Carol Moore Films

Screening of 3 films by Carol Moore

Lyric Theatre, Belfast – 16th December 2007

The following is a rough transcript of a discussion that took place following the screenings of Carol's NESTA Fellowship film - The Farther, The Dearer, This Belfast Thing and Are you seeing me?.

I apologise in advance for any words or phrasing that I have misunderstood or misquoted and for those small sections that I just didn’t have time to transcribe.

The Chair was Damian Gorman (Playwright, poet and filmmaker) accompanied by Michael Diskin (Executive Director) of the Lyric Theatre and Carol Moore. The discussion reflects some feedback on the films but moves to a wider discussion about programming for a new Lyric Theatre that might reflect the north's new demographic.

Damian
My name is Damian Gorman. I am very happy to be associated with what we have just seen. The reason why I am chairing this – its not because I wrote a play around these issues for Malcolm Smith and the students at BMC called “Darkie”. It’s not because of that or because I’m doing a similar thing with Tinderbox – but because occasionally in this line of work one of your contemporaries comes up with a piece that is just the real thing. It’s just beautifully made, really accomplished and you look at him or her and you think “bastard”. (Laugh) Obviously I don’t mean that. I’ll tell you what I mean. My own response to that before we hear what yours are. I said to Carol without getting too artsy about it, I think it’s an important piece of work. I think it’s a generous piece of work. It’s humane. And occasionally in the theatre or wherever someone tells you a story that you didn’t know in such a way that you can hear it and they take you somewhere that you haven’t been in such a way that you are content to go there. Overall they tell you a story so well that it becomes part of your own story. You carry it with you; you incorporate it literally as part of your own story. And in my own opinion that is her achievement particularly with that third film.

Now I think what is important is that we get to you very quickly but if you don’t mind I want to ask Carol one or two things and Michael a few things and then say whatever you want to say until you think it is said. Carol, just a very simple question first of all. Why did you choose to make films around these issues because there are other very urgent issues in this part of the world? Was there a final thread that led you onto this issue that made it personal to you and give you the energy and effort to make 3 films?

Carol
As I said before my background is in theatre and if you are old enough you may be aware of Charabanc Theatre Company. The plays we wrote in the early eighties, although they were about Belfast and rural plays - you assume when you come from this place you should know these stories. What I realised is that there were all sorts of stories going on in housing estates and streets I knew nothing about, that were outside my experience. I was a Protestant growing up in Glengormley who was in many ways sheltered from the troubles. It was really only when we started the theatre company and we wanted to write, not exclusively, but write about the female gaze onto Northern Ireland and we went out and met people with stories and experiences that I knew nothing about and would never experience. In the early eighties going into Divis Flats - it was not just the housing conditions but also the political scenario, which they found themselves in. They had a tower block in which the British Army could land their helicopters; there were listening devices and cameras. And the play was ultimately about - how do these women survive. A lot of their husbands were on the run – how do they live in high-rise flats often in grinding poverty. I suppose its really through Charabanc that I got my politicisation.

Then I got the opportunity of the NESTA fellowship - I could have decided to do something in theatre but I’d already made some short dramas with film crews - and a switch went off in my head maybe for a number of reasons. We were now in a post conflict situation and seeing more and more people coming to settle in Northern Ireland - and as I said in my introduction there was a rise in racist attacks – and as an artist I thought I don’t know anything about these people – I don’t know their stories. I don’t know their experiences but I want to - I want to find out. So having a camera of my own where I wasn’t dependent on big budgets or hiring crews - I could just literally lift the camera, make a few phone calls and go out and meet people. It took quite a long time to meet people - and it took quite a long time to find people who were willing to come in front of a camera - certainly the first film Are you seeing me? – because I was asking them to stand in front of paramilitary murals and people were very confused about why I was asking them to do that. I suppose I wanted to make a visual statement about Northern Ireland’s past without explaining Northern Ireland. So putting people in front of the murals made that statement for me.

Damian (to Michael)
How can we widen the definition of who we are and I’m wondering as you begin to programme for a new theatre, is that part of our thinking? How do you programme for a new citizenship?

Michael
I hope it is obvious that the Lyric wants to be at the centre of life in Belfast to represent all of its communities. Anything in Northern Ireland starts with the presupposition that you have to represent both sides of the equation here. But as has been comprehensively represented by these films that definition of a two-sided society is now becoming increasingly out of date. I’m here on a practical mission, not just in admiration of a fine piece of art that we saw on the film screen. We have to be realistic. There is a problem of language. If we put a play on in English how do our Polish friends, our Latvian friends, our Indian friends, if English isn’t their first language going to enjoy, participate in it, write for it, act in it. Of course in a typical first wave of immigration, immigrants are concerned with very practical problems. How to get a flat, how to make some money, send some money back to their relatives. Then as they settle they want to express themselves in a cultural way. I had a former job when I was managing a receiving theatre and we’d get requests for say an African night and I did my best to accommodate it. In a sense there is a further step beyond that because an African night will be very valuable for the African community, will attract a certain element of the settled community who’ll come along and hopefully see another culture but the further step is to bring streams of cultures together and come up with a show that speaks to us all about our new society here. That’s what I’m looking for. There are practical problems. Someone just arrived from Latvia is more worried about his flat, getting a job, his wife and children back home and that film really caught the pain on both sides – it’s not just about the loneliness of the guy in the bed-sit wherever he was in Belfast – but the wife and kids back home – the parents who bring up kids just to say goodbye. I was very moved by that. I’m really looking forward to hearing from anybody from ethnic communities and see how we can help them express their own culture and participate in our culture.


Bronagh Crummey-Bryans (Irish)
…When you hear people saying, “They’re coming over here and taking our jobs.” I think people forget in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s a massive number of people, both north and south who had to leave here because of the economic situation. People don’t realise that for many people like Alex coming from Latvia – you don’t choose to leave your family and your children because “I fancy going to live abroad for a few years and having a good time.” You do it because of the strife perhaps in your own country or the economic situation. So I think it’s really important that for people who are saying “They are taking our jobs.” They have never met these people. They have never had an opportunity to get to know these people and to know what its really like. Through many different projects that are going on in Belfast and through training people to actually have that opportunity to know what it is like to be in an environment where you are surrounded by people who don’t speak your language or celebrate your culture. So the stereotypes that are being perpetuated are the result of not having an opportunity to meet people.

Zhenia Mahdi-Nau (Iranian)
I think one of the things you learn when you learn about other cultures is about yourself. I don’t think – I don’t see it as necessary to go outside of yourself and you will find something new. I think you begin to understand something about your own nature. I’m working as an artist with groups of people from the Shankill area. What I’m interested in is that when you go beyond the murals, when you go beyond the very obvious differences, language, use of particular expressions, accents. When you go beyond all these things, there actually is no difference. When you go beyond the fact that the food may be different, the taste buds may be used to different things, the weather may be different – and I think in the film we were watching – probably what touched most people is that the pain is the same pain that you feel when you are away from your family, the closeness that you feel and the sense of loss that you feel – all those things are human emotions that are common among all of us. One of the things that is crucial to learn from each other is just the fact that you can understand much more as a society at one with yourself if you really understand the differences in the people around you are just surface differences. The reality for us is the same. For me that’s very important to project in creative pieces of work and the important value of such work especially in the last film we saw.

Another thing that is really important is that when families and people come here from a different culture we normally see how difficult is for those families to settle here. The 2nd generation are the kids that were born here or come here when they are very young. They have a totally different issue because very soon they begin to integrate into this community and they become a part of it – but also that brings its own difficulties, especially if they look different. If they are white/blonde, the community here once they have the same accent, don’t notice the difference… but if you have people who are African or Chinese, eastern European etc. If you have people who actually look different … they still have the difficulty of their own culture and being alienated from their own culture because they are neither from here or from there. I think it’s really important for these kids. We saw for example in the first film some young Indian people. One was born here, the others had come fairly recently. For one that’s born here, there are other issues and challenges to have to face because he wants to be part of this culture, he’s also part of another culture but who is he really? There are always going to be questions. In the 21st century there is a lot to be learnt from other cultures. There is lot to be learnt from England or other places where this is not such an issue anymore. These kids have a voice as well…I came here in the mid 70’s…. I speak from personal experience, you are neither from this or that so you begin to have your own individual identity. For me as an artist that was a good thing eventually. So we need to be open to those challenges and they also bring opportunities.

Tracy Dempsey (Irish)
I loved today particularly the last film. What was so enjoyable was that Alex was like so many of us. He was cracking jokes. It came across that he was very witty but people wouldn’t know that unless you talked to him and you provided that with his level of English and the subtitles. To me its about finding a commonality whether its language, film or music. Michael, you were talking about the problems of putting things on here …. To me it’s about providing English in this country so people can share their experiences and hear the stories. I don’t think it matters so much where you grow up – as Alex’s Dad said it doesn’t matter where you are living, its who you are. … Language aside… its making people feel part of a group (whether music or sport) with a common interest opposed to common nationality or common religion. It’s choosing the groups you belong to based on what you are passionate about as opposed to the circumstances of your birth.

Eileen Chun Hu (Chinese/2nd generation)
… I’ve worked for the last 5 years in Ballymena on an Ethnic Minorities Project called Inter-Ethnic Forum. In one way I wasn’t seen as a Chinese person, I was seen as an ethnic minority who knew about ethnic issues, but a local person because of my Belfast accent who could talk to the statutory bodies quite easily. So that would show that the differences of being were well accepted. I’ve come back to Belfast to be Chief Executive of the Chinese Welfare Association where I want to take it well past what peop0le perceive us as being. …. I mean I’m 3rd generation, my children are 3rd. I hope we are seen as new role models. The 3rd film struck a chord with me. My father moving away from Hong Kong to N. Ireland with a nine year old son and I was born at the height of the troubles. I can see what happened then but its 40 years on and I’m not living like this at all. I’m living hopefully in an integrated world….

I want to develop the assertiveness of ethnic minorities in NI…In the last couple of years in the statutories I’ve been working in, there are no ethnic minorities working at senior level – NI Executive or health boards – there are little or none of us there. I think for Anna Lo to get that position (meaning MLA at the Stormont Assembly) – that shows were we are. We are behind, yet we are always trying to move, to work on. … What I see from Alex’s film is that in a few years or twenty years time, is that we don’t see new immigrant communities. I feel quite uncomfortable with it. I’m nearly 40 years old and I’m still seen as “new” community and I think I’m not. There are parts of us are and a new wave from Chinese coming in and a speat? of babies being born and they are all having the difficulties that we had 30 or 40 years ago, but life is like that – that’s migration… I see from Alex’s film that he is trying to raise money for his children etc. I don’t’ think that is any different to any one of us sitting here – do we not all have to work to make money for our children and our children’s education. I would like to see the role models – that we make it a more complete, holistic view and not something to be totally different.

Joanne Bush (German)
I have been very moved by the films … I was wondering why Alex didn’t take his family with him. He said something about the agency promises are not kept promises. What I assume is that his salary is that low that he cannot afford to have his family here. A lot of Polish and East Europeans I know who live here and I think there is a difference currently that the migrant workers work are not the same as N. Irish ones. A lot of people I met have shocking low salaried and they are not becoming rich here and its still about survival. And I thought that when he talked about Dublin he wanted to be employed directly by someone – that this is all about the conditions he accepted to be able to feed his family. I was kind of missing this a little bit because it is something that has to be changed because these conditions are quite shocking.

Carol
I can’t speak for all migrant workers but those I have talked to tend to come over singly. I know there is a current new wave of Polish and Latvian single people coming over and a lot of men without their families. They have to borrow money to actually make the journey over. The only way they are going to get a job and to get a work permit is to work through an agency. That tends to cost a lot more than just coming directly. So immediately they arrive with a deficit. The reason why he didn’t explain about the slight exploitation and I say slight because Alex is essentially a very positive story and I didn’t want to put a negative spin on it as I think it would be unfair. He was told he would be making a certain amount of money and when he arrived he discovered he was working 6 days a week for less money. He was supposed to meet somebody at the airport to take him to his accommodation and acclimatise him to a different country. That person wasn’t there. He made calls and put in a house with other people and as the weeks went on, the number of people in his bedroom increased and increased until eventually he found his feet. I think the myths people have about migrant workers – bringing down our wages, taking our jobs – is really something that has to be addressed. We saw a programme recently called “Meet the Migrants” that went some way to do that because these people are going through agencies and employers are choosing to exploit them. A migrant worker doesn’t choose to have different wages from you or me but when English is not your first language - it is easy to be told well this is what you are getting paid and if you don’t like it you are out the door. So I will take your work permit and accommodation and off you go. These people then find themselves homeless and have to return home. There are a lot of issues.

Damian
… We’ve seen what Carol was able to do with documentary… and I think you can get het? up on the divisions between documentary or theatre – but you are putting form to ideas… given that in a theatre what you have to work with is the air in the room – you charge that with something or something changes in the room. What ways generally speaking can theatre respond to challenges or processes, which are exercising people? How can theatre address such things?

Michael
Well there is no question it is a challenge for theatre. It is a language based art form. Roddy Doyle was doing some work in the last year in Dublin. He’s taken The Playboy of the Western World – the arch typical Irish play. It was a play about outsiders going to a remote village and he changed that to make outsiders new immigrants. And it was also great in that African actors based in Dublin were given a job and were put on the stage of the Abbey Theatre. So that’s one way of moving this agenda forward.

Our relationship with new immigrants as someone from the settled community is mediated by economic advantage because we have jobs, house, they haven’t - we have loads of money, they have less money. But in cultural terms that relationship is entirely incorrect. A Serbian who came over here two years ago and he said to my friend “I want to go to the Opera tonight.” And my friend said “What Opera?” “The Troubles According to my Da.” is at the Opera House. (This is actually a local play) I want to see what its like. I was interviewed by the editor of the Polish magazine in NI - and he played it very tentatively. He was asking about cultural activity in NI and Belfast. And then it came out at the end of the interview when he said that Poles think the level of cultural activity is lower than what is going on in Poland. No opera, ballet, no big exhibitions. Now I tried to explain that one of the things we are stronger in is based on the spoken word and they were naturally excluded from those activities. But in my previous job in Galway I had the honour to bring in a Russian ballet company. We had set up in Galway a theatre company that tried to bring in European theatre forms - a lot more visuals – a lot less based on word – an we thought we had invented this. What absolute arrogance. When I went out to Russian in the early nineties to a city of a million people. There were major economic problems - the city was falling apart. But inside this ballet company they were absolutely dedicated to their art stretched back hundreds of years, absolutely superb in every aspect of the art form. They were masters of it and we thought we’d invented something. These people were miles ahead of us. So we started bringing that company to Galway and in effect people in Galway hadn’t seen ballet, it was a new art form for them. There was a magic moment as the years went on. First it was the middle classes, the fur coat brigade, they came out to see the Russian ballet. Then I noticed the audience changing and involving all the new immigrants – the East Europeans and Russians who had started making a bit of money, started to settle down. And they’d dress up and come to their art form. And the self-confidence to say this is my culture and you are all now coming to see it. I can see their breasts filled out with pride. It made me feel very good. We have a lot to learn from your cultures. I’d love to see those Polish or African actors out there, Chinese dancers, street theatre – you are the masters of it and we need that to embellish our culture here.

John Lovett (Irish)
… I think we have to be very careful about this notion of how do we use th4atre to make it more inclusive. What can happen is that it can become patronising and condescending to the new Irish. I think what made particularly the last film so powerful was that we saw a story about somebody who happened to be East European. When I drove up from Dublin there was a panel discussion on the radio talking about cocaine. Someone on the panel said, “You can get cocaine anywhere you want. I was in a taxi and the taxi driver told me you can buy cocaine from a from taxi drivers particularly east European. Nobody on the panel questions that. So what’s very interesting about Carol’s last film is that we saw a person and it wasn’t condescending, it wasn’t patronising. It was about somebody who happened to be east European. That resonates much more to me. For me as an Irish person to see somebody do an Irish dance in an American production – ohh! – there’s the drunk Irish person – do you know what I mean – its about how we represent a people – its about how we tell a story – we don’t patronise a cultur

Susie Kelly (Irish)
… There are lots of issues to be explored but we have to call on our playwrights. Since the troubles and before right back from Synge and Yeats we have been exploring the attitudes of the Irish and what’s going on across the sectarian divide. There is plenty for playwrights to explore in our own N. Ireland attitudes in the fears, prejudices and the worries that we have. You can see NI characters on stage discussing this issue. It doesn’t all mean we have to se an African play, a Latvian play – we can be exploring our own thoughts as well. There is so much food for our playwrights and they should be commissioned…

Michael
I am worried about the traditional form of the play excluding new immigrant communities. I’m saying we need new forms, new designs, maybe more visual types of theatre. You see we could put on a play here about integration and the audience would be full of local people. Are the Polish people going to come to a play in English? You have got to be realistic. I think there are other forms of theatre we are really weak in that these immigrant communities are very strong in and we should learn from them.

Damian
In a way if Carol would accept this – that film was not about a Russian-Latvian coming here. In a way it’s a love story, it’s a story about separation from family. At the same time I think there is something in what Michael is saying about an awareness of certain forms appealing to certain people.

Carol
… Irish theatre has been very language driven – there is our history – but I think there is a lot to be learnt from African, East European cultures bringing music and experimental genres into the theatre. That’s one area that I am interested in. I’ve just been given a bit of money by the Arts Council because I want to do just that. NESTA has taught me to push my creative boundaries…so I want to use dance and film to tell the story. It’s not going to be a play and therefore bound by language as I’m trying to bring new audiences in – we can only try - if it works it works.

But something Zhenia and Eileen said about 2nd and 3rd generations …. Here are the new artists … the singers, the playwrights, the novelists, the poets and they are going to be responding to exactly what the two of you said, “Do they feel they belong here?” They feel like they belong here but they also have a hankering for wherever their families came from. I think those stories, those narrative have to start to be told to find out what these new generations of Northern Irish think about this place.

Damian
… A question in my head – At which point (and this is not to take anything away from what you’ve done) is the mediation or facilitation of the telling of these stories by people from here, a step towards these stories being told in a non-mediated way without anyone from here in the road.


Carol
…I was interviewed as part of the NESTA application process – and the question came – “Why wouldn’t we give this money to someone from an ethnic minority community in NI. And I said if those artists are out there I think you should – and I suppose that’s my answer. There will come a time when those playwrights should be putting those plays on in this theatre. But there is a gap at the moment. I think it will be some time until we find them but we should be looking for them. At the moment it’s finding that mediation.

Joanne
I’m from Berlin and the interesting thing about Berlin is that we have four generations of migrants… every 4th person is not German born so there is a 45-50 year experience of a pretty mixed population. On top we have this conflict of East and West resulting from unification. I think one good thing of now being here as a migrant worker is that you shuttle? experience and I just wanted to give an example. I don’t think the traditional theatre will disappear. I think what happens is that new forms will come… and I think it is beautiful that you as a theatre person will make more films – hopefully of work with dancers…In Berlin there was a Turkish play, not in a theatre but taking place and they made it funny translating it to a mixed audience. Another play was that we were given head phones and we were directed through the city by people working from a call centre in India… I think this is were new forms come into place … but its not just about sitting watching a play … its not a traditional audience anymore, it’s a participatory approach where disciplines are mixed – where theatre meets fine arts, where fine art invites dancers and so on. I think this is where diversity becomes really, really interesting. The hippest form of hip-hop in Berlin is Turkish. These are the best hip hoppers you have ever seen… they will come up in other forms and other languages.

Male (Irish)
…I used to work with ethnic minority communities in the Republic both on cultural diversity and integration. What I found is that integration has too sides both from the Irish but also from the ethnic communities so you have to draw both sides into it… and that’s something I wish you had explored a little bit more in Alex’s difficulties with integration – because Alex focused on his issues coming over – a lot of people understand that. But the main problem I find with ethnic minorities is that their struggles are trying to integrate – especially if they come as a single parent or by themselves. When they have children – through the schools their kids make that a lot easier… I’d like to mention the Travelling community. How has theatre reached out to them? They are the community who has faced more racism and prejudice and they have been longer here than anybody else.

Carol
Alex’s actioning of integration was in his workplace. What you find is that migrant workers don’t really have time to integrate because they are often working 2 or 3 jobs and all Alex did was got to work, do his language class and come home. Although by accident or default some of his neighbours may have known who he was he didn’t have time to get involved in their lives or they his. It’s one of those things in a documentary where you think yes it would be good to get Alex to talk about this or that, but sometimes that isn’t significant in their lives or they don’t want to talk about it. There are all sorts of things that should or could have been in the film and for all sorts of reasons I couldn’t get in… I absolutely agree what you said about the Travellers and I don’t think there has been enough of their experience in the theatre and on film…

Damian
Could I just say that when Carol told me that she was making these films we were actually working together in this place … and when I saw them I realised why – from someone I knew as a theatre person – it was right to tell these stories on film. That’s because – I don’t know about yourselves – but I would be guilty occasionally of hungering into myself and walking past people I didn’t know… The great thing about these is that you see – you see something going on in the eyes of people – the little joky interactions, other kinds of communication between Alex and Olga – you see it – and it’s not deniable. You see things going on which is what this man was saying that are just human, they are beyond the bits and pieces of division we have talked about. And that doesn’t happen on it’s own. It’s the imagination that frames these things. And one thing I think as someone who made documentaries for 5 or 6 years – one thing I admired about these was a great restraint. For somebody whose first documentaries they are – it’s amazing. Many documentary filmmakers who have been at it for 30 years would have been in there at the airport. We have to get the hug here. Not only did Carol stay back but she didn’t even translate the first exchanges. There was something very mature in a filmmaking sense about that. And the last thing I want to say is that I suppose the act of connecting with anybody, of a friend or in a relationship – with anybody – is an act of moral imagination – its an act of imagination because you need to come up with the threads that will connect you to whoever it is. But it’s also a moral act because you decide it’s worth doing… The last thing I want to say and probably on your behalf as well is thank you to Carol for this piece of work – for this effort and also to thank Michael and of course yourselves for taking the time to go and gee this today.