Thursday 28 February 2008

"The protean shapes of faith"

Thursday, February 28, London
Seb, Ian and Nonie have returned from a filming trip to Prague, Budapest and, as one of Ian's fine photos illustrates, Istanbul. We will post from each of these locations in the next few days, but meanwhile here are some wise words about travel from Colin Thubron, from his recent (and excellent) Shadow of the Silk Road:
Sometimes a journey arises out of hope and instinct, the heady conviction, as your finger travels along the map: Yes, here and here... and here. These are the nerve-ends of the world...
A hundred reasons clamour for your going. You go to touch on human identities, to people an empty map. You have a notion that this is the world's heart. You go to encounter the protean shapes of faith. You go because you are still young and crave excitement, the crunch of your boots in the dust; you go because you are old and need to understand something before it's too late. You go to see what will happen.

Thursday 21 February 2008

Taj Mahal? Been there, shot that

Sunday February 17 - Tuesday February 19, Agra, India
"Mehtab Bagh. Mehtab Bagh."

It's golden hour in Agra, India. The hour before sunset so precious to cinematogaphers the world over.

"Mehtab Bagh. Mehtab Bagh."

We're chasing the light, all too aware of the sinking sun. And we're racing in a minibus through streets crammed with tuk-tuks, carts drawn by bullocks, colourful lorries, battered buses and a swarm of motorbikes. Every so often our driver Ramesh leans out of the window demanding directions.

"Mehtab Bagh. Mehtab Bagh."
No-one seems to know how to direct us across the Yamuna river to the gardens with a view of the Taj Mahal at sunset. But somehow we find the bridge, a narrow, two-lane iron structure (with a railway above) built under the Raj and seemingly not mended since. Traffic hurtles towards us as we manoeuvre around anything that presumes to move more slowly than our camera car.

Then, after one wrong turning, there's the sign and then an official at a gate stopping us from taking the car any further. We jump out and hump the gear down to the river bank. Across what at this time of the year is little more than a stream ("you should see it during the monsoon!") is the magnificent mausoleum of the Taj Mahal, with soft sunlight rounding the curves of its white marble.
Truth to tell, we're just a few minutes too late. A glimpse of the Taj's domes from the road had shown them glowing a subtle orange, but now the sun has sunk a touch too low. Nonetheless the sight beats most tourist vistas and cameraman Nandu shoots happily, catching reflections and snatching the red globe as it sinks away.
I arrived in India yesterday morning, travelling on the same flight as Paul Merton. He has come for a 9-week shoot for a Five follow-up to last year's Paul Merton in China. Paul travelled first-class. I didn't. But then again I'm only here for three days.

Having met up with Ramesh, we do the four hour-plus drive to Agra. I was last in India (as a tourist) more than twenty years ago, but India remains India. We stop for a moment and there's a monkey on the car and a man wanting money for a photo. There are beggars at every traffic light, camels on the highway and an unrelenting soundtrack of horns.
Monday morning Ramesh and I drive to Fatephur Sikri, the extraordinary city built by Mughal emperor Akbar in the late sixteenth century and abandoned after only 14 years. We meet our Indian crew, Nandu and Subu, and scope out the vast mosque here -- which is one part of the story I've come to shoot. The only frustration is that because a previous crew damaged the building in some way we're not allowed to use a tripod inside the courtyard. We try persuasion, tricks when we think the guards are not looking, as well as other means, but we have to make do with the camera on the ground, on ledges and Nandu's steady shoulder.
Another problem is that our contributor, a cultural historian who was to talk with us about the Taj Mahal, has had a bereavement in her family, and so we have to to find a replacement in Agra in the next few hours. The resourceful Ramesh makes it happen.
That evening there's the frantic drive to Mehtab Bagh and next morning we're at the Taj Mahal main entrance at 8am. What of course you never see in documentaries is the palaver of getting past security, especially if you have camera equipment. There are soldiers with guns everywhere. The kit is subjected to a detailed scrutiny and we, like every other visitor, are patted down for concealed weapons. The process, like so much in India, is both rigorous and ramshackle.

Inside, jostling with the crowds, there's an intensity to the way everyone needs to have their picture taken with the Taj. And there is perceived to be one perfect spot, dead centre, for which people constantly compete and for which -- when we manage to manoeuvre the tripod there -- we receive disapproving looks and not-so-subtle shoulder barges.
Filming is permitted only from a single wide platform just inside the entrance to the garden. Our two minders make sure we don't trespass any further forward, and then when we start the interview, we're only one question in before one of them challenges our permit. "No casting," it states on page three of the form but, the minder says, the interviewee is "casting". No, no, we all argue, "casting" refers to drama shoots. My plea that I have flown thousands of miles for this moment makes little impact, at least until Ramesh takes him away for a quiet word and an understanding between them. We film the interview.
Despite all this, the mausoleum -- completed around 1648 by emperor Shah Jahan in memory of cherished wife Mumtaz Mahal -- is a magnificent sight. Serene, glowing, glorious. Looking at it, staring at it on our monitor, and then walking around (beyond where the camera can go), none of the minor hassles mean a thing. It is, simply, a sublime achievement of faith and beauty. (John Wyver)

Monday 11 February 2008

Mr Church and Senora Superwoman

Tuesday February 5 - Friday February 8, Cordoba and Toledo, Spain
Tuesday, 10pm
It’s probably not the most auspicious start to a tightly packed three day filming schedule to find yourself pleading with the Guardia Civil at Malaga airport not to lock up your camera equipment overnight. We had meant to drive straight to Cordoba, but were to be thwarted. The customs officials had finished their shift for the day, and they needed to check our equipment to assure themselves we weren’t importing it from Tunisia into Spain. “We had a bit of trouble in Tunisia too,” our cameraman Ian Serfontein reflects, “but nothing as officious as this.”

Wednesday

Twelve hours later we find ourselves, after a night at the local Ibis Hotel, back at the airport negotiating with customs and finally being allowed to head two hours north to Cordoba.
We’re here of course to film the great Mezquita which dates back to 784 CE and was the most magnificent of over one thousand mosques in the city in Islamic times. It was enlarged in stages under successive rulers and was at one time the second largest mosque in the Muslim world. It is most notable for its giant red and white double arches and forest of over one thousand columns. I had arranged filming permission with one Rafael Iglesias (Mr. Church no less) who turns out to be far more pleasant and amenable in person than I had imagined. But lunch is an important business in Spain, and we are to come back at 3pm when he would be ready for us.

This still leaves us three hours to try to capture something of the disorientating mystery of the enormous warehouse-sized prayer hall. Unfortunately, whole parts of it had been sectioned off for building renovation with unsightly barriers. How also to convey the uniqueness of this building, which after the ‘Reconquista’ quite literally had had a highly decorated Catholic cathedral inserted into the middle of it, when the nave too is undergoing serious restoration works? “I don’t know if I mentioned about the scaffolders who arrived two days ago” remarks Mr Church casually. He hadn’t.
We are only allowed to stay until 6pm, soon after which there would be a service for Ash Wednesday. A large area of temporary seating for the congregation has been installed amongst the forest of columns in part of the mosque space as a makeshift cathedral in the absence of the real thing, spoiling, from a filming perspective, yet another section of the building.

These challenges aside, possibly the most irritating thing about filming inside heavily visited religious buildings has to be the constant flashing of digital cameras. Mr Church kindly stops tourists coming in after 5.30pm, and we have the luxury of the final half hour of the place to ourselves. This has to be one of the great pleasures of these trips: the enormous privilege of experiencing some of the world’s finest buildings in total peace and quiet.

Later, walking through Cordoba’s medieval backstreets to find a restaurant for dinner, we come upon an elaborate Catholic Ash Wednesday procession filling the air with incense.
Thursday
The next morning, after filming the large courtyard filled with orange trees we meet our first interviewee, the cathedral’s arch canon whose surname is Cumplido, which roughly translates as “complier” given that cumplir means to comply. I wonder whether in order to work at the cathedral you need to have a suitable surname.

Our elderly interviewee lives up to his name, and takes a hard line when asked if he sees the building as a symbol of interfaith understanding. Not in the least. After all, as he points out, the site still has the remains of the original basilica built by the Visigoths before the Moors conquered. Many of the columns and other building materials were taken from the remains of the basilica and re-used, and for him the building is a sacred Christian place. It is a cathedral and not a mosque, we are reminded. He has absolutely no time for the story of Emperor Charles V’s reported comment on finally visiting the cathedral after having authorised it to be built. “You have destroyed something unique,” he is supposed to have said, “and replaced it with something commonplace”. Did Charles V think he had made a terrible mistake? “That comment is a myth. He didn’t say it,” our arch canon tells us with absolute certainty and not a little irritation.

Our second interviewee teaches history at Cordoba University. He is a delightful man. Amongst other things he tells us that the double system of lower horseshoe arches and higher semi circular ones inside the mosque functions as a Roman aqueduct, with channels for rain water to be drained away from the roof. He is also very much of the opinion that if the cathedral hadn’t been built inside it, the building would have fallen to the fate of Cordoba’s other mosques, and would in all probability not have survived.

By now it is mid afternoon, and after driving across the river for a view of the mosque, spoiled by a large green crane directly in front of it, we leave Cordoba for the four-hour journey due north to Toledo. After an hour or so the car experiences some difficulties, and we find ourselves pulling into a garage in Guarroman, which is not anywhere you might normally choose to make a detour to. A “guarro” is a pig in Spanish, and is also used to mean “dirty old man”. Next to the garage there is, somewhat appropriately perhaps, a brothel with flashing neon signs of women in compromising positions. Fortunately the mechanics fix the car and thankfully we don’t have to spend a night in Guarroman which had been looking for a brief while like a distinct possibility.

We finally arrive in Toledo in time, thanks to the late Spanish dining hours, for something to eat before retiring.
Friday
The filming of two synagogues and an interview to accomplish today. Toledo is a beautiful walled hilltop town about an hour south of Madrid, and was one of the former capitals of the Spanish empire. It has a wealth of important historical buildings and enjoyed a golden age, known as La Convivencia, when Jews, Christians and Muslims lived together harmoniously. The tolerance was such that the religions almost blurred into one another and the two synagogues we have come to film bear witness to that.
The Santa Maria la Blanca synagogue, finished around 1200, has a plain interior dominated by horseshoe arches. It is a beautiful space, and feels more like a mosque than a synagogue. It was built for the thriving Jewish community by Moorish master builders and decorators. In contrast, the Transito synagogue, built some 200 years later, has no arches or pillars and is a large rectangular space with a richly decorated blaze of Hebrew inscriptions which integrate Koranic verses and Hebrew psalms and an intricately carved ceiling. Again designed and decorated by Islamic builders, it is now a museum of Sephardic culture.
Our interviewee, an elegantly dressed art historian at Toledo university, looks too young to be so accomplished an expert on the history of the period we are interested in. She tells us about the two different synagogues in some detail and explains how Toledo became a unique and important centre of learning and translation at this time, with prominent scholars of all faiths exchanging texts in philosophy, science, mathematics and theology. After the interview, she kindly offers to take us back to her house so that we can film a view of the old Jewish quarter from her roof terrace. Her front door is ajar and we walk up some steep stairs past her kitchen and living rooms. The building feels as though it must be at least 300 years old. “I need this large house as I have so many children,” she tells us. It hardly seems possible that she has any children at all. I ask her how many. “Seven” she replies. She has trouble remembering whether she is 36 or 37, and one by one her children arrive home, spanning in age from 13 to 1. They are all immaculately well-behaved and greet us with impeccable manners. She explains that it suits her very well to live within Toledo’s walls as it is completely safe – hence the front door which is always open. As we take leave of our host, who also tells me she is chairing a major commission for the government on tourism in Spain, I tell her she is a superwoman and I truly believe she is. (Linda Zuck)

Thursday 7 February 2008

The joy of production texts

Thursday February 7, London

Just four of the texts sent to the production office during the past week (for the full stories, see the other blog entries)…

February 1, 12:23
Nonie from Chartres

Hi John, having a farcical morning trying to interview Rudy alongside 5 groups of restoring builders and now an organist! And it is pouring with rain… Challenge to say the least.

February 2, 15:50
Seb from Tunis

Luggage lost, equipment impounded. Ah yes, Africa, I remember, : )
February 5, 16:21
Ajay, after a conversation with Ian in Barcelona

Nothing 2 worry about, and he's on the case, bt Ian missed his flight connexion … yep.

February 6, 09.55
Linda from Malaga

Just got the gear out of customs after its unexpected overnight and setting off now for Cordoba. At least we'll get to film this pm.

Tuesday 5 February 2008

"As perfect as the purest conceptions of the greatest workers in stone"

Saturday February 2 - Monday February 4, Tunisia

"I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do"
and
“I appreciate you’re in a hurry, but you’ll just have to come back after the weekend and collect it all then”

In my lexicon of phrases-to-fret-about these two refrains have a top-five placing – particularly when in the first instance they relate to lost filming-tapes, and secondly, to our impounded camera equipment.

It’s Saturday afternoon at Tunis Airport, and cameraman Ian Serfontein and I have arrived in Tunisia to film at Kairouan, a modestly-sized town 200 kilometers south of the capital. Widely acknowledged as the fourth most important Islamic city in the world (after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem), Kairouan is home to one of the earliest architectural marvels of the Islamic faith, a mosque whose foundations go back to the 7th century.
Writing in 1889, the great French novelist Guy de Maupassant said of the site
"I know of three religious buildings in the world that have given me the unexpected and shattering emotion that was aroused in me by this barbaric and astonishing monument: Mont Saint-Michel, Saint Mark's in Venice, and the Palatine Chapel in Palermo. These three are reasoned, studied, and admirable work of great architects sure of their effects, pious of course, but artistic first, inspired as much or more by their love of line, of form, and of decoration, as by their love of God. But at Kairouan it is something else. A race of fanatics, nomads scarcely able to build walls, coming to a land covered with ruins left by their predecessors, picked up here and there whatever seemed most beautiful to them, and, in their own turn, with these debris all of one style and order, raised, under the guidance of heaven, a dwelling for their God, made of pieces torn from crumbling towns, but as perfect as the purest conceptions of the greatest workers in stone."
But neither my limited charm nor great French texts can move the customs officials. Our equipment remains captive.

Fortunately, help is at hand. The ominous sounding – but incredibly helpful – TECA (Tunisian External Communication Agency) smooths our passage; tapes are found, equipment is released, and we find ourselves in the company of Adel, our fixer for the next 24 hours.

We’re soon on the road – with our driver, Mohammed - and within minutes, Adel and I are engrossed in discussing Islam and Christianity. Adel tells me that a few months previously, a Swedish producer had come out for a few days filming with him, and had returned home a confirmed Muslim. I can’t claim impartiality, but as a committed Christian I’m delighted to be learning more about Islam and keen to exchange texts and world-views. The debate goes on and on and on.

A pause in the theological discussion is offered by a road-side stop, featuring delicious, freshly grilled lamb and local breads. Adel tells me that it’s not unusual for Tunisians to eat lamb three or four times a week. I’m overtaken with envy. Finally, we arrive at our hotel at about 10 am.
The next day and we’re up at 6am to film the sun-rise. Early morning fog frustrates our efforts but we do see the Mosque for the first time. It’s a sensational building -- elegant, straightforward, and possessed of immaculate scale and geometry. 145 metres long and 80 metres wide, the walls enclose a serene courtyard, bordered my arcades. At one end of the courtyard is the prayer hall and at the other is a single three-storey minaret.

Because neither Ian nor I are Muslims, we are unable to film within the prayer hall but our friends at TECA have kindly arranged for a cameraman from Tunis to drive down and help us out – I’m yet to see the rushes but I’m hoping that Ahmed will have captured the large wooden minbar (apparently, the oldest in existence, and dated at 862-63 CE) and the stunning mihrab – decorated with tiles, specially imported from Iraq.

After a couple of hours, Ahmed returns to Tunis and Ian and I are left to film the courtyard, exterior details and some further shots of Kairouan. It’s a memorable first day and that evening we enjoy another lamb dinner before retiring to bed early.
A brighter morning on Monday means that we film a beautiful sunrise over the minaret and then drive to the offices of Mourad Rammah, the conservateur de la Medina de Kairouan. Rammah will be our chief interviewee and proves a most charming, relaxed and enthusiastic host. Having travelled extensively to all of the key Islamic sites around the world he is able to contextualise Kairouan and talk with great authority and passion about why the building is so remarkable. Rammah speaks in good jargon-free French and then persuades the authorities to allow us to film at the top of the minaret – it’s quite a coup.
Above all, Rammah talks in straightforward terms about the design of the mosque – how the builders incorporated Roman and Christian ruins into the stone-work, how the minaret could double as a fortification, how the courtyard is graded to collect water, why there are so many columns in the prayer hall -- the focus should not be on the Imam. Without any sort of recce, it’s always a great relief to find such a good contributor and we film with Rammah until 2pm.

A late lunch and a further interview accomplished we drive out of town to capture a final sunset over Kairouan. The only sadness of the trip is, over another dinner of excellent lamb, watching Tunisia crash out of the African Cup of Nations, losing to Cameroon 3-2 in extra-time. Ian and I triy to console our hosts with England’s loss against Wales in the Six Nations. (Seb Grant)

Monday 4 February 2008

Art Nouveau and the art of Gothic

Tuesday January 29 - Friday February 1, Paris and Chartres, France

Our France shoot -- to film the Art Nouveau synagogue of Agoudas Hakehilos in Paris and then the cathedral at Chartres -- started smoothly… but swiftly descended into an irksome farce. This was a bit of a portent of what was to follow over the next couple of days!
The early morning sky was clear and full of wintery promise when Ian Serfontein and I met at the bright and breezy time of 6 am at London St Pancras. We carefully loaded the camera kit onto our trolley and strolled purposely towards our Eurostar set for Paris, confidently navigating our way through the throngs of our dawdling fellow passengers.

It wasn’t long before we understood their slightly hesitant behaviour – a computer error had swapped all the numbers of the carriages around, and no one knew which was their carriage. After wheeling the kit up and down the concourse more than once, we eventually plumped for a carriage which we calculated must be number 12 (even though it said it was number 5). A bit of reading and a doze later and we woke up in France.

Our first impressions of the exterior of Agoudas Hakehilos, or Synagogue Rue PavĂ©e, were good. In the still largely Jewish area of Le Marais in Paris, it is a modest, tall and thin building, designed by Paris’ herald of Art Nouveau architecture Hector Guimard. The synagogue is still a very active place of worship, and the centre for all Orthodox Jews in Paris. Entering the interior of the synagogue however brought both visual and cultural surprises.
Despite some knowledge of Orthodox Judaism it was still difficult not to feel a little bit taken aback by my first meeting with my main contact at the building, the President of the synagogue, Daniel Altmann. He extended his hand to shake Ian’s, but because of my gender he could not take mine, and initially he barely looked at me.

It was however a real privilege to be able to be allowed to see inside the synagogue, which is usually out of bounds to the public. The design and furnishings are intricate and lovingly formed creations by Hector Guimard. It is amazing to contemplate the amount of time it must have taken him to create the synagogue and to recognise how proud he must have felt to have authored every single detail of it – even the keyhole plates are in the Art Nouveau style!
Commissioned and funded by the Agoudas Hakehilos society, which was made up of Orthodox Jews of primarily Russian origin, the building is testament both to their arrival in France at the beginning of the twentieth century and also to their intention to make Paris their permanent home. Daniel Altmann talked with pride about how the community came to have their synagogue built by Guimard. By choosing the most eminent contemporary French architect the society created for themselves a building to be proud of and signalled their intention to become an important part of France’s and future.

Our departure from Paris proved as challenging as our arrival. We planned to catch a taxi to our hire car and to whiz over to Chartres in time for an early aperitif, but this was dashed when we learnt that the pesky Parisian taxi drivers had decided to strike that afternoon and blockade the city.

In Chartres our first day was occupied with filming general views in The Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres, and the time was enjoyable and relatively straightforward. This impressive example of Gothic architecture is genuinely awe-inspiring and we were relieved that the previous night’s rain had cleared and a bright blue sky illuminated the stained glass windows within the cavernous and fairly dark interior. We also had a good amount of time to play around with our Wally Dolly – a small trolley on tracks which allows Ian to glide the camera through objects on location. Gothic artistry and big pillars make fantastic foregrounds for gloriously coloured stained-glass window backdrops.
Day two began with an early morning canonical mass in the Cathedral. This was a small gathering, but an important way to demonstrate that although sometimes it is hard to tell, this historic building is more than just a tourist site and is still a functioning place of living worship.

The rest of our day was spent interviewing Rudy Moriniere, who is in charge of the care and restoration of various elements of the cathedral, including the Triforium (upper gallery) and the Crypt. My interview with Rudy was supposed to only take an hour or two and in the end took over five hours to complete. We were constantly interrupted by the eruption of drilling, hammering and banging. The otherwise helpful Tourist Office and Centre of National Monuments had conveniently failed to tell us that one side of the cathedral was actually being restored in these months. Consequently, despite Rudy’s valiant attempts to influence those workers whom he knew to stop work for ten minutes or so, just as a favour to him, and our attempts to wait for silence in their lunch break (only to discover different groups broke for lunch at different times) we were repeatedly interrupted by noise. After we had returned from our first break to wait for silence and we had persuaded some stained-glass window restorers to pause their work for us, it was tempting to throw ourselves off the Triforium in despair when the organist arrived and started practising his scales. "Oh yes, here is the organist now! He has come to practise. He is usually here for two, or two and a half hours," chirruped our translator cheerfully.
Our perseverance, however, was worthwhile to get a glimpse of what this great building meant to Rudy. He shared his privileged access to the Triforium with us and his excitement was clear when he got up close to the columns and pointed out traces of medieval red and ochre paint, or speculated on all the legions of workmen who had come into contact with the same walls before him. Having been a timid youth, Rudy revealed the power of this building on atheists as well as Christians, explaining that his new adult self-confidence is a result of working within the walls of the Cathedral – he really feels that the majestic spirit of the building has emboldened and changed him.

After concluding our interview, while eating a traditional Chartres macaroon and taking a final tour of this incredible cathedral, all memories of annoying building works were forgotten. Soon it was time to head back to Paris for a last delicious French supper, before returning to the UK… taxi strikes and erroneous carriage numbering notwithstanding. (Nonie Creagh-Brown)