The Newcastle-based filmmaker network Hubbub welcomed one of Britain’s most creative film producers to their March 6^th meeting. Keith Griffiths has an enviable track record of working closely with some of the most remarkable filmmakers in Europe and is a respected authority on art cinema production and the avant-garde.

His credits include Institute Benjamenta, London' and 'Conspirators of Pleasure and his company, Illuminations Films, are currently working with the Brothers Quay, Jan Svankmajer, Patrick Keiller, Chris Petit, Iain Sinclair and Steve McQueen.

It was a stimulating session that Griffiths delivered, using a selection of films that he has worked on to demonstrate some of the views that have kept him at the forefront of the avant-garde.

Griffiths describes himself as a failed architect -"couldn’t do the maths!"- but feels that as a filmmaker he is still fulfilling an architect’s brief, collaborating with others to create something unique in time and space.

His parents had wanted him to take up a career in law, something he described as "unthinkable" at the time, but since becoming a film producer, ironically, he spends a great deal of his time wrestling with lawyers over the fine print of film contracts, where a law degree might have come in very useful.

Carving out a film career for himself via the Royal College of Art, Griffiths moved on via sessions as camera assistant, sound recordist and editor. In the 1970’s he worked for a variety of regional arts associations, predecessors of today’s Regional Arts Boards, eventually becoming Deputy Head of Production at the BFI before starting his own production company.

He describes film artists as externalising an essentially internal vision and his own work conjoins this vision with cinema, which he says is at last rediscovering itself as a storytelling medium and not just a visual medium.

Griffiths explained that with access to cinema effectively denied to them, film artists had been forced to make imaginative use of other potential opportunities, like public spaces, to exhibit their work. He says this process has produced a rich and vibrant range of work and made it accessible.

He showed a film of some of the work of Len Lee, a New Zealand-born kinetic sculptor who started out as a filmmaker, but when he ran out of film resources switched to other means of creating things, making use of movement, time and space, light and shadow. Although he was recognised now as sculptor, he still thought like a filmmaker. The results, shown on the film screen were imaginative, dynamic and satisfying to observe.

As a producer of avant-garde film work Griffith said his job was to make a proposal attractive to financiers, often without the benefit of a script, because the script could only be created as it was being shot. Imagination played a big part here. For example pitches had been made using collages of images cut from magazines, story-board style. Then having got the money side together, it was his job to give the artist enough space in which to work, to externalise that inner vision and do so without interference from other parties on board the project.

He said there was a steady market for these films, across Europe and beyond, with a very big market in Japan, where the visions of European filmmakers were very popular with the young female audience, who apparently tended to see European avant-garde imagery as very erotic. It was no surprise to learn thereafter, that one of his most important sources of finance is Japanese film investors anxious to exploit this unique market.

Some of Griffiths’ richest anecdotes came from his collaborations with the Czech avant-garde filmmaker Jan Svankmajer, with whom he has now made four features.

Svankmajer’s work was banned by the former Czechoslovakian regime, but Griffiths managed to meet him and was invited to an underground screening of the director’s work. In those pre-velvet revolution days, the audience made their way to a secret location, where Svankmajer awaited them with a pile of 35mm film cans and an industry-standard Moviola editing screen.

Later, after premiering a new film of the still-banned Svankmajer, Griffiths and one of his Swiss investors found themselves as guests of the secret police in a Prague jail. Their hosts explained that it was not possible for them to make a film with Svakmajer and did not seem to understand that the film they wanted to suppress had already been made! Things were feeling distinctly uncomfortable, but were improved by the Swiss investor, who took out his personal Czech investments portfolio from his briefcase.

His portfolio represented millions of Swiss Francs supporting Czech industries. He was a well-known name in Czechoslovakia and he was now threatening to pull his investment in the country’s future! After that, release from custody was immediate and the film was saved.

Griffiths showed an extract from his latest Svankmajer feature which has been well received at Venice and Rotterdam festivals. He described the film as topical and interesting, dealing with fertility and genetic modification and how these matters might affect society. Now accepted by the authorities in his own country as a filmmaker and distributed there by Warner Bros, his latest films opened at all ten screens of a Prague multiplex. Czechs flocked to see it and came out furious, considering that he had made fun of an infertile woman. Svankmajer had based his story on a traditional story and somehow had not only touched a chord with his audience, but touched a raw nerve as well.

In other ways, Svankmajer is very much a traditionalist and a reactionary steeped in some surprising pre-velvet- revolution attitudes. Griffiths observed that after seeing his film screened in a typical modern widescreen multiplex, the Czech director, who had insisted in filming in traditional academy ratio, expressed surprise that his image had occupied so little space on the screen. He expressed the thought that he might shoot in Panavision next time. This caused some amusement in Griffiths, because only recently, when he suggested to the director they approach Panavision as a possible co-producer, Svankmajer had scorned the idea. "That would be a sell-out to the Americans!" he had remarked.

As a final act of thought provocation for the session, Griffiths stated that the current move into the digital era was helping all filmmakers become more creative as manipulators of images. In digital film, every single frame could be manipulated and this was film going back to its roots, when everything was manipulated to enhance the narrative, pointing up again film’s pre-eminence as a story telling medium. Griffiths then invited his audience to observe a cut from a film in which the image had been manipulated, not by digital means, but by an analogue film maker.

The black and white film showed a peaceful, happy scene of people paddling in the sea’s edge with waves regularly washing over their lower limbs. Gradually the waves are superimposed on a second image and the waves are seen sweeping over large white fluffy clouds spread across a clear sky of a fixed tone that complemented and combined perfectly with the moving waves above. The director was manipulating the sky and the sea to make a single comprehensive picture of the scene at this moment, on this glorious day. The scene was achieved by a Swiss filmmaker. He had taken his camera lenses to be optically cut by Venetian glass experts, allowing him to capture both images simultaneously and not a computer in sight.

Hubbub’s attendees were surprised to find that two and half hours had passed since Griffiths started his discussion with them, a good indicator of what a lively and entertaining guest he was.

Griffiths was originally asked to take part in the recent Animate! conference organised by the University of Teeside, but could not attend at the required dates. Thanks to some swift action by Hubbub his services were secured, only to be threatened by total disruption of rail services caused by the Selby rail tragedy. Fortunately Gill Air came to the rescue by sponsoring a London-Newcastle ‘plane ticket for the event, an act of generosity for which Hubbub regulars had reason to be grateful.

One plea to Hubbub’s organisers: If a guest has such a rich programme to offer, a handout sheet detailing the films to be seen, with basic credits would have been useful. As a basic tool for an understanding of what was to be revealed it would have been valauble. As a take-away to consult later and perhaps research further, it would have been indispensable.

The event was sponsored by the University of Teeside, Northern Production Fund @ Northern Arts, Pilgrim Films and the University of Northumbria@ Newcastle.

Contact: hubbub.events@virgin.net

check out http://www.hubbub.org.uk