…Michelangelo was there first.
In RAGE, Sally’s 2009 film which defied all the usual conventions of cinema, the character Michelangelo, unheard and unseen throughout, managed to film his interviewees using only his mobile phone, before secretly posting the interviews on his website.
It rained in Cannes the day I left; the Croisette and the open-air cinema on the beach suddenly desolate and deserted. Continue reading
RAGE has had to make its way into the world against the prevailing view of what constitutes ‘cinema’. Releasing it on mobile phones and the internet sparked enormous interest but also provoked fear and hostility in some parts of the film industry. Continue reading
For many weeks of interviews in the UK and the US about RAGE I took a line of ‘welcome the pirates’. It was a useful, energised and relaxing way of thinking compared to the defensive stance mostly current in the film industry, itself based on a growing fear of bankruptcy….the end of independent cinema in particular as we know it.
A couple of years ago a young man with impeccable political principles boasted to me, quite innocently, that he had managed to download all my films for free on the internet. On close questioning it became evident that he had not thought through the implications of this for me and all the others who had worked with me (many of whom, on some of the films, had been paid very little or, like me, had deferred their fees and were therefore dependent on ticket and DVD sales to get paid for their labours).