Nevertheless!

 

Once a long time ago my friend Biggles and I organized a weekend’s film making with super 8 cameras (it was possible to video things but we wanted to do super 8 just for the fun of it).

The film making took place on a glorious summer weekend at a friend’s farm in Hertfordshire. The idea was to do remakes of great classics: Biggles directed a remake of Gold finger, while I directed and starred in Casablanca.  The weekend was a roaring success: everyone I knew more or less took part. There were at least four James Bonds, and as many Pussy Galores (one of them me). The only way one would be able to  recognize Bond or Pussy was because of the bow-tie and smoking jacket and the sequinned gown which was handed from one actor to the next. 

People were told to arrive with props and costumes and when they arrived they were directed to the wardrobe department and then the prop department that were situated on the lawn in front of the main house to deposit their stuff, then they were given parts to play, according to what was going on at the time. There was not only these two great classics being filmed: we did commercials too.  For some reason we decided the rather unassuming London suburb of Penge would feature, and we did a commercial for the fictitious ‘Penge Tandoori,’ complete with romantic candlelit dinner and an Indian waiter in turban. There was an ad for the Penge Health Club which included people lazing around by the swimming pool smoking and drinking and eating cream cakes.   People  were also told to bring props for whatever scene in whatever film they wanted to star in, and then we shot it: these small snippets became the ‘trailers’ later when we edited the films (this was done on an antiquated cutting machine and needed cellotape!)

One girl arrived with several pillows, a motorcycle crash helmet and a hoover pipe as well as several meters of aluminium foil into which she had herself wrapped up.  She said she wanted to do the moon landing. So we filmed her as she descended the barn ladder in slow motion.

Our host, for some unfathomable reason, wanted to do a very obscure scene from ‘The Thirty Nine Steps’ which involved filming him in the kitchen cooking at the AGA, then turning around to a young ‘starlet’ and uttering the following sentence: ‘Do you like Haddock?’ (but pronounced ‘hiddock’, like in the original).

And I wanted to do my favourite scene of any film: the scene from ‘The African Queen’ when  Rosie and Charlie  have been fished out of  Lake Victoria  and are being cross examined by the German Captain of the’ Louisa’: ‘How did you get here?’  Rosie replies that they came down the Ulanga  river in the ‘African Queen’. The Captain replies: ‘but that is impossible!’ and   Rosie  tosses her lovely head and flashes her eyes and utters her immortal and inspirational : ‘Nevertheless!’

I cannot claim to have ridden down the rapids of the Ulanga but we have been through a Coup d’Etat; an Islamist occupation of the north and a war.  In my little way here in Djenné I sit at the beginning of a new year that promises to be if not quite as difficult as the last two, at least no doddle... But, we are here still: the people are working in the MaliMali studio; sometimes there are people in the hotel; the library is continuing with the new project; we are here! Nevertheless....