Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami takes an in-depth and honest look at one of the most important artists of recent years. To find out more, HOME’s Artistic Director of Film, Jason Wood speaks to director Sophie Fiennes…
Jason Wood: It has been reported that the project was 10 years in gestation. I do recall that when you made Hoover Street Revival that you were talking about a Grace Jones documentary. Can you talk us through the various stages that the project went through and was the protracted process due to Grace’s schedule and the difficulty of finding a time when you could spend time following her?
Sophie Fiennes: I spend about 4-5 years filming on an ad-hoc basis, travelling with Grace to wherever she was off to, so Japan, Moscow, Jamaica, NYC etc… Grace was clear that she wasn’t in any hurry to complete the film. Maybe she wasn’t quite decided if she ever wanted the film to be completed… I don’t know. But I think we both knew we didn’t want to rush it. Also, I knew I couldn’t complete it without her performance and I wanted to do that justice. The documentary is shot with small hand-held mini DV cameras, and that just wasn’t sufficient to capture the performance. I knew Grace had in mind a show that was theatrical. But this kind of show doesn’t work for music festivals where the venues are very restrictive technically. I realised I wanted to pursue a staging for the film that spoke to Grace’s sense of theatre, so a theatre with flies to bring the backdrops in and out, and which would allow her an intimate relationship with the audience. It took time to raise the money to do that and to be able to properly complete the film in terms of sound and picture. The edit itself was of course an epic journey. A long process of working and reducing the material and finding the links between the material both within the documentary itself – and between that and the performance.
JW: What impressed me most about the film was the approach that you took. You avoided a convention: archive footage/talking head interviews –and the result is a work that feels intimate and personal and which gives a genuine glimpse into Grace’s character, her psyche and her Jamaican roots. What influenced the approach that you took and what clichés and pitfalls did you wish to avoid? All of your work has its own unique style so I guess this follows that pattern.
SF: As a viewer of films I grew up watching a lot of new wave cinema and films that were shaped not according to genre, but according to the subjective and particular cinematic sense of the director. It’s very personal, how to frame, how you relate to time on film and what moves or just simply fascinates you. Film time is always compressed but I like to feel the weight of time in a film, and the sense of moments. With documentary you have no control over the events happening around you, I embrace that, and try to be as sensitive as I can be to what is happening so I make my luck for the edit. I really enjoy the edit as it is like writing with film; writing with the moving image and experimenting to see what the material can do, what it can provoke in us.
JW: There are two sequences that I would like you to discuss in more detail. The first is where Grace is in the studio and tracks down Sly and Robbie and gives them a piece of her mind. She is formidable. Was it intimidating being with her in this moment? The second sequence that really fascinated me is during the La Vie en Rose sequence. Here, you really see two sides of her. She’s unhappy at the gender of the dances and the fact that the set-up looks cheap but then she doesn’t want to disappoint the dancers by sending them home. Were you seeking to capture two sides of her personality and a sense of contradiction? She is tough, and formidable, but also in her own way quite caring and even vulnerable.
SF: Your heart always sinks a little when Grace calls you and you hear her voice on the other end of the phone saying, ‘We need to talk!!” (I remember she did this when the BBC came on board as she was worried they might seek to control the film, and we might be compromised creatively, but as we were then working with the lovely Christine Langan and it was for BBC Films, I knew we were on safe enough ground etc).
In this instance when she was speaking to Robbie, I was sitting safely behind my camera and I wasn’t the one getting ‘the Jamaican treatment’. I was just trying to make sure I got it all and trying not to start giggling nervously…
With the French TV show Grace was conflicted, as you can see. We did discuss that it was totally surreal, and I wasn’t sure what she would do, if she would pull them out, but she said ‘I wouldn’t like that to happen to me, if I was one of them’. And I think in this scene there are many surprises from Grace, also her way of unpacking what the image of her surrounded by these baby doll girls is even saying or communicating.
JW: The concert sequences are astonishing. Grace is still an incredible live presence. Was it a challenge to translate this passion and energy to the screen?
SF: I brought a lot of my experience working in dance, and filming dance to it. I also brought my knowledge, gathered over many years, from watching Grace and talking with her about performance. Working with my DOP Remko Schnoor, and this clever staging idea devised for Grace by Eiko Isioka, I felt that I could build the conditions to give Grace what she needed to work her magic. It was important to shoot on film; it’s so much more sensual than any video. Also, the band have toured with her now a lot, so the tightness of the band and the musical side was already there to build on. I selected the set list so the songs would relate to the documentary material and how I was shaping that.
JW: I was at the BFI launch of their filmography website and the panel that was convened to talk about the dispiriting figures about the lack of opportunities for women in the film industry, both on and off screen. I was impressed by your eloquence on the subject. Does this feel like an incredibly important moment to present a documentary about a woman who has always seemed to be entirely in control of her own destiny and career?
SF: Yes, I think the timing is really interesting in terms of repositioning what it even means to be a woman….and also in terms of Grace as a catalyst to remind people that making work is a creative process, you don’t always know how things will play out, you have to experiment and you have to be brave.
Thank you Jason, for you support of my work going back to Hoover Street. It really helped build the necessary confidence to continue.
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami opens Friday 27 Oct. Find out more and book tickets here.
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