Steve McQueen

Artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen makes a stunning debut – easily one of the best filmmaking debuts in recent years. Since its premiere at Cannes, the Camera D’or winning Hunger has picked up numerous film festival accolades and critical praise due to the filmmaker’s approach – one that powerfully uses the tools of filmmaking, one that exploits the frame as a larger canvas and one that does not compromise any of emotional content for the sake of art. It's set in 1981 where IRA prisoners are brutally treated at a prison without having a political status. To protest their condition, the leader Bobby Sands starves himself to death. An extremely difficult film to stomach, but a must for true cinephiles, Hunger is first rate in all departments and benefits from a tour de force performance by Michael Fassbender. I had he chance to speak to Steve McQueen in a phoner interview earlier this month.

Steve McQueen

Yama Rahimi: Tell us how this project came about?
Steve McQueen: I was eleven years old when this story unfolded in the news. I was watching this man's image on TV without knowing who he was and the number of days he was on a hunger strike but did not understand what was going on. My parents told me that this person was hurt because he was not eating and that equation was very strange to me. It was a coming of age situation where cracks appeared in the walls of my surroundings and things were not as they seemed and of course 22 years later still confused by it I had the opportunity to make a film about it.

YR: Were you looking to make a feature film or did it happen because of this project?
SM: No I wasn't at all. The opportunity aroused and I asked if I could tell this story. That narrative and story interested me enough to approach it.

YR: Why did you want to tell this story? Did the situations in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib Prisons shape how you told the story of Bobby Sands?
SM: Well they happened during the filming but when I was working on the project, there was no Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib. Of course history repeats itself where people abuse their power and individuals abuse their bodies. Nowadays people abuse their bodies by taking other people with them and not with hunger strike.

YR: That's what struck me while watching the film and how the Bobby Sands story is still relevant today. How important was to you to strike a fair balance between both sides -- the prisoners and the officers?
SM: I wanted to tell a story of human beings, I identified with prisoners as much as I did with the prison officers. It has to be a situation where you look at people as if they were you. I don't think anyone is evil but they are put in a situation where they can advantage of people. It was to look at those people and embracing them.

YR: The film is very stylized without sacrificing the substance. Were you concerned about the style coming in the way of story?
SM: No because the camera was dictated by the architecture. It was a necessity of what I was doing. It wasn't much about the style, it was about how the space dictated me where to put the camera. So I was free to do what I wanted because the space was very limited. The cells were 5 foot by 7 foot.

YR: Tell us about the casting of Michael Fassbender who gives a phenomenal performance as Bobby Sands?
SM: Well the situation with Michael was that I didn't think much of him the first time. I thought he was a bit arrogant but it was my naiveté because it was my first time doing auditions. It was also my naiveté that actors are nervous at auditions but after the second time I knew he was the guy.

YR: How much of the script was storyboarded?
SM: None.

YR: What was the biggest challenge?
SM: Convincing people that I could do something which was not conventional.

YR: Were you surprised by the success of the film in Cannes and beyond?
SM: I was, but I knew we made a good movie but what I'm most happy about is that the people that worked on this film will work again and make more films.

YR: What are some filmmakers or films that inspired you?
SM: I'm not inspired by filmmakers or films but more by life itself but I love Jean Vigo's Zéro de Conduite and Andy Warhol's Couch.