Interviews
Thursday, 02 July 2009 Written by Jez Conolly
O Dreamland: inside the Lindsay Anderson Archive
Kathryn MacKenzie is a member of the research team based at the University of Stirling currently working with the Lindsay Anderson Archive, a large collection of the filmmaker's personal and working papers, photographs and memorabilia. Jez Conolly asked Kathryn to shed some light on the man and his legacy as she sees it through her contact with the archival materials.
What's the history of the Lindsay Anderson Archive?
The Lindsay Anderson Archive arrived at the University of Stirling in 2001. On Anderson's death in 1994 his friends got together at his flat to sort through his belongings. Valuable books from his collection were sold and his collection of framed cinema and theatre posters was divided up amongst friends. The documents and items that remained were then put into temporary storage at the British Council in London. Lindsay Anderson didn't leave any instructions as to where his archive should go but his friends were clear about where he wouldn't want it to go: the British Film Institute, Anderson having been engaged in a long-running dispute with the BFI. After housing the collection for some years the British Council decided to offer the collection to the Scottish Screen Archive. Anderson had Scottish family connections and often defined himself in terms of his Scottish temperament so it seems fitting that the archive reside in Scotland. In 2001 the archive was transferred from the Scottish Screen Archive to The University of Stirling where it fits in very well with our other prestigious film archival collections; The John Grierson Archive; and The Norman McLaren Archive.
How is the archive being used today?
The archive is currently the subject of a three-year Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project, ‘The Cinema Authorship of Lindsay Anderson'. The project aims to investigate Anderson's claims to the status of authorship through the use of the archive. There are four members of the project team and we have all been involved in giving talks at conferences and screenings. I recently gave a paper on Britannia Hospital at the Edinburgh International Film Audiences Conference. John Izod gave a paper at University of Portsmouth entitled ‘Music/Industry/Politics: Alan Price's role in O Lucky Man!' in July 2008 and recently returned to Portsmouth to give an extended version of this paper for staff. Karl Magee wrote an article on Anderson's unrealised film projects to Sights Unseen: Unfinished British Films, edited by Dan North, published in January 2008. Isabelle Gourdin will be giving a paper on Lindsay Anderson and National Identity in the cinema at the Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) Annual Postgraduate Conference at Bangor University.
In September of this year we are hosting an international conference ‘Archives and Auteurs: Filmmakers and their Archives' at the University of Stirling. As part of this conference all four of us will present papers on our work with the archive. The conference looks like it's going to be a great event with loads of interesting speakers and events going on as well. There will also be an exhibition of material from the archive on display.
The archive was also used extensively in a book published in 2004, Never Apologise: the collected writings of Lindsay Anderson. Photographs from the collection were also used in the booklet accompanying the BFI release of a Free Cinema box set and in the Region 1 Criterion DVD releases of This Sporting Life and If....
Could you tell me about some of the more interesting or unusual items in the collection?
There are so many, where to start?! Personal favourites of mine include a letter from Akira Kurosawa congratulating Anderson on his win at Cannes with If...., and a letter from John Ford from 1952 thanking Anderson for writing to him about The Quiet Man.
Another favourite would be a very beautiful drawing by Jocelyn Herbert, the renowned set and costume designer, of a scene from The Whales of August featuring Bette Davis and Lillian Gish (see attached).
It's just such a lovely drawing and having read all the correspondence about the making of the film, the problems encountered with directing Lillian Gish, who by this time was quite deaf with Anderson having to shout her lines at her to prompt her, and Bette Davis, who lived up to her reputation of being awkward and ill-mannered, to put it mildly!
There are also some wonderful photo albums and scrapbooks in the Archive, a personal favourite of mine being a scrapbook from a 1957 trip to Moscow. This was for a production of Look Back in Anger by John Osborne and, along with Anderson on the trip were John Osborne, Tony Richardson and Oscar Lewenstein. The scrapbook is a mix of photos of the cast and crew, photos of people and places in Moscow and enroute, postcards, tickets and memorabilia from the trip.
Having worked with the archive, what is your abiding impression of Lindsay Anderson?
I think the archive gives us a much more rounded picture of Anderson's personality and working practices. He liked to portray himself in public as confrontational and abrasive and although this is reflected in the correspondence there is also another side to his personality which wasn't so public. He was very generous to all his friends, helping them out whenever he could and offering advice, support, and often somewhere to stay when needed. He was also very conscientious about replying to letters from fans, sometimes just to thank them and other times going into detailed discussions of points they had raised or questions they asked him. It really makes me feel privileged to get the opportunity to gain such an insight into the mind of such an important film-maker.
If you had to pick out one of Anderson's films as a good starting point for anyone unfamiliar with his work, which one would it be and why?
My immediate instinct would be The White Bus, a short film which Anderson made in 1967. The film was based on a short story by Shelagh Delaney and Anderson got a Czechoslovakian cameraman, Miroslav Ondricek, over to shoot the film, after seeing his work on Milos Forman's A Blonde in Love, which he thought reminiscent of Free Cinema. Ondricek would then go on to work with Anderson on If.... and O Lucky Man! The White Bus has still not received a DVD release and is therefore very hard to get hold of, although the NFT in London do have a video copy available for viewing. As part of our conference in September we will be screening the Red, White and Zero trilogy - Anderson's The White Bus, Tony Richardson's Red and Blue, and Peter Brook's Ride of the Valkyries. The White Bus was intended to be screened with these two films as a trilogy of films based on short stories by Shelagh Delaney. However Richardson and Brooks veered so completely off these tracks that the films were never released as a trilogy so this will be a pretty special event!
What influences of Free Cinema do you think can still be seen in contemporary British films?
I think its influence can still be seen in films, both ‘fiction' and ‘documentary'. The big names of Free Cinema went on to direct some very influential feature films, along with Anderson of course, Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson had very successful careers. Film directors such as Ken Loach, Stephen Frears, Mike Leigh all owe a dept to Free Cinema. The Free Cinema manifesto is, I think, still very relevant to film-makers today:
"As film-makers we believe that
No film can be too personal.
The image speaks. Sound amplifies and comments.
Size is irrelevant. Perfection is not an aim.
An attitude means a style. A style means an attitude."
There are a number of recent films that blend fiction with documentary, using their own experiences as the basis for the film, a current example being the new film Momma's Man directed by Azazel Jacobs, the story of a thirty-something man returning to his parents' home in New York to take stock of his life, which stars Jacob's parents as the parents of the main character and uses their own apartment, Jacobs childhood home, as the setting for the film. Documentary films seem to be receiving a lot pf press recently, such as The Class, Man on Wire, and Gonzo - the life and work of Hunter S Thompson. The use of documentary in films, which I think coincides with an increase in the use of archives and history in the arts fields, is something which I think you could say ties in with the idea that ‘no film can be too personal'. For example Tarnation, a documentary by director Jonathan Cauette about growing up with a schizophrenic mother, is a very moving, very personal film.
Have you met Malcolm McDowell?
No, but I do know that he had a very special bond with Anderson and saw him as something of a father figure. In 2004 McDowell developed a one-man show about his relationship with Anderson. The show premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 2004 and then travelled to London and Los Angeles. In 2007 this was made into a film, the director being Mike Kaplan, another friend of Anderson's who worked with him on The Whales of August. Never Apologise is based on McDowell's memories but also on material from the Anderson Archive. Anderson's diaries and letters here at the University of Stirling were key to the development of the show and the film and McDowell has been keen to promote the Archive, with the Scottish premiere of the film being held here at Stirling University, at the McRobert Arts Centre.
What does the future hold for the archive?
At the end of the three-year AHRC project in September 2010 the archive will be catalogued to item level and this catalogue will be available online. This will make it easier for researchers, both those who wish to visit the archive and remote visitors. This three-year project is also illustrating how rich and interesting the archive is and will hopefully pave the way for future research projects. In 2010 University of Stirling University will have a newly refurbished library with a dedicated archive search room for users of all our collections.
By Jez Conolly
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