Mercedes Driver

Mercedes Gleitze. Not a new model of German automobile. You’ve probably never heard the name. She (she’s a she, not an it) was the first British woman to swim the English Channel and an all-round remarkable person.

The same can be said of Elliott Hasler. Last night saw (at the fabulous [and at risk] Curzon Mayfair) the premiere of his debut feature film, the unusually titled ‘Vindication Swim’, which he wrote at the age of 18 after reading a newspaper article about Mercedes, who was born in Brighton, as was Elliott.

It took him over three years to shoot the film which is highly ambitious being a period drama (set in the 20s) and involving extensive shooting on the open sea. Whenever the Channel off Brighton was reasonably calm and the weather OK he had to scramble his cast and crew, including his lead actress Kirsten Callaghan (making a knock-out debut), old-school character actor John Locke (who recently appeared in the brilliant ’Poor Things’) and Victoria Summer (‘Saving Mr Banks’ as Julie Andrews). Kirsten, as totally committed as all the cast and crew, did all the sea swimming herself. They come across as a family engendered by Elliott.

Elliott called in no end of favours. Period vehicles and horse-drawn carts for the street scenes. Background artists from local am-dram groups from Rottingdean to Worthing. Huge attention to detail, extending to making this one of the lowest carbon footprint feature films of all time.

Through sheer dint of will this low-budget independent British movie is now getting a good release of over 300 UK showings and Elliott and his team are setting off on a month of post-screening Q&As all round the country. Picnik Entertainment have come in firmly behind the now 23-year-old’s stand-out calling card, amplifying the huge talent of ‘Vindication Swim’ ‘s prime mover.

The cherry on the cake of last night’s premiere was the presence of Ronnie Wood. No moss will gather on this young rolling stone – Elliott is now working on his follow-up feature, also South coast based (with Graham Greene’s ‘Brighton Rock’ at its heart).

Mercedes Gleitze (who was finally honoured in 2022 with a blue plaque in her native city) attempted the cross-Channel swim seven times before finally securing that swimming first on 7th October 1927. Persistence, resilience, vision, inspiration from a committed parent (in Mercedes’ case her German-born father, in Elliott’s his accountant father as producer who no doubt stretched the sub-£400K budget to its limit – Simon, Elliott & I first met in Brighton in January 2023 and they made an immediately charming duo), boldness, humility, winning the loyalty of a rock-solid team – the maker of this remarkable film and its subject share many outstanding qualities. Mercedes’ name is now becoming more known. Elliott’s, without a shadow of a doubt, will soon be.

Photo: Stewart Weir

Premiere at Curzon Mayfair 28/2/24

Elliott Hasler, Kirsten Callaghan, Victoria Summer, John Locke

124 Freshfield Road, Brighton

Protest and Progress and Paramount

Photo: Misan Harriman

Our latest Doc Hearts feature documentary with Oscar nominee Misan Harriman has now started shooting – ‘Protest and Progress’ – for Paramount+.

Directed by Doc Hearts founder Andy Mundy-Castle in the wake of his lauded ‘White Nanny, Black Child’.

It couldn’t be more timely…

Breathtaking

Tonight [9pm ITV1] sees the broadcast of the first episode of ‘Breathtaking‘ on ITV. In some ways it will be perceived as a ‘follow-up’ to ‘Mr Bates vs The Post Office’, being a primetime ITV drama addressing a real-life home-grown social crisis. Whether it will have anything like the same impact remains to be seen – like the Post Office scandal, it does connect to an issue and process playing out right now (in the form of the on-going COVID-19 independent public inquiry), on the other hand lightening rarely strikes twice in the same place.

‘Breathtaking’ is set in the run-up to the first wave of Covid-19 in the UK and centres on an acute medicine consultant, Dr Abbey Henderson (played by Joanne Froggatt), and the NHS staff around her as they struggle to cope with fast-rising numbers of Covid patients. The series is based on the insider memoir of palliative care doctor and author Rachel Clarke, specifically her third book ‘Breathtaking’ (2021). Interestingly, Clarke was a broadcast journalist before she studied medicine, producing/directing current affairs programmes for the BBC and Channel 4.

A common question which came up in watercooler and pub moments in the wake of ‘Mr Bates vs The Post Office’, and which I broached in my previous post ‘Important Television‘, is why did a mainstream, traditional TV drama ignite public interest and move matters on where solid, persistent journalism and political activism failed? The answer I would contend lies in what television’s main strengths are. TV is not great at explaining things – it takes the medium a relatively long time to get across facts and information. What it is brilliant at is prompting emotion.

You can judge most programming, and indeed most performance and art, on whether it creates a strong emotional response in you. The films and plays and gigs and pictures which most evidently fail are the ones that leave you feeling little or nothing. All great (and even good) art is some form of emotional experience and sentimental journey (in the sense of relating to sentiment and feelings).

The other main reason for this drama’s stand-out success is story and narrative drive. By presenting the well-aired facts behind the sub-postmasters’ tragedy in story form with all the powerful dynamics of well-structured narrative they were elevated from the predominantly rational to a fully rounded expression with emotional depth and relatable feelings.

I designed and delivered a module on Storytelling for an MDes course (an MBA for designers and creatives) at Ravensbourne university/film school on the Greenwich Peninsula a few years ago. I used it to draw attention to the way the Left often relies on cogent statistics and well marshalled information to make their argument, where the Right simply deploys better stories and trumps them regardless. In this year of elections it is worth keeping in mind that politically it is a mistake to undervalue story and overrely on rationality, facts and figures.

It will be interesting to see whether ‘Breathtaking’ boosts the public’s anger at what was done in its name by Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and co. and if so, whether that anger can be channelled productively to improve our society and make any future response far better and more just.

Matt Hancock

‘Boris Johnson Steps up Plans to Tackle Coronavirus as Criticism Mounts‘

Tales of an Industry Stalwart

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The 44th London Critics’ Circle Film Awards

The ‘For people in trouble’ team :: Adam Gee, Giannina Rodriguez Rico, Sam Brain, Alex Lawther

 

The 44^th London Critics’ Circle Film Awards last night was a refreshing event, friendly and unpretentious, but also distinguished by the wise decisions its voters made. Not least by voting ‘The Zone of Interest’ Film of the Year and Jonathan Glazer Director of the Year, ahead of the likes of Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan and Yorgos Lanthimos. I mentioned in a recent post that the movie is “by a country mile the best movie of the year”, in a really vintage year which saw people coming back to the cinema in big numbers for films of substance. It is released in the UK this week.

I had the pleasure of having a conversation with Jonathan Glazer in the bar after the ceremony and wishing him all the best at the BAFTAs and Oscars (as well as discussing the Auschwitz-related documentary I am currently working on). I also had a chat with Mica Levi who composed the extraordinary music in the film. Mica and Johnnie Burn (Sound) won the award for Technical Achievement, a category which puts everything from Visual FX to Casting in one pot. Their achievement was the subject of my recent post ‘Let’s Hear It for Audio’.

Whether the timing of the LCC Film Awards, the week the final round of BAFTA voting closes and in the run-up to the Oscars on 10^th March, means they will predict the winners or even influence them is difficult to say, but hopefully they will as the winners were spot on – from Emma Stone as Actress of the Year for her brilliant portrayal in ‘Poor Things’ to the important ‘20 Days in Mariupol’ as Documentary of the Year. I was lucky enough to meet its modest director Mstyslav Chernov in the drinks before the ceremony and said I was certain his brave film would triumph.

It was enjoyable to meet with critics known to me and not. I was telling Mark Kermode, the entertaining MC for the evening (who I have known since we were teenagers and who shares my deep love of music), about the documentary I currently have in the edit about protest songs and mentioned that we had used a Nina Simone song to explore issues around Black Lives Matter – he started fishing around under his dress shirt and pulled out a small silver pendant. “Funny you should mention her because this is her chewing gum, taken from the bottom of her piano by Warren Ellis and cast in silver by him – there are only 25 of these in existence.”

Warren, Nick Cave’s genius musical partner, wrote an excellent book about it, ‘Nina Simone’s Gum’, which highlights how seemingly insignificant objects can form beautiful connections between people. There were many warm connections made at the event, very well put together by Chair Rich Cline and his bijou team. The Guardian’s Pete Bradshaw introduced me to Paul Mescal. I was delighted to have chats with the likes of the lovely Andrew Scott (who won Actor of the Year – bizarrely overlooked by BAFTA’s Best Actor category as ‘The Zone of Interest’ was in Best Film), Molly Manning Walker (winner of The Philip French Award for Breakthrough British/Irish Filmmaker for her film ‘How To Have Sex’, which is just opening in the USA) and photographer/filmmaker Misan Harriman (Chair of London’s South Bank Centre) who collected the inaugural Derek Malcolm Award for Innovation on behalf of the brilliant Colman Domingo and with whom I will be working this year on a great documentary film project.

 

Paul Mescal & Andrew Scott

Jonathan Glazer & his wife Rachel Penfold

Misan Harriman & Andrew Haigh (All of Us Strangers)

The row in front of Barbie and behind The Zone of Interest

Mark Kermode and Pete Bradshaw