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The Future's Bright, The Future's Figgis

Despite the imminent release of Cold
Creek Manor,a thriller he
made for Touchstone, Mike Figgis spent last week promoting artistic autonomy
and experimentation. Returning to the very cinema in Newcastle where he was
first infected with the film bug, Figgis performed - yes performed - an enthralling
remix of his real-time, split-screen LA story Timecode. The performance was
the final act of the city's pioneering Audio Visual Festival - filling November
with inventive global cinema, digital media, visual art and audience participation,
which included the European premiere of Cold Creek Manor ("I asked Disney
nicely if I could show it"). Organised by a collective of North East talent,
with the independent Tyneside Cinema at its head, the Festival presented a vision
of a democratic artistic future, where talent is liberated by digital technology.

Figgis comes across as a man with a wry wit on a serious mission. He talks
with equal authority about art and politics; George Bush, who arrived in the
North East at around the same time as Figgis, is "thick in irony",
with a heavy emphasis on the word thick. Like the President Figgis broke off
from a busy schedule to visit Newcatle. In between Q & A sessions in Edinburgh
and York he spent the weekend with his son Louis (named after Louis Armstrong),
two nights with the festival audience and a morning watching the rugby world
cup final whilst being grilled about his ambitions, for this article. Figgis
approach to cinema begins with the understanding that "the industry is
inherently conservative" and ends with the proclamation of "support
for anyone who says 'I'm bored with the status quo, lets do something different".

It's not often you can say that innovation and gyration co-exist but they do
in a live Timecode event. "It's a performance art connection…pushing
the boundaries of film." There's as much to enjoy watching Figgis at his
mixing desks, sifting cds, twisting dials and shaking his "red mullet"
(the name of his production company and the phoney company that features in
Timecode). On screen four image-tracks, recorded simultaneously, featuring Salma
Hyak, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Stellan Skaarsgard and a host of other talents improvising
around Figgis' ironic storyline. They lie, cheat, murder and emotionally implode
jumping from track to track, responding like Star Trek extras to earthquakes.
Figgis points out that without digital technology you couldn't put four concurrent
image tracks, each comprising a single hour-and-a-half shot, on the same screen.
"You'd have to have edits. I wanted to go beyond continuity to something
else." Which is exactly what he does in the live mix.

Leaving the images alone, Figgis assumes complete control of the sound. He
makes himself master of the narrative, fading deftly between dialogue from the
four sections of the film, directing the audience to whichever part of story
he prefers. He chooses the musical score on the spot, immediately adjusting
emotional impact and meaning. He can remove dialogue altogether, showing the
images in silence or over-score them with anything form Mahler to the Chemical
Brothers. At the Newcastle event Figgis even stopped the film completely, rewound
and replayed sequences bringing to the fore different dialogue or using another
piece of music. The presentation combines immense technical acumen and narrative
understanding, resulting in a unique blend of theatricality and the edgy ambience
of a nightclub. No wonder Figgis is soon to tour the Timecode remix like a dj's
road show.

In part the experience justifies Figgis belief that "sound is the most
important thing in film" and satisfies his want, after being removed as
composer from The Browning Version which he also directed, "to always control
the music". The overall effect is to make the audience engage with the
film, rather than just receive it. You have to question your reading of the
film as the mix changes.

The Audio Visual Festival Director, Mark Dobson, views Figgis' live mix as
the fulcrum of a "spectacular cross-over of art, digital media and film".
The festival brimmed with experiments in digital media, club graphics or "vj-ing",
music videos, live performance, video art, animation, workshops, lectures and
feature films. Who wouldn't want to see Mathew Barney's weird and wonderful
the Cremaster Cycle, or the cult Iranian hit Ten, or the Chimera Project's fascinating
melee of sounds and visuals, or Peter Greenaway's multi-media digital extravaganza
The Tulse Luper Suitcases? "Welcome to a world of creative convergence"
the AV Fest programme read, "if it's new its in AV". So, is this kind
of fusion the future of cinema?

Some film analysts believe that George Lucas leads a pack of Hollywood power
brokers trying to get digital projection to replace celluloid. If that happens
they'll be no need to make films on traditional 35mm film. More than that shooting
on 35mm is expensive, largely because of the time involved in a shoot. Figgis
summarises the situation by explaining how producing Cold Creek Manor "involved
a lot of economics". Shot in Canada where cheap crews and locations saved
Disney 10%, it still took three months to make. Timecode took three weeks to
produce and daily shoots could be examined without add on costs from printing
film. Figgis is confident the money he makes from Cold Creek Manor "will
subsidise me for the next three years and the next three digital projects".
The economic imperatives for a digital revolution in cinema are immense for
big corporations and the Audio Visual Festival is already ahead of the game
in offering models for inventive and cost effective ways of working; "most
of the people who worked on stuff for this festival did it for free, with guidance
from professionals" says Mark Dobson.

With the right support and promotion the AV Fest (an affectionate name coined
by devotees) could become a UK based digital equivalent of the Sundance Film
Festival. Sundance began life as a place for people of independent spirit and
limited funds to find an audience. When the studios spotted Sundance, in independent
veteran Tim Roth's words, they "said, hang on there's something we're missing
out on here - it's cheap and people like it". The AV Fest isn't anywhere
near Sundance's level of name recognition yet but it will be back in 2005 and
you can be sure it will bigger and better second time around. You only have
to ask Figgis to find out why. He's done his live Timecode remix in about twenty
cities across in the US and UK but complains "it wasn't getting reviews
as it's not a film showing and it wasn't getting written up as art because reviewers
don't consider film to be art….but now people are looking."

Indeed they are looking and in the way people do when a new phenomena emerges
- with a mixture of fascination and misunderstanding. Cold Creek Manor, although
shot on 35mm and following many conventions of the thriller genre confused tabloid
critics on its US release, although both New York and LA Times gave it excellent
write-ups. The latter two were fascinated by the use lighting techniques, shot
composition and an array of neat tricks borrowed from digital video. Figgis
knew what he was doing too: "I constantly found myself saying we need less
light, because I knew you could do that from dv." The two papers also enjoyed
the film's emphasis on character and social situation, inherited from the economic
constraints of Figgis' low budget digital pictures. Significantly, Figgis admits
to making conscious choices in directing Cold Creek Manor based on his digital
experience and dislike for the dirge of high-octane horror flicks; "I had
zero interest in making that sort of film".

At the Audio Visual Festival Figgis found a welcoming audience for Cold Creek
Manor and also for his campaign to "open up" film to a digital generation.
"Digital media is of course more democratic as you can bypass those [corporate]
organisations if you want to. But you can't do anything unless you open up an
audience and the Festival does that. The energy seems good on Tyneside."
Herein lies the problem for planners of the 2005 Audio Visual Festival. If you
create something genuinely innovative in cinema sooner or later the moneymen
come to town, bringing with them an agenda that can easily sweep aside your
own. The AV Fest pulled together by volunteers and like-minded digital fanatics
was democratic and participatory but, precisely because it was pioneering and
promoted cheap filmmaking, it may not be to sustain autonomy. As Figgis himself
puts it: "digital media gives you great creative freedom but freedom brings
its own set of responsibilities." Which is perhaps why, in the midst of
all his experimentation and alongside his advocacy of democratic, accessible
digital filmmaking Figgis sends out a warning: "view DV with a combination
of optimism and realism."
Ben Dickenson