Screenings: Ghosts, Making The Battle for Haditha
Filmmaker Nick Broomfield originally studied Law at Cardiff and Political Science at Essex University before joining the National Film School. In 1975, Broomfield made the first of several films with the American filmmaker Joan Churchill. The first of these, Juvenile Liaison (1975), is one of the most interesting, and certainly the most controversial. An extremely disturbing picture of harsh and oppressive police treatment of children accused of minor offenses, the film became a celebrated example of institutional censorship when the British Film Institute, pressured by the police, withdrew the film from distribution and refused to allow it to be shown on television. This action inspired the BFI Production Board to resign en masse.
While making Driving Me Crazy in 1988, Nick decided to place himself and the producer of the film in the story, as a way of making sense of the event. This experiment led to a sense of greater freedom from the confines of observational cinema and led to a more investigative and experimental type of filmmaking.
Broomfield’s later works are fascinating examples of what might be called the Heisenberg Principle as applied to motion pictures. By openly acknowledging that the intrusion of the filmmaker into the situation being filmed inevitably affects and alters that situation, his approach demonstrates that the documentary is itself merely a mode of representation, and that the truth emerges from the encounter between the film-makers, subjects, and spectators.
Broomfield perfected his now trademark (if increasingly imitated) in-your-face style in his documentary on the South African neo-Nazi leader Eugene Terreblanche in The Leader, His Driver and the Driver’s Wife (1991). Kurt and Courtney (1998) raised the question of censorship once again, via Courtney Love and her lawyers’ increasingly determined efforts to stop the film in its tracks. This gave rise to one of the film’s most characteristic moments, in which Broomfield interrupts an award-giving ceremony for Love hosted by the ACLU in order to protest her efforts to silence him and others. He is rapidly evicted.
The latest chapter in Broomfield’s career is his turn to docudrama. Last year’s film Ghosts retells the events surrounding the death of 23 illegal Chinese cockle-pickers at Morecambe Bay in February 2004. Ghosts was shot on handheld cameras, with a non-professional cast and an improvised feel. His latest film, The Battle for Haditha, when it is released, is certain to be controversial. It is an investigation of the massacre of 24 men, women and children in Haditha, Iraq, allegedly shot by U.S. Marines. American soldiers in Iraq are played by former Americann soldiers, and Iraqi non-actors portray Iraqi insurgents and affected families. It just won Broomfield the best director award at the San Sebastian Film Festival, adding to his storehouse of awards including First Prize at Sundance, the British Academy Award, Prix Italia, the Dupont Peabody Award, the Grierson Award, the Hague Peace Prize, and the Amnesty International Doen Award.
