British filmmaker Asif Kapadia Approaching Oscar-winning documentary “Amy”, which was released ten years ago, as if he were a detective investigating a crime, he told an audience of documentary professionals this week at Reality visionsA film festival in Nyon, Switzerland. So who killed Amy Winehouse?
When he made the film, Kapadia was aware that it was “really dark.” “A friend told me: ‘If you tell the truth this movie will never come out.’ I thought, “What is the truth? And then when I learned the story, I thought, “My God, this thing will never come out. There is a version of this movie that is 15 minutes longer, which is really heavy, and my wife is still annoyed that we did not let go, but it is just a little too much.”
“My language that I use is as if I am investigating a crime, as something terrible happened,” he told the audience in Nyon, located on the beach of Lake Geneva, overlooking the Alps. “And so, if you came to our editing suite, it is literally the type of stage from a” zodiac “or something, like any David Fincher movie, with all these lines and whiteboards, where you have pictures of all – all suspects, whatever, all characters – and you try to connect the dots.”
His “evidence”, so to speak, was drawn from existing material archive movies from Youtube and the like, and private pictures given him by friends and family follows by interviews he conducted with those who knew her best.
Asif Kapadia
With the permission of visions you reel
The reason he had taken on the film in the first place was that when she was alive, there were questions he had about the British singer writer: “Why is she such a bad way on stage? Why does she continue to show up on the front pages of newspapers? Why does none look after her?” And then after she died it was: “How could she die at 27 in this modern time and no one had any problems? I didn’t understand.” That’s what drove him to take on the case … you … the movie: “To reveal some kind of truth,” he said.
Originally, he and the film’s producer, James Gay-Rees, met with some of the central characters in her story: her father, the head of the record label, and her other manager, who wanted him to make the film because they liked what he did on his previous film, “Senna, another movie that centered on a talented individual whose life was a short: brazilian racing manager
“We set our rules before we got on board,” Kapadia said. “I said: ‘Okay, so if we make this movie, you have to give us all the music, you have to give us all the publication. You will pay for it. Leave us alone for two years. Don’t tell me who I can talk to. Isn’t it a happy than to do it. Handle it.
The height
He added, “I ended up interviewing as 120 people, people who were part of her life, all over the world. The most important thing was: No one trusted journalists. No one trusted cameramen. Everyone was a potential paparazzi. Everyone was potentially there to somehow sneak a photo and sell it to the news. Had to really earn confidence for every individual I spoke to do the worst, only I could do, we would only sit, and we wouldn’t have a camera, only I would have a camera, only I would be lit, and we would put on, I would not think about.
“I’ll be like,” I’m happy to do it at two in the morning, when you want to come in, Saturday, Sunday, anytime. I’m here, you let me know. I will not ask you to write a release. You just talk to me, and at the end of the movie, if you are in the movie, I’ll show you the movie. If you are happy, sign the release. “
Kapadia explained that while he does the interviews and archive research, he edits the pictures at the same time, and that would give him new leads to follow.
He said, “There will be someone in the shot, behind Amy in a room, and I go,” Who is that person? Do they hold a camera? Maybe they have some pictures. “So much of it is about examining the image very carefully.
After seeing a clip that included a telephone message from Winehouse to Nick Shymansky, her first manager, as well as other material, Kapadia said: “There are probably 50 different archive elements in the small sequence, like someone has held a mobile phone message so personal and they are not willing to share it with me. You have to get to the point where they give you material that you would not even think about asking for. “
Kapadia explained that Shymansky was the first person among Winehouse friends who became friends with him. “He came to meet me to say, ‘No, I won’t talk to you. I won’t be part of this movie. I don’t think you should do this movie, but annoying, I really like’ Senna ‘, so I thought I would meet you.’ I thought, “I’m inside. I have something to work with here. “I brought him to the editing suite and said,” This is the team “, and he looked at all the work we had on the walls, and he is like,” no one has ever taken Amy so seriously, as if you have literally studied her in a way that no one has ever done. “
“And then he said,“ I don’t have anything. I just got these few videos. “I’m like,” Can I see them? “He said,” No, I won’t give them to you. And he showed them to me, and then they ended up in the movie.
Other materials, such as photos and Winehouse’s notebooks, came out of a similar process for discovery and persuasion. “One person would lead to another five people, and each person walled to another five people. And initially everyone said no, and then eventually there’s a tipping point where people start speaking to one an another, saying, ‘you Should Talkan Talcid Talcid Talcid Talcid Talcid Talc Talc Talc. They should talk to me. Because with this movie, participular, more than the other movie, it was therapy for them to be awake to honestly speak about their grief and their sadness and guilt and every or felt. said. “I was her best friend.”
My job is to never tell a person what anyone else has said. Always continue impartial. I will only go with what I find, but then I back up everything with what I can show. My job is always to find out, “how can I visually tell the story,” and if I do not have pictures, in this case we have quite a lot of still images, which always tell too much the story. And that’s kind of kind.
The film opens with Winehouse talking to his friend Lauren Gilbert, who holds the camera, on Gilbert’s 14th birthday. “The most important thing that is really interesting in this movie was that it is a certain time when people had home -free cameras,” Kapadia said. “It’s pre-iphone, it’s mini dv cameras. So what you ‘got is people holding the camera to their eye. It’s really a movie about who’s holding the camera. So that opening scene is her friend Lyuren, and then it becoms her first manages, nick, nick, movie She’s Always Talking to Her Friends, and Therefore Us, The Audience, and We’re Always The People Holding The Camera. And That Journey goes from Lauren, Her Friend, to Her First Manager, Nick, to her, to the camera and then she plays on the case that she plays on the case that was the case for the event. that holds the camera, and then it is her dad who holds the camera. It’s a really low point.
“So all the way she looks at the audience, and it is a really powerful emotional element that plays through the movie that she plays for us, and then we attack her. We literally chase her down the street and we are with a point of view on the paparazzis.”
