It’s About Us

“What is the film about?” As a film journalist, this is a question you are constantly being asked. As a writer or director, developing a new script, it occurs even more often. In the opinion of script advisor David Wingate - whose credits as a script doctor include among others Lukas Moodysson’s FUCKING ÅMAL - this question can easily kill creativity.

In yesterday’s Berlinale Talent Campus workshop, Wingate philosophised about the true meaning of the question and advised the Talents, how they can sidestep the issue. It was an inspiring encounter with an intelligent expert and made you think about creativity and the relationship between an artist and his work long after the session had finished.

Wingate interprets the question almost as an insult. As if the film were not enough, producers, commissioners, journalists want to know what it is about. He admits that he too, as an advisor, has in the past spoilt films by asking precisely this question. “It is forcing you to distance yourself from the film you’re working on. This can be useful at times, but also very dangerous. Film changes, it moves, the ‘about’ changes.” Wingate is convinced one cannot express a film in words. “Film is an almost entirely non-verbal medium. I think a film made by an illiterate person would be great.”

Illustrated with vivid anecdotes about artists, who had to describe their own work of art, Wingate emphasises the absurdity of the task. British painter Lucian Freud, for example, when asked what his paintings were about, replied: “Anything I could say about my painting would be as meaningful as the grunts, that tennis players make while hitting the ball”.
Wingate calls it “the tennis-grunt-theory”, a theory one could easily apply to all artists. Similarly, a choreographer replied to the question as to what the dance was about, retorted: “You’ve seen the performance, haven’t you?” “Yes”, “So?”. And finally the artist Anish Kapoor: “My sculptures are not 'about'. If I knew what they were about I wouldn’t have to do them.”

The advice Wingate gives to the Talents is clever if not easy to apply in every case. He is convinced that it is always easier for an outsider to say what our film is about. “When asked by a commissioner, it’s important to ask yourself what he really wants to ask. You have to read between the lines.” Often he means something else in sub-phrases: Is the film ready? Are you ready? Where are you in the process? Can you grasp of the film as a whole? He wants to measure your relationship to the film and your engagement.” A useful trick, according to Wingate, is to turn the "what" into a "who". “Who the film is about, is often easier to answer. In other words, describing what the people in the film are about.“

Wingate summed up by saying, that the real answer to the question as to what your film is about should always be: “It’s about us.”

Sarah Stähli

© Berlinale Talent Campus 2007