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British
film maker hopes to make feature film in Kurdistan |
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: KRG - Kurdistan Regional Government |
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British film maker hopes to make feature
film in Kurdistan 25.10.2006
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London, UK,
October 25, -- Gill Parry, a British film maker,
visited the Kurdistan Region in July to scout a
location for a new movie. The story centres on a
Kurdish boy who is looking for safety, which
translated into Kurdish is Amini, the title of the
film.
Gill Parry answers
questions about her location-scouting visit and
about prospects for a film industry to develop in
Kurdistan.
What’s the basic storyline of Amini (Safety)?
Parry: Amini is the story of Shwan, a 12-year
old Kurdish boy who is bombed out of his home in
Mosul at the beginning of the war in northern Iraq.
Left as the only survivor, he rescues a stray dog
that is about to be shot, and together they try to
reach safety in the mountains of Kurdistan in Turkey
- the fabled sanctuary that Shwan's mother told him
stories about as he was growing up, the place where
his family found refuge as they fled the brutality
of Saddam Hussein before he was born.
Who wrote the story, and why?
Parry: The screenplay was written by Clive
Bradley, based on a book called Kingdom by the Sea
by writer Robert Westall. The book is actually about
the adventures of a boy in Second World War Britain,
but we wanted to update the story and make it
relevant and compelling to audiences today.
What drew you to the script?
Parry: I already had the book under option
[an option is the right to acquire ownership of
intellectual property for a pre-determined amount of
time] and had the idea of updating it. Then I
recruited Clive to write the script for my company,
Connect Film. He’s a really talented screenwriter,
his most recent TV piece was the highly acclaimed
That Summer about a group of kids’ experiences of
the 7 July 2005 London terrorist bombings, and his
first feature is now in post-production and will be
released in cinemas next year. Clive was involved in
the Kurdish solidarity movement in London around the
time of the Anfal campaign. So he connected strongly
with the story of Amini.
What’s the background of the film makers who want to
make Amini?
Parry: Yousaf Ali Khan is the director, he’s
a very talented young British guy with a powerful
vision who’s won many awards for his short films,
and has just completed the feature length Almost
Adult for Channel 4, about the experiences of two
young African girls who come to the UK as
unaccompanied refugees. The film has been selected
to screen at the London International Film Festival
this month, and at the highly prestigious Dinard
festival of British film in November.
I’ve made several award-winning shorts and 30-minute
dramas including Solid Geometry, starring Ewan
McGregor and based on Ian McEwan’s short story, for
Channel 4. I co-developed and was the executive
producer on the Jimmy McGovern-scripted Mary Queen
of Scots for BBC television. The feature film
version of the Mary script is being made by Warner
Independent Pictures.
Our executive producers and sales agents for Amini
are Robbie and Ellen Little from the Little Film
Company in Los Angeles. Robbie and Ellen have
championed many award-winning and Oscar-nominated
independent films in their many years’ experience,
including Antonia’s Line, Richard III, Gods and
Monsters, The Scent of Green Papaya, Titus, and most
recently Tsotsi, the South African movie which won
the Best Foreign Language Oscar award in March.
Where have you visited in Kurdistan, and when?
Parry: My first visit was to Kurdistan in
Turkey in September 2005, with Clive Bradley, the
script writer. It was an amazing trip and we loved
the landscape and got a taste of the wonderful
hospitality of the Kurdish people.
The trip we have just returned from in July was my
first visit to the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, and it
was great to be able to go with Yousaf Ali Khan, who
will direct Amini. We were both incredibly inspired
by our experiences there. We were really blown away
by the awesome landscape with such variety – and
tremendously moved by the sense of optimism and hope
of the people we met there. It also felt very safe
and peaceful which, even though we had been told to
expect this, was still a bit of a surprise. We are
fed so many images of the conflict and bloodshed
around Baghdad and further south in Iraq here in the
UK, it is difficult to imagine how different
Kurdistan could be.
How are you raising funding to make the film? How
close are you to your target?
Parry: We are raising funding together with
our US executives from a number of different sources
such as sales, equity and tax based funding. We are
about half way there. We hope to raise the balance
so that we can shoot the film sometime in 2007.
You went on a location scouting visit to Kurdistan
in July with the film’s director. What were your
impressions of the Kurdistan Region as a potential
film location?
Parry: For our film it is absolutely perfect
as the story is set there! In terms of landscape,
climate, casting, background artists and finding
sets, it’s exactly what we need. For other films it
would depend on the story of course, but we kept
imagining it as wonderful setting for a really great
Western – some parts of it really look just like
Marlborough country – and the vistas are amazing.
Also it has to be said that the Kurdish people were
universally welcoming, friendly and open-hearted and
that always makes a major difference to how easy it
is to shoot films in any place.
Will you definitely shoot the film in the Kurdistan
Region, or are you also considering alternative
locations?
Parry: We’d really love to shoot the film, or
some of the film, in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq.
But we have to keep our options open and we’re
currently looking at various different possible
shooting locations.
What do you think are the advantages and
disadvantages of filming in the Kurdistan Region?
Parry: The advantages to shooting in the
Kurdistan Region are numerous, and we’ve spoken
about some of them above. Unfortunately there are
some potential challenges and difficulties as well,
that affect us as Western film makers. Because the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office advise against
travel to any part of Iraq except on essential
business (they don’t class film making as essential)
and they don’t make an exception for the KRG-controlled
areas, insurance will be difficult for us. We are
obliged to insure all our cast, crew and equipment
and also need public liability insurance for a film
shoot, and this would be expensive. We also need a
special sort of film insurance called a completion
bond which is required by the financiers, and we
definitely would not be able to obtain a completion
bond for any filming in Iraq. Those would be the
major hurdles, but they are not insurmountable.
The main character in Amini (Safety) is a Kurdish
boy aged around 10 to 13. Have you found someone to
play him? How about other actors in the cast?
Parry: We are just starting the casting
process now. We will be looking for a boy to play
the role of Shwan and some other adult roles, both
within the Kurdish community in the UK, and
hopefully in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq on our
next trip.
What would be your advice to the government for
making the Region an attractive film making
location?
Parry: I think possibly a really helpful
thing would be if the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office could be persuaded to take the KRG-controlled
areas of Iraq off their no-travel list.
What advice would you give to young people in the
Kurdistan Region who want to make or act in films?
Parry: Join or set up cinema clubs, acting
workshops, video-making workshops, and somehow find
equipment to just start making films – short films
to start with probably. And then try to get them
shown at film festivals around the world. Tell the
stories that are important to you, because your
country is amazing and full of powerful moving
stories, and don’t put any limitations on what you
can do because anything is possible.
What do you think of Kurdish directors such as
Bahman Ghobadi and the late Yilmaz Guney?
Parry: We think that they are geniuses of
cinema. Yol, A Time for Drunken Horses and Turtles
can Fly have made a huge impression on us and around
the world. I can’t wait to see Bahman’s new film,
Half Moon, which has just won the Golden Seashell
prize as Best Film at the San Sebastian film
festival. It looks like it is wonderful, another
masterpiece from one of the great talents of world
cinema.
krg org
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