AND THAT'S MY STORY: BEN HOPKINS, FILMMAKER
I have been intrigued to find out more about the creators behind projects that I have been fortunate enough to see and/ or hear for a long time now so I've decided to do something about it. And That's My Story is a series on this blog that shares with you a bit about the creators and talent I've met along the way and their journey towards fulfilling their dreams; it will run for as long as I can find people who are willing to share their story. Today, I would like to introduce you to Ben Hopkins.
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I met Ben briefly after the screening of his film Hasret(Yearning) last week Monday and asked if he would mind taking part in this series. He kindly agreed to answer some questions about what filmmaking means to him, his preferred camera kit and his latest film. Enjoy!
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Still from Hasret (Yearning) //Source: Photo Courtesy of HOME
HELLO BEN! WAS BEING A FILMMAKER ALWAYS IN THE CARDS FOR YOU? AND WHICH CAME FIRST, YOUR NEED TO TELL A STORY WITH WORDS OR VISUALLY?
No, but I wanted to be a writer since I was 8 or 9. I was about 16 when my school made a deal with the local repertory cinema (they still existed then, back in the 80s), that we could get tickets for 50p for screenings before 5pm weekdays. I took up the offer and went to see some films – films I had no idea existed (until then I had just seen the usual Hollywood films – Star Wars, Indiana Jones etc). In the first week I saw movies by directors like Fellini, Herzog, Godard. Very soon I was hooked, and my ambitions changed from writing towards film-making.
WHAT ARE TYPCAL DAYS FOR YOU AS A SCREENWRITER AND DIRECTOR DURING PRE-PRODUCTION, PRODUCTION AND POST-PRODUCTION STAGES OF A PROJECT?
Since my son was born, I work in an office – I used to work at home. Now I cycle 15 minutes to my office to start work around 9am. At 1pm I cycle home and have lunch with my wife, and then a nap (all writers deserve a nap). Then I cycle back for 3pm, work until 6 or 6.30pm and then cycle back home to play with my son and put him to bed. As you can see the life of a professional writer is much like many other office job… you just need to put in the hours. But there’s one advantage: I am my own boss.
Post production is much the same – we edited HASRET in my office on rented equipment – it’s a lot cheaper than hiring a room in some expensive post-production facility.
But pre-production and production are of course radically different. You can be working any hours at all, often shooting all night and coming home at dawn, drinking my first glass of wine as my son is having his breakfast… And whilst researching and preparing a film like HASRET we were just walking miles and miles through all the neighbourhoods of Istanbul where tourists and foreign visitors never or rarely go, stopping anyone who seemed interesting and talking with them, entering doorways that looked mysterious or seemed somehow promising… and it’s through these long walks, talking with whoever you come across, that you meet a huge range of people that in a normal life or in a normal job you would never meet.
So those are the two very different sides of my work – a rather controlled, even dull, office job… that every now and then is completely transformed into an adventure, an exploration of the hidden corners of life on this planet. It’s a very satisfying combination.
Still from Hasret (Yearning) // Source: Photo Courtesy of HOME
IS IT EASIER TO DIRECT A PROJECT YOU'VE WRITTEN THE SCRIPT FOR? WOULD YOU SAY YOU PREFER DIRECTING A FILM BASED ON YOUR OWN SCRIPT OR SOMEONE ELSE'S?
I’ve never directed someone else’s work, so I don’t really know!
WHEN FILMING, WHAT CAMERA GEAR DO YOU LEAN MORE TOWARDS?
It depends entirely on the film. With HASRET we were shooting much of it hand-held on busy streets, or in rather dodgy neighbourhoods at night time, so we wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible. For this reason we chose the “Black Magic Pocket” 16mm chip camera for these scenes – as the camera is just as big as your hand, like a normal stills camera. As a result no one really realised we were shooting a film, which really helped us blend in. For the more touristic, “normal” scenes, and for interviews, we used the more professional/standard Sony F55 camera, for its higher resolution. If I were shooting a fiction film with great actors, I would aim to get an Alexa or some other top-range camera. As I say, it all depends on the film you’re making…
HOW DID THE IDEA FOR "HASRET" COME ABOUT? AND DOES THE FILM BEAR ANY RESEMBLANCE TO WHAT YOU ORIGINALLY THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO BE?
[Ben kindly sent me a document titled 'HASRET: An Introduction' detailing the answer to this question; here is an excerpt]
"In the mid 2000s, I had a brief, enthusiastic discussion with Thierry Garrel, then head of documentary at ARTE France, about my plan to make a film about the writer W.G. Sebald. Garrel was excited by the idea, and turned out to be as much a fan of the German writer as I was myself. We shared our impressions of his work, and agreed that it was only a matter of time before Sebald’s particular blend of fact and fiction would find its way into documentary film-making. Indeed, we both expressed surprise that his intoxicating, unusual mix of historical research and dreamlike invention had not really yet found its echo in cinema. Garrel left his job shortly after our meeting, and I never made my film about Sebald. But the ideas that we had discussed in the meeting remained in my thoughts.
For instance, around the same kind of time (2006), some director friends and I discussed an idea to make a portmanteau film about London: Andrew Kötting would do South London, John Hardwick, East London, Vito Rocco West London, and I would make a segment about North London, where I grew up and spent most of my life. Immediately I thought along Sebaldian lines – a mix of objective, factual observations of North London, plus “my” fictions about the place. My fictional interventions in the truth of North London would take a much more absurd, comic, even silly form than W.G. Sebald’s ever would (the tone of Sebald’s work, albeit at times wryly comic, is predominantly melancholy): my London humour is irrepressible… and so the fictions I would use to blur the fact-fiction barrier would have taken a rather comedic tone.
The London portmanteau film remained an idea between film-making friends, and we never took it further. However remembered the idea when I was asked to submit a short film idea for a portmanteau film about Istanbul in 2009, when Istanbul was about to be European Capital of Culture. By then I had left the UK and was living in Istanbul. Again I turned to the approach of mixing factual observation of the city with my own personal fictions – in this case my magical sensations about the Cats of the old European centre – I felt that the cats of Istanbul were not real, normal cats, but some kind of magical, divine spirits.
This Istanbul portmanteau film was never made. I remember feeling a sense of regret about both the unmade London film and the unmade Istanbul film. I felt I had come across a very interesting way of making a city portrait; a mixture of objective truth and absurdist, personal fiction. When I saw Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg I was at first a bit troubled – (that Guy had had a similar idea and got there first) – but then it reinforced me in my wish to make such a film. I became convinced that I had to make a “personal” film again; a film that came very much from my idiosyncratic view of the world – my last film PAZAR – BİR TİCARET MASALI (2008) was a relatively traditional, objective, Realist work, and my next film WELCOME TO KARASTAN (2014) was not my original idea (the idea for the film came from (Pawel Pawlikowski) … it now felt like ages since I had made my last “personal” films – the idiosyncratic fiction THE NINE LIVES OF TOMAS KATZ (1999), and the playful documentary 37 USES FOR A DEAD SHEEP (2005). Having, with TOMAS KATZ, already made a film about London, I decided to concentrate my ideas on my new home town: Istanbul. In doing so I knew I was entering a long tradition of poetry, music, books and films about this much-written-about city. My guide through this complex tradition was my wife Ceylan Ünal Hopkins, whose contribution to the project from its beginnings is recognised in her co-writing credit; (for a non-Turkish, recent Istanbul inhabitant like me to create an Istanbul portrait like HASRET without Ceylan’s help, would have been difficult, if not impossible.)"
Still from Hasret (Yearning) // Photo courtesy of HOME
WHAT WERE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES YOU ENCOUNTERED WHILST FILMING AND PROMOTING "HASRET"?
Filming it was quite easy, as I had a great crew and a committed production behind us. We had fun together, and the crew had to act as well, which they enjoyed. I hope the fun we had is somehow visible on screen.
But it’s been very difficult getting the film out there. I’m relatively “known” as a film-maker in Turkey and Germany, and to an extent also in the UK, but there are large swathes of the globe where my work is pretty much unknown.
So, as a non-famous film-maker, with an unusual and not-easily-label-able film, and a film without any famous people or celebrities in it, and no actors, and not about Major Issues of Today … it is REALLY difficult to get it shown anywhere. I’m afraid to say the film was rejected by pretty much all the festivals we sent it to.
So, it’s sad but true, the main challenge is getting the film SEEN by anyone at all!
Still from Hasret (Yearning)// Photo courtesy of HOME
YOU'VE WORKED ON FEATURES, SHORTS, DOCUMENTARIES AND HAVE WRITTEN NOVELS. ARE THERE OTHER FORMS OF STORYTELLING THAT YOU ARE INTERESTED IN EXPLORING AND IF SO, WHICH FORM ARE YOU LIKELY TO TRY NEXT?
Jeez, that’s enough already, innit? I’ll be very happy if I can finish my present novel (I hope this year) and make my next film (I hope next year). It’s a struggle to get anything made these days, and I’ll be really happy if I can continue as I am, just about making a living as an artist who does his own work just as he likes it. That’s already an achievement, I think.
But who knows. Maybe I’ll write a play some time soon ☺
IT APPEARS THAT THE PLETHORA OF RICH STORIES DIFFERENT COUNTRIES HAVE TO TELL IS SOMETHING THAT CATCHES YOUR ATTENTION. WHAT'S THE NEXT COUNTRY YOU PLAN ON GETTING TO KNOW ON A DEEPER LEVEL?
Turkey is such a complicated, conflicted and rich place, it’s taken up most of my energy and attention in the last decade. Maybe I need to look at somewhere more peaceful and simple… like Norway. Or Liechtenstein..
AND LASTLY, CAN YOU PLEASE SHARE 5 FILMS THAT HAVE LEFT A LASTING IMPRESSION ON YOU?
Off the top of my head, here are five of my favourite films:
Sunrise by Murnau
Barry Lyndon by Kubrick
Team America: World Police by Trey Parker
The Innocents by Jack Clayton
Edvard Munch by Peter Watkins
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I would like to take this chance to thank Ben once again for taking the time to answer my questions; to find out more about Ben and when his films will be screened, you can check out his website.I'm sure you all know this by now but learning a thing or two about filmmaking is my idea of fun. And if you are anything like me you'd have found what he had to say informative and interesting. I hope you are all having a lovely and fun day my friends. Until next time!
Mo x