By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
A new Broomfield sweeps clean: a UK doc retro
Nick Broomfield has a new doc about the aftereffects of South African apartheid, debuting on Channel 4, His Big White Self, revisiting an earlier subject, Afrikaner extremist Eugene Terre’Blanche. In the Guardian, Paul Hoggart uses the new pic as a way to describe Broomfield’s output. “Broomfield bravado is nothing new, providing such memorable moments as his standing up at an American Civil Liberties Union awards ceremony, where Courtney Love was guest of honour, to denounce her for threatening journalists (Kurt and Courtney), and walking into an American high-security prison yard to interview Suge Knight, the jailed head of a record company called Death Row, whom he suspected was behind the murders of the famous rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls (Biggie and Tupac)… Broomfield edits his films in his rural bolt-hole, an idyllic spot about an hour south of London…. Broomfield has just turned 58 and turns out to be as genial, laid-back, softly-spoken and ruminative as he is in his films. There is an air of old hippy-bohemian about the place. An antique roll-top bath sits in the middle of his office – only one item in a fine selection of Victorian sanitary ware…. “I was taught by someone who loved observational films where people are made to feel completely adequate about the way they are. That is what makes an insightful film,” he says. He still thinks of his films as “political”, though in a broader sense. “A film is a portrait of an aspect of society.” …
… Broomfield was not the first documentary reporter to put himself in the frame, but he is probably the one who has done most to popularise this style in Britain. His search for answers provides the narrative backbone to issues which may remain unresolved, usually laced with his gently sly comedy…. His work has been an important part of a wave of new, popular feature-length documentaries, many of which, like the films of Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock, are screened in cinemas. “They’re politically more critical than can be made through the Hollywood system, which is so conservative and careful,” Broomfield says. He compares this wave to the arrival of the “New Journalism” in the mid-60s. For Broomfield, “it is the feeling that the incidental stuff can be much more revealing than the big questions” … Broomfield believes in the essential goodness of human nature, even in appalling circumstances. It is this trait that apparently motivates his [next film, a] Chinese cockle-picker drama. “Visually, it’s tremendous, but we filmed in China illegally. The authorities are very controlling. I found China charmless and brutal. It was a ghastly place. I so hated it.” He used new HD… digital technology, which produces superb sound and images, even in low light. This film, he thinks, might turn out to be part of an explosion in cheap, independent drama production made possible by this technology. If he sneaks under the radar here, catching his subjects off-guard as he has done in his documentaries, he could well be proved right.” [Broomfield’s website is here.]
