Ms. Swinton, are you happy with how the world of film has evolved since you started out in the 1980s?
This is such a funny time to ask me that question, because I was recently on stage at the Berlinale, in the same venue where Derek Jarman and I were showing Friendship's Death, which we made in 1986. I'm in a kind of reverie and a visitation of the past. And so it is a good day to ask me that, because I’ve been thinking: What was it like then? What do I miss? What do I not miss? I will confess that there's a lot that I do miss in terms of the ways in which we were able to make films in London in the eighties and ninetines with the British Film Institute…
You sound quite nostalgic for that time.
You know, I'm not really a believer in nostalgia — I am being nostalgic about this because I'm looking back and realizing how lucky we were. But at the time, we felt very beset. Everything was very hard. We made our films for so little. But we didn't really care about money, none of us had it, nobody really ever thought of earning any money. But that was a freedom. There is a sort of freedom when no one's looking over your shoulder because you're never going to make them any money. You are left to your own devices. And we were very free in that sense.
“I do believe there’s a sort of trench warfare attitude that we all had back then. Even now, these are really tough times in general. But that never stopped us.”
You and Derek Jarman were certainly making films that were incredibly experimental, outsider cinema.
Sure, I mean, The Last of England, which is a non-narrative film shot on Super 8 with a soundtrack by Simon Fisher Turner, that had big reviews, important reviews. I mean, they were terrible reviews, I remember this very right-wing critic called Norman Stone excoriated it in the Sunday Times. But that film was taken very seriously. It was not marginal at all. There’s a great repertory cinema in London called the Prince Charles Cinema, which showed The Last of England for an entire year. That's unimaginable now! And that I miss. Because there was something about the way we sat in the culture as outsider artists, you could say, which didn't feel outsider at all. I miss that because I look at the heirs to that tradition, younger artists, and they have to fight. I mean, there are other ways of getting your work out, you can post onto YouTube, but if you want to be in the cinema, if you want your work on the big screen, it's definitely trickier now. So that I do mind.
We might always have to fight to get certain types of art made, but that can also be very invigorating and motivating.
I do believe there’s a sort of trench warfare attitude that we all had back then. Even now, these are really tough times in general. Especially culturally, it’s very, very tough. But that never stopped us. That actually galvanized us. And I hope that happens today too, I feel confident that it will. I think it does galvanize artists and it galvanizes culture. I can only hope. What's the alternative? You know, we're not going to, we can't give up. None of us — yourself included, we're all working in culture. We have to keep going, despite the many obstacles in the race of filmmaking. There are so many points at which a failure of nerve can make a difference.
A failure of nerve?
Well, I'm not judging this because the pressures are enormous; but I think it's possible for people to forget that we have agency. We have agency as artists and it's possible for artists to forget it. People might think they have to make a certain kind of film, because then that will get distribution… And then they sort of get pushed out of shape because they're thinking of that. People just forget to remember that they have agency, and that what we really need as a culture is people's truth, is people's real response. People need to realize how powerful they are. I think we need cinema now more than ever. We need to look at the world through someone else's eyes and exercise our own sense of empathy and compassion.
Are you feeling hopeful and optimistic about the future of cinema, despite those challenges?
I find the alternative very hard to hold in my mind and in my heart. Being hopeless or helpless… I like to try and make things better always. I would rather try to mend things. I'm very good at mending things, when things get broken in my house, I tend to be quite happy. I get the glue out! I think as long as there are people who are willing to try a little harder to find new ways of connecting, then I am hopeful.
“We are people who work together. We need to be able to understand each other, and we need to be able to communicate and to be in an agreement about what our conversation is going to be.”
It seems like you’ve always worked with people who are fueling that sense of hope for you. Your recent collaboration with Julio Torres comes to mind.
Oh, we love each other. I loved his work in Saturday Night Live and his specials that I'd seen, and I'm proud to say that I was an early voice when we were talking about finding a director for our 2023 project Problemista, to suggest, “Why don't you direct it?” And I'm so glad that those of us who suggested that prevailed! He's a wonder. He's a real wonder. In general though, I think you get a good feeling about people quite quickly. I'm having a little scan now and I do think I’ve got a pretty good hit rate. I'm not sure that I am wrong, ever, about a director I wanted to work with. Which is a great thing to be able to say!
How do you typically go about choosing a director to collaborate with? Do you tend to work with filmmakers whose work you’re already familiar with?
The wonderful thing about directors having done film work before is that you have a little clue and an introduction to their sensibility. For example with The End, I knew Joshua Oppenheimer’s work before, I was a great admirer of his features and documentaries. The End was a very easy project to engage myself with. But you also need to meet directors as people as well — because we are people who work together. We need to be able to understand each other, and we need to be able to communicate and to be in an agreement about what our conversation is going to be. In the end, the directors I’ve worked with become like family, like different branches of the family.