In September 2014 Carole Manship was "In conversation with Sima Gonsai" for the newsletter.
PF: How did you get into film producing?
SG: I originally trained as a classical Indian dancer for 12 years from age 11. I grew up in Blackburn and came to realise that Indian dancing was definitely not seen as a profession up north, so I did a degree at Wolverhampton University in film and 16mm direct animation taking in the elements of dance. I was interested in how dance could be captured on film and decided to do a Masters in ‘Dance to the Camera’ at Birmingham City University. I found the creative side of film editing and camera work was very much like choreographing a dance. I worked a lot with sound and images, informed by dance itself. I see Indian dance as colourful, vibrant, physical and spiritual and I wanted to capture the essence of this in film.
PF: We saw on Linked In that you have collaborated with Freefall Dance Company at Birmingham Royal Ballet. What is that about?
SG: I have been working with Freefall Dance Company for the past two years. Freefall has a group of 10 dancers with profound learning disabilities and works in partnership with the Birmingham Royal Ballet. I’m very proud of the film we made – called Freefall – which is now being screened at dance festivals worldwide. Dance for the camera is a specific genre that few know about, it can be seen as high art as it combines dance and high production values but is now becoming of interest to both dance and film audiences.
PF: You’ve made a film about the Birmingham suffrage movement suffragettes. How can you do drama on top of all the dance films?
SG: There is a massive contrast between the two and my experience after all my dance work led me to it. As a student, I was a keen cyclist and wasn’t dancing as much and had started to venture into experimental film, putting the movement of cycling into it.
The Arts Council saw the direction I was going in and approached me to apply for an artist grant. I came up with a project called Cycle Dialogues, in which I visited different countries with my bike and a camera. (This was about 2006.) The first ones I chose were Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia because I saw them as colourful and wonderful countries with all the elements that appealed to me. I arrived by plane and just started out with a map, stopping people who lived there – not tourists – asking the questions: Where shall I go and why? I very much explored the country on two wheels and found that the conversations with people were the highlights of the trips. The first trip was 1700 miles long; that’s a lot of movement. The last country I visited was Ireland in 2011, adding up to 6000 miles across 7 countries in five years.
Each country was different; the people were different; and the conversations were different. Brought together, the project included filmmaking, writing and storytelling.
PF: And what was this film about suffragettes?
SG: In tandem with my cycling, I started working with Birmingham Archives and Heritage, part of the Library of Birmingham. They had seen my work and consequently asked me to help bring their archives to life, which have such diverse stories and people. So, since 2011, I have worked solidly on history and heritage projects. Fight for the Right, the Birmingham Suffragette Story is a 20 minute drama based on historical fact found in the Birmingham archives but written with the use of fictional characters. The Producers’ Forum event in June was interesting as Faye Ward, producer of the new film Suffragette was the speaker. I had met her prior to the talk and discussed the possibility of screening Fight for the Right in tandem with the release of her Suffragette film and we’ve been talking to BFI about its distribution – especially so into schools as the Suffragette movement is taught as part of the curriculum. What was exciting for me was to have two completely different sets of young girls to work with – one from the Pakistani and Somali community in a Birmingham state school and the other from an all girls school. They were able to share their thoughts of women’s right to vote and it left each of the girls empowered in some way. The film is now in Sydney and has been nominated there for Best Short Film. It’s being shown for a second time in Manchester at the Pankhurst Centre and was featured at the opening of the new Library of Birmingham. My aim is to inspire debate in how far we have come to strengthen equality of women. I have also made a film about the Birmingham Chartist movement.
PF: Are there more dramas in the pipeline?
SG: For the past five years, I’ve had funding for various projects from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the current such project is After Dawn, a 20 minute drama about World War I, again using young people as actors.
PF: And what about dance films?
SG: My first film with Freefall Dance Company, Freefall, will be screened in San Francisco in November – it’s a five minute short dance film. It has been screened at several screen dance festivals worldwide including Colorado, Cuba, Norway, France and Britain. I’m currently working on a 10 minute film called Seated. This is a site specific film. I’m very excited about sending it off to festivals, and Channel 4 has expressed an interest for developing short dance films with Freefall Dance Company for Random Acts.
PF: What’s your relationship with The Producers’ Forum?
SG: I’ve always been associated with the Forum - in the early days, I was mentored in a PF programme . But I didn’t have the impression then that The Producers’ Forum was an organisation for me. Now that it has opened up its membership, I have finally joined. I learn a lot from the events ‒ each meeting and talk always teaches me something new. One good thing is that The Producers’ Forum will be able to help me promote (when we’re ready next year) my latest project, Origins, about getting South Asian artists and filmmakers to come forward and share their work.
This interview was originally published in our September 2014 Newsletter, http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=4a23fd5acbcc0d2c93735b669&id=6d95c2ec58.
An Archive of all the Producers' Forum Newsletters can be found at http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/home/?u=4a23fd5acbcc0d2c93735b669&id=7fa4d4166c
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