.
Making a fi lm is like leading an army. The
brilliant directors are obsessed to the point
where they see nothing other than how good
their fi lm can be. It’s a diffi cult thing to direct
a fi lm.
And what do you predict for
the British film industry in
the coming years?
We need to protect our public service telly,
at Channel 4 and the BBC, where we can
still fight for quality above all else. If this
ecology is sustained within the broadcasting
industry, then the small investment in film
from both will continue to reflect the priorities
of both – different yet complementary. We
need to continue to protect talent, support
new and unknown voices and be led by the
ideas of those we trust and admire rather than
prescribing where it is we want to go. This is a
time of great change – hence an opportunity
to tell stories differently, at a different cost. Our
greatest successes have always come from the
most surprising and least derivative ideas.
If you had the chance to go back
and talk to yourself as a young
undergraduate, what golden
advice would you give yourself?
I would say to myself, what I say to young
people now, that the more true to ourselves
we are – particularly as women – the more we
can go to bed and sleep easy at night. If we’re
good at being ourselves, then we’re better at
what we do. ■
Sara Kalim originally trained as an actress but then went behind the camera to work in
television documentaries and current affairs. She started in BBC Documentaries and moved
on to the independent sector to work as Head of Development at Landmark Films and at
Quicksilver Media. She lives in Oxford with her husband and two children.