MEET THE PROFESSIONALS - Josh Appignanesi (Part 2)
MEET THE PROFESSIONALS: JOSH APPIGNANESI ON TEACHING, LIVING, AND WORKING IN LONDON
Josh Appignanesi is a filmmaker, writer, and director, who has taught and mentored at The London Film School (LFS), Arista, Script Factory, Film London’s Microwave, Guardian Masterclasses, and the Met Film School among others. We recently spoke with Josh about his latest feature, THE NEW MAN, co-directed with Devorah Baum - read the interview here. In this next part of our Meet the Professionals interview series, read on to hear more about his work at The London Film School and his take on life as a filmmaker in London.
Can you tell us a little about your involvement with LFS, and what drew you to teaching?
I started doing a workshop there a few times a year, must be over five years ago now. It was Ben Gibson who got me along – he’s now the director of the Berlin Film School (DFFB), but at the time he was the director of The London Film School. I’d done some teaching before, at different institutions and training things, and this was a little workshop I’d concocted after my last film (THE INFIDEL) came out. It’s really nice to teach, in little bits. Particularly when it’s practical teaching, it’s not long-form teaching where you have to assess things over numbers of weeks. it’s really fun, as a teacher, to just jump in and do two days with some really interested, excitable students who want to be there, who have chosen to be there for that weekend. And it’s a really diverse workshop, as well, because it’s not just filmmakers – you get artists, you get graphic designers, writers, journalists, people from the corporate world, people from advertising and commercials…. All kinds of people show up at all different levels. Some are really experienced as well, people who’ve made features before, or have made documentary features and are kind of transitioning into fiction films.
The workshop is called Visual Storytelling, and it’s sort of how you tell a story through pictures. Over the last few years it seems like more and more people from diverse walks of life want to know about that, you know. Maybe they make music videos and they want to get into kind of proper storytelling, maybe they make documentaries… It’s a really cool course, it’s gotten really fun. And that was the main thing - I’ve done a few other things in the past, and I might look to teaching some new stuff at the LFS, but the visual storytelling one seems to go down quite well. It’s just a really vibrant, fun place to come and do a couple of days, it’s very practitioner-led, and it’s good to do.
Did you go to film school yourself?
I actually didn’t go to film school, no, I just sort of started doing it. I do sort of slightly regret, now, not going to film school – I did apply to a couple of film schools, I didn’t get in, I think what you’re supposed to do is just keep applying, but I just went, “I’m too cool for school, I can just do it myself.” I guess it all worked out in the end, but what I miss from not having gone, I suppose, is this sort of sense of a cohort and an institution that’s behind you, a sort of peer group around you. It was something that I had to build myself, and I think it maybe took a little bit longer to do that. So no, I didn’t have that formal training. I did do quite a few long form courses, particularly in screenwriting, that gave me a kind of formal grounding, particularly in the screenwriting side.
And where did that training take place, where were your earliest filmmaking experiences?
There was a course called North by Northwest. It was brilliant, it was a residential course in Denmark with all these tutors from USC, which is a great film school in America, I learned a lot from those Hollywood guys. And then there was another course here which was called Arista, which was again a residential 1-week writing workshop, that was really great. I actually ended up being a tutor on Arista – it’s sadly gone now, but it was one of the best in the UK. Those are the two main ones. Someone should definitely try to resurrect those kinds of medium-length writer training, it’s invaluable, there’s a gap. But otherwise it was just me and friends making shorts and trying to get bits of funding…
What advice would you have for anyone graduating soon from LFS, or has maybe already graduated, and is looking to start making their own films, collaborating with other people…What advice would you have in terms of the early days?
It was hard when I started out, and it certainly hasn’t gotten any easier. It’s different. My very early career was, I wouldn’t exactly say pre-internet, but it wasn’t the world it is now, social media and the web being everything it now is. Which obviously makes some things easier, we couldn’t have made this last film (THE NEW MAN) without what the internet allows you to do in outreach and speed, and what new technology allows you to do. But on the other hand, it was a bit quieter, in terms of your own internal noise and headspace. Still, I think the advice is the same. Everyone knows the basics: you keep trying to make your stuff, collaborate with people you like, find your voice, reach out to people... You have to keep trying to promote yourself, unfortunately, which is a horrible bit of it, but it is part of it. And to be honest, it never ends. I guess the one bit of advice I’d say is that there is no place that you finally get to, where you feel secure about your career and you feel that everything’s working brilliantly. It’s always ups and downs, and sometimes it can feel like it’s mostly downs. And that includes questions like, how do you make money? Which is a really tough one, and one that most people I know working in media and the arts don’t really have an answer to. Sometimes you get some money, sometimes you don’t. So I don’t know how helpful that is, but it’s my experience, anyway.
Outside of THE NEW MAN, what projects are you working on currently?
I’m working on far too many projects, actually. Several new script ideas… most advanced is the film that I’ve actually now shot most of, working with a producer called Jacqui Davies. It’s a film that we shot around Tate Liverpool, around an art show – it’s a quasi-fiction, it has sort of documentary elements in it, but it’s basically fictional. Kind of an artist’s film – it has one foot in the artist’s film camp, one foot in the fiction film camp. And it’s pretty bonkers, it’s a romantic thriller at heart, inspired by the work of Leonora Carrington. She was one of the great surrealist painters of the 20th Century but isn’t as well-known as some of the others, mostly because she was a woman, and also because she lived in Mexico. She died recently, but 2017 is her centenary year, and there’s quite an effort to rehabilitate her. This film features her work and is inspired by her, although it doesn’t focus on her life. It focuses on the life of a writer called Chloe Aridjis, who is the star of the film but she’s normally a novelist, by no means an actor, which makes things interesting. She’s a Mexican-American novelist who lives in London. It’s kind of a gothic romantic thriller set in the art world, and shot on these beautiful antique video cameras I’ve resurrected… Yeah, it’s pretty crazy. That’s my next project that’s coming out. The rest is all script ideas, in development. Most of the ideas that I’m having at the moment are me trying to get a handle on the incipient fascism that seems to be just bubbling out of every orifice of the world right now, in this really depressing way. Maybe I need to make a comedy about it.
In terms of balancing new projects with promoting THE NEW MAN, how do you manage your own time?
I have no time. I’ve had no time for a few years now. No, I don’t find it easy to manage anything, it’s just all a massive, endless spiral of stuff coming at me, and I’m just about keeping my head above water. But that’s a good place to be! It’s tough juggling all this stuff, for sure, but I wouldn’t want it any other way, really.
What first inspired you to make films?
Well, I’ll tell you when I first fell in love with films – obviously it was a gradual process, but there was this one particular incident. When I was about 16, I got home really late from this night out, and I turned on the TV. And there was just this completely hallucinatory film, I’d never seen anything like it, and it was weird, and I wanted to go to sleep but I just couldn’t stop watching this crazy film… It just haunted me, but I never found out the title because I’d missed the beginning, but it stayed with me for years. And then a few years later I discovered it was THE SACRIFICE, Tarkovsky’s masterpiece, and you know, I was then a huge Andrei Tarkovsky fan…
But the mystery of that film, in a way that can’t quite be repeated now because of the internet, all the information is just out there. Back then I would have had to go out and buy a copy of yesterday’s newspaper to find out what the film was, or something, and that was sort of too much research for a 16-year old boy to do… I think the mystery of those times, and the mystery of that film, somehow combined in that moment. And I feel like I’m trying to get back to that sublime experience, but who knows if that’s possible?
What inspires you about working and living in London?
It’s obviously a really buzzing, inspiring place full of interesting people doing great stuff… To me, it feels like it’s not a choice, really. I couldn’t constitutionally survive outside of a big metropolis – maybe New York, I could do, maybe Paris, a couple of other cities, but… it’s basically London and New York for me, given that I’m English language-speaking. And now, more than ever, in this political climate – I just feel like big diverse cities are a question of the survival of humanity, without them we’re really not in a good place. I’m a city snob, I love cities. And then mountains.
What is the most challenging part of your job, and what are your processes for working through it?
Just sort of…self-doubt, or something. Not to just sink into total defeat, and self-hatred. I think that’s the most challenging part, and I think I just… rant. I think I rant, and then maybe have a drink, or something? I don’t know, I don’t have the answer to that. I seem to keep going anyway, so there you go.
Who, living or dead, would be your dream collaborator?
God, that’s impossible. My dream collaborator… I very much like Tilda Swinton at the moment, I guess you could say her. Yeah, I’m really into Tilda Swinton at the moment, just really impressed with what she’s doing. She’s fantastic.
For more information about Josh’s workshop at the LFS, click here. THE NEW MAN is on limited release now and available on-demand from January 23rd with a countrywide screening at Picturehouse Cinemas on January 24th. Connect with Josh at @JoshAppFilm and his website.
Written by Laura Nucinkis.
Photo Credits: The Creative Life Film Co.