From the golden era of Windies Cricket and the Caribbean Revolution in Fire in Babylon, to recording the music of the Bosnian conflict to answering who saves James Bond, Stevan Riley has fused history and drama to bring to us cinema that documents and enthralls in equal measure.
Fire in Babylon, the story of Calypso cricketers comes across as a film that was waiting to be made. Please tell us how it all happened.
So, I was basically in touch with the producer of the film, he wanted me to do the film. He told me that they had funding available for a film on cricket; on English cricket. They were English cricket enthusiasts willing to finance a film on cricket… so, I asked, “On which team is it?” I mean I have got friends who are bigger cricket enthusiasts than me, I enjoy cricket but do not follow religiously. When I was told that the team wasWest Indies, I suddenly became a lot more interested. When I was young, my real introduction to cricket was through the West Indies team because they were exciting and dangerous, essentially. I watched the 1984 tests when I was 9 years old, and from then to my early teens, I’d sit down with my friends and we would watch when the West Indies turned up, because you’d essentially be waiting to see whether any English batsmen got hit or not. So, that was part of the curiosity and excitement. So I had the opportunity to make the film, and thought this could be quite interesting. The West Indies were colourful, they had a great soundtrack; you know the Reggae, the surroundings would also lend themselves quite well to the film score. And I would understand only later that the story ran way way deeper when I read the history of the islands and started reading about the importance of cricket in their social development, unification of the islands and I realised that this wasn’t just a cricket story. It was really an epic on sporting and cultural history.
This 80 minute film deals not only with the golden era of Windies Cricket, but also the political and music movements of the Caribbean. Was this mix a deliberate inclusion in your film or things just fell into place?
I studied history at Oxford, and I was very curious and interested in the context of that time. I knew that in my country when I was growing up, there were a lot of issues regarding race. On television, the dialogue was quite crude at times, and I felt that the Black British, or even the Asian British were not fully integrated. Remembering that, I wondered how this cricket team; this team of Black icons fit into that whole timeline and structure. I just collected as many books as I could; testimonies of players, their autobiographies, essays from West Indian academics and pieces on West Indian history, which all sort of spoke about cricket and its connection to what was a Caribbean struggle, and obviously the struggle of West Indians living overseas. And one book in particular was Beyond the Boundary, which everyone knows, of course. That was a huge eye opener for me; I didn’t realise that connections ran so deep. And there were these little facts like there was the first Black Captain of the West Indian Cricket team before there was any Black Premier in any of the islands. And I realised that cricket always led the way, and their people always looked at their cricketing heroes as progress. And what could have been more progressive than this team of young players, this generation which ran supreme for 20 years?
“The two most influential exports from that time from the Caribbean, were music and cricket. Viv had a very close association with Bob Marley, whose revolutionary message was Viv’s own really. Bob was defiant with his lyrics and Viv was defiant with his bat; they both stood for something similar.”
Yes, 20 years… as you talk of the first Black captain and these Black men who were transforming their society, the film also has a few of them sharing their bit of the history… did they realise their on-field performances’ impact on their society?
I think so. I think some of them realised sooner than others. Viv, in particular and Clive, both captains. Even when Viv was very young, he was quite politicised, he told me that as a young boy, he followed the Black Panther movement. He was very interested in what they stood for and he felt a great deal of empathy for the people who were suffering during the Civil Rights Movement in America. There’s a guy who features in the film, Frank I Francis, not many will pick up on this, proper Rastafarian, got locks back down to his middle back, and he was Viv’s school teacher in history. And he taught Viv history, black history,Caribbean history, not from the English perspective, but from the African perspective. Thus Viv got surrounded by and exposed to all of this at a very early age. So, these are the people who helped me meet Viv, a few key Rastafarians, including Frank I Francis and also the West Indies team’s official photographer, Colin Cumberbatch – he used to accompany the team on the tour bus. Speaking to these people was an eye opener for me. And then I met Viv, and spoke at length with him, for 6 hours we talked. And I know that it was incredibly conscious, what kept cropping up during the conversation was the consciousness of the times, consciousness of himself and that of the team. And the weird thing is that some of the players, unlike Viv, wouldn’t rush to associate themselves to be a part of something as radical as the Black Panthers. But I think that is actually part of the English conservatism coming through. I think that’s probably part of the English influence in the Creole Caribbean culture. It’s that the Caribbeans are, actually, a little conservative, and I think there was quite a movement within the West Indies team. They weren’t necessarily screaming from the rooftops, but no doubt the players like Andy Roberts, Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd showed it through their actions. When Michael Holding, during the Packer series, ventured to Australia to play, he wanted to be shown that there are no South Africans playing in the team, and obviously playing in the World Series. And Michael boycotted the Rebel tour as did Viv, and even Colin Croft, who self admittedly went to the apartheid-divided tour of South Africa, up until that time he recognized the revolutionary surge of the impulse that came with independence in the islands. Not just as West Indians, but more as Blacks.
The people of West Indies witnessed their greatest sporting period during those two decades, but since then, they have only won the T20 World Cup a couple of months back, which was there biggest victory post mid 90s. So, during the course of shooting the film, did you feel the vibes of disappointment among their fans for not having won anything major for so long?
I think that just says it. Because it runs so deep within their society, in their history… I mean it’s one of their most significant successes post independence; the success of their cricket team. Anytime I spoke to them, I needed to remind them that we were celebrating West Indies Cricket, they would very easily slip into a lament about the state of the cricket team in the present day.
One thing I just loved about Fire in Babylon was that the film had a very personal tone. Do you think documentaries, in general, tend to put just facts together, instead of telling a story more subjectively?
Well, I think a lot of the subjectivity comes with the edit. As soon as you put a cut in the sentence, you are affecting history in a way. Having studied history in university, there’s a discipline called historiography which looks at how you present history and how the narrative of history evolves. You can only approximate the historical truth, it’s shrouded in myth. The West Indies supremacy has entered into cricketing folklore as a golden age and and I wanted to preserve that mythical feel and aspect. It was a mythical tale, you know, these guys are legends, and there is this mythical quality about it which I wanted to keep, and celebrate their extraordinary achievement. History in a history book is dry text, it’s a tight account, when you are working with film, you are adding imagery, very seductive imagery and music. That makes it subjective. But I also know that when people watch documentaries, there is this feeling that it is dry and academic, historical pieces. I wanted to tell as honest a first hand account as possible from the testimonies of people who experienced it, entirely West Indian as you say, but at the same time, I needed to elevate it, to entertain, as cinema documentaries need to be entertaining as well, and the West Indian Cricket was incredibly entertaining, and so I wanted to do justice to that as well – to West Indian spirit and personality.
Since you believe that film can present history as a piece of entertainment too, how do you view the role of cinema in recording history?
There is a different discipline when it comes to cinema. The aspects that I bring to the table are that I am very analytical, that’s the historian, the academic in me, and I want to dig into the details. I think, as a filmmaker, you need to have a degree of empathy with the subject, to be able to translate that emotion and convey it to the audience in a way that it remains true to the subject, and help the audience to recall or relive those moments, even if they weren’t present. The tools of audio, visual and the narrative sums up the discipline of a film maker as opposed to a historian. I love history, but making film is different.
Moving slightly away from Fire in Babylon, your first documentary Rave Against the Machine dealt with the underground music movement during the Bosnian conflict in the 90s, and then Fire in Babylon too deals with the Caribbean music movement. Do you see music essentially as a tool to protest, to unify masses?
The story for Rave Against the Machine focussed entirely on music, but Fire in Babylon certainly had a musical aspect. The two most influential exports from that time from the Caribbean, were music and cricket. Viv had a very close association with Bob Marley, whose revolutionary message was Viv’s own really. Bob was defiant with his lyrics and Viv was defiant with his bat; they both stood for something similar. It was an attraction for me having the music. That’s one of the aspects I enjoy most about filmmaking – the rhythm of the music and the narrative and how they work together.
You wrote and directed Fire in Babylon, you also almost single-handedly made Blue Blood. So how do you cope with the challenges of being largely an independent filmmaker?
It’s tricky, you know. I suppose it might be helpful down the line, but as a documentary filmmaker, you end up wearing all the hats, you are into production. I was involved heavily in the edit of Fire in Babylon and also for the latest Bond film. I am quite hands on anyway, and sometimes it’s very difficult to communicate a specific vision. In documentary filmmaking, the way the narrative works because you are carving out the script afterwards, it’s a different sort of challenge, as compared to drama. I would like to do drama, because I think it would be a lot more collaborative because the script is written in advance. So the narrative is dealt with in advance, and then you can bring a team to realise that very clear vision. Do you read me?
Yes, in fact, I read that one day you just packed your bag, took your camera along and started shooting forRave Against the Machine, and as you say, you also go along the post-production process mostly by yourself…
Documentary is hard work, without a doubt, it is very hard work. There was so much archive with Fire In Babylon, and similarly with Bond, there were so many interviews, and ultimately you need to condense them down. To do 20 years of cricket history in 80 minutes, you need the skill and the confidence to decide what to leave out and what to pull in. I guess there are a lot of priorities to be met, you have to be true to your story, entertain the audience, be original to yourself and of course, it takes a lot of thought. When you start joining the dots and getting that connection, you start getting closer to your final vision. It doesn’t arrive instantaneously in documentary, you start with some ideas. Like I feel great if I begin a film with a great tone in mind, I get the emotional movements solidifying in my head.
Your documentary on the Oxford-Cambridge boxing tradition, Blue Blood dealt with a topic not known to many outside the two universities, Fire in Babylon too deals with the golden era of West Indies cricket at its crux, yet both the films enjoyed a considerably global audience. So, for whom does Stevan Riley make films?
Without being too selfish, first person I try to please is myself. I’m quite a perfectionist, if I’m not happy with the film in the end; it will nag me. But en route to that, I am very aware of the audience and the characters. I want to be true to the emotion of my characters; that’s the main drive of the piece and I always stay true to that.
Talking of entertainment in cinema, please tell us a little more about the documentary on James Bond you recently made to commemorate his 50th anniversary.
MGM is doing it and I think it is releasing worldwide. It’s like cricket for me; I am not a lunatic James Bond fan. But for me what was interesting is that you have this icon who has survived for 50 years with no other cinematic success to compare with. I mean no cinematic hero has managed to last for so long in a series… The question that occurred to me is that while James Bond saves the world, who saves James Bond?
Ha ha ha…
That is the question I really wanted to answer, and then that led me to all the interesting avenues. I found the characters behind the scenes, the writer Ian Fleming, the two producers, and they made such fascinating stories, their struggles… We always assumed that Bond would live on forever, but it wasn’t really the case.
Who have been your role models in the world of cinema?
There are a lot of directors I like watching… the films I loved growing up were from the 70s, before the blockbuster thing overtook more character-driven cinema in Hollywood. Those were the films I loved, hard emotions, you know…
I read a piece in The Gurdian written by you, where you mentioned how you looked up to Alan Clarke…
Oh yes, definitely. I would say, without doubt, Alan Clarke, also Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Casavetes, Cimino… you know there’s plenty during that period for me, in terms of drama. In terms of documentary, the films which really inspired me, one was a documentary which I saw in Sundance in 2000, it was calledDark Days and was directed by this English guy, Marc Singer. I remember having finished watching that, and then I put the DVD straight back in and watched it over again.
What was it about?
It was about the homeless people living underground in Penn Station, New York. And he was living with them. It was shot beautifully – 16mm, black and white, and had a great soundtrack by DJ Shadow, and it was moody and deep. It was such a cool film. I was really moved by it, and suddenly I felt that documentaries could be cinematic and just as powerful as drama. That became my turning point, and then I got sucked into documentary, but I followed drama originally. Even if I do drama, I would like to do real stories, they have more resonance for me.
One final question, tell us something about your future projects…
There are a few actually. There’s one piece on the Spanish bull fighting tradition… I am not allowed to speak about it actually… so, yes, there are a couple of them. But I cannot talk about them unfortunately.
