Monday 27th February 2012.

Monday 27th February 2012.

Heathrow Airport. I never enjoy leaving home and I never enjoy sitting in the car-park known as the M25 but, here we are, at the airport ready to fly Qantas to Perth. After months and months of endless emails I’m finally at Day 1 of another cinema tour. Starting in Australia and then going via New Zealand to the USA. Before anyone reading this thinks ‘great idea, I must try that’, I say ‘don’t!’ It makes no commercial sense and involves 25 flights, thousands of miles of driving, 18 hour days, a gazillion emails, press interviews and post-screening Q&As. I’ve gone this route and don’t regret it but I wouldn’t advise it to anyone. One good conversation with a UK commissioning editor that results in a project being funded will be better for you or your company – and you can be home for tea. So why do it? Because I love showing my films to a live audience. I love bringing the worlds of Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn to them, the Leonardo exhibition, or the life of a small boy growing up in post-Taliban Afghanistan. I understand the numbers – one TX can get 2 or 3 million. That would take me many lifetimes in cinemas but still….


Of course, any attempt at generating an audience involves a stab at winning awards. The BAFTAS and OSCARS have just gone by. Senna nabbed the BAFTA but wasn’t even shortlisted for an OSCAR which was won by Undefeated. We were one of the films that qualified for OSCAR consideration this year and I guess it is kind of refreshing that a relatively unknown film won. But anyone who thinks the best films make the final 5 is a fool. Small groups of largely white, middle class, older men initially watch their DVDs and make their decisions…partly on the film of course, but just as much on politics, buddies, favours, and there’s a certain style of doc that Americans like. Narrated, endless music, bold clear narrative. Yes, there are exceptions that have won but, by and large, that’s how it is (in my opinion, at least). So why do we invest the time and money to enter. I do wonder. Ego I guess. The hope that it will help sell or promote the film too. Last week my film THE BOY MIR won an RTS and was shortlisted and nominated in various other awards/festivals, as were two other recent films IN SEARCH OF HAYDN and LEONARDO LIVE. The laurels look good on the DVD case but I’m not sure if any award we’ve ever won has made the blind bit of difference – except when they come with a cash prize. No-one ever rings up and says, ‘hey, we saw you win that award and we want you to make your next film with us’. Maybe that happens to other folk…

While I’m on the subject of awards, let me state publically that I can see no earthly reason why the BAFTAS, having been dragged screaming into having a best doc award then only can bring themselves to have three nominations. Seriously? Ask Anna Miralis of True Stories or Nick Fraser of Storyville or any serious doc director (i.e the ones who actually bother to watch as many docs as they can) if they feel there were only three docs this (or any) year worthy of a nomination. Ridiculous and insulting. Therein lies a key problem for documentary production as a whole – it’s belittled, disrespected, looked down upon. We try to pretend otherwise but wise up, people. Compare where you are at as a 40 or 50-years with decades of experience with your buddies who are doctors, bankers, lawyers. I’ve been invited in Australia to give some masterclasses at the AIDC and one of the sessions is with young film-makers wanting to know how to ‘make it in the industry’. A colleague of mine summed it up: I have to tell them that 95% of them will fail and the rest will struggle from project to project. My BOY MIR film has won multiple awards, had great press and lots of TV & festival screenings - and yet I don’t think I would risk the mental strain of raising the funds to make another such film. I know there are lots of other film-makers now willing to go to Afghanistan and good luck to them but the mile steeplechase of endless funding hurdles is feeling too much for my ageing bones. I’ll be sticking to my art exhibition films for TV & cinema and my composer films, also for TV & cinema. They are a struggle too but, unless something goes really wrong while filming at the National Gallery or Barbican, I won’t risk being kidnapped or blown up.

On that note, I want to end this blog with a sad note to mark what I’m sure is a shared sadness at the death of Marie Colvin and the other journalists who have died - and continue to so - in Syria, as well as the thousands of Syrians. Beyond X-factors, Dancing on Ice, Big Brother there is a wicked, weird and wonderful world out there which needs to be reported – and it is shocking that anyone has to die as a result. That’s what journalists and film-makers are for: to bring that world to the audience. I just wish the industries we work in would treat us with a bit more respect.

Still, can’t complain: off to sunny Australia.

Wednesday 8th February 2012

Wednesday 8th February 2012

I have just had the most stunning drive from Brighton to Aberystwyth on the western coast of Wales. I had a talk to students to do and then a screening in the evening of THE BOY MIR - TEN YEARS IN AFGHANISTAN. It all went very well but I want to share that the drive (accompanied by Ronald Brautigam CDs playing Beethoven) through central Wales was absolutely stunning. Sunny, with a sprinkling of snow on the ground. So, people, stop sitting in front of your computer reading blogs and take the family for a drive in your local hills....

Thursday 2nd February

Thursday 2nd February

The international screening of LEONARDO LIVE is coming up...and it's all very exciting. Here's an extract of an interview I did for a US newspaper which sums up why I'm so happy we went through so many hoops to make this film.

I have been making films for 25 years - and in recent years this has included many arts & culture films. My films IN SEARCH OF MOZART, IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN & IN SEARCH OF HAYDN play to good audiences in cinemas and concert halls around the world and thus I know there is in an audience out there. It is TV that has abandoned its public service ethics and gone down-market and down-hill but crowds of all ages remain who want to learn about great composers and great artists. I have made over 100 films about artists and I always feel such a sense of privilege to be in galleries after the visitors have all gone home. I wanted thus to bring all these things together and present a major exhibition not just to TV audiences but cinema audiences. TV is one thing but in the cinema it plays on a big screen in high-definition, no interruptions, great audio, like-minded folk around you, nice cup of coffee and a slice of cake...and a stunning look at the works and life of one of the most creative genius's ever to walk the planet - if that's not worth 90 minutes of your time, I don't know what is! I have close relationships with galleries around the world but above all the UK - and thus I went to talk to my friends at the National Gallery What, I asked, have you coming up in two years time that might work in cinemas...they smiled and said, we have the best possible answer to that question...Leonardo! The exhibition focusses on his time in Milan - which was the most productive time of his life. The National Gallery has brought nine of his paintings (almost half his painting output) under one roof for the one and only time in history. It has never happened before and it will never happen again. I feel so honoured to have been the one camera team to have been allowed in to film these works in detail - and to give you, the audience, a rare opportunity to share in these masterpieces. Plus we go behind-the-scenes of the exhibition too. If I have a favourite moment from the many great moments in the film, maybe it's the look at the new Leonardo painting, the Salvador Mundi. It's the first 'new' Leonardo discovered and acknowledged as one of his in over a hundred years and it's quite wonderful. The reaction has been tremendous - and the sense of pride that all over the world folk have had a chance to share in these examples of what humans are capable of means that we are certainly going to do more. We have a few already lined up and it's all very exciting. What the Met has done for opera and the National Theatre for theatre, PhilGrabskyFilms.com will try to do for art. When you look at so many of the feature films out there - $100m productions that seem little more than an excuse to show violence of one sort or another - there has to be room for small projects like this which celebrate creativity. We all know that we are able to bomb, shoot, stab, punch and swear...but it's good to remind ourselves that we can also paint, sculpt, compose....