Originally printed in Issue 43 - October/November 1994
Interview by Hugh Linehan, who was the editor of Film Ireland at the time.

After almost a year at the helm, Rod Stoneman, Chief Executive of the Irish Film Board, talks to Hugh Linehan about his experiences and opinions to date

Hugh Linehan: How does your background as a filmmaker and commissioning editor inform your approach now?

Rod Stoneman: Well, my 'oeuvre' is fairly modest –five documentaries– but that experience was a very crucial one in understanding the pros and cons of low budget production –the problems of keeping afloat as an independent filmmaker, and the experience of making 52 minute documentaries work for television. Around 1982 I stepped back from that and became a premature apparatchik. All I actually made while I was with Channel 4 was about 30 or 35 title sequences. But, even in a 25 second sequence, there is pleasure in the manipulation, the plasticity of the sound and image.

No matter how much you focus on a budget or a script, in the end a film works through the details of how a particular image works with a particular sound, how a meaning is made there, and I think that making sequences and programmes was a very useful and illuminating experience.

Being involved from the beginning in a brave new institution, which was trying to be an entirely different type of broadcaster, was also a formative experience. It was extraordinary to see the command structure evolve. I think it's important not to take too pessimistic a view of the current state of Channel 4 in particular and British broadcasting in general, although clearly there are increased commercial pressures around it, but things always change.

HL: Do you have any desire to return to filmmaking at any point?

RS: Well, it was clear to me that any delusions of making a major contribution to programme making or cinema were unfounded, so with some misgivings I accepted that I was going to engage with other pleasures –-of standing back from actual production, but having some relationship, perhaps a little more vicariously, with a much wider range of other people's films, through funding in Channel 4 and, in a different way, through the Irish Film Board.

The extraordinary range that the Channel 4 job involved –seeing a rough cut of an African film, a political documentary, a piece of experimental work and a low-budge feature made in Europe, all perhaps in the space of a week, was something of a compensation for not sticking my own sounds and images together.

HL: You did have an involvement with Ireland in a variety of different ways during your Channel 4 period.

RS: One of the basic central commitments of the Independent Television and Video Department was to work with the indigenous, that which was relevant in Birmingham or Bogota or Berlin or Belfast. The texture of authentic speech, whether in a political documentary or in a low-budget feature, is generally more interesting, and often more illuminating, than a great deal of television production which is, very often, parachuted in. There's a saying that most British television coverage of the Third World is researched in Terminal Three of Heathrow Airport. That commitment meant that, over my 10 years in Channel 4, I spent a lot of time in Northern Ireland, probably supporting somewhere between 12 and 15 documentaries. Mother Irelandis probably the best known and The Kickhams would be one of the more recent. We were also involved in low-budget features like Margo Harkin's Hush a Bye Baby, through the Derry Film and Video Workshop, and as a part-funder on Joe Comerford's High Boot Benny.

HL: So would it be fair to say that your perspective on Ireland was through a Northern filter?

RS: Yes, you're probably right. I always thought, there is such a threshold of boredom or resistance, that one of the crucial strategies is to approach the conflict in the North from more unexpected angles. To come in head on into something that is probably over-saturated by a certain kind of current affairs coverage is not very useful. You need something more unexpected to help extend understanding. Off the top of my head, something like Marilyn Hyndman's Under The Health Surface, or Cahal McLaughlin's Moving Myths, inevitably brings aspects of the conflict into the picture, but doesn't approach it head-on. There are other things, like Ireland, Trouble the Calm, which was a fairly tough socialist critique of the regime here in the South. That sort of work had refreshing politics without coming straight through the front door at you. There were exceptions, like Pack up your Troubles, which talked seriously about the possibility of a British withdrawal.

HL: In the context of drama, I was talking to a producer who has a project in a very late stage of development, set in the conflict, who thinks it might not happen now because the backers may feel that it will be out of date.

RS: Generally, since feature projects are not immediate, current affairs responses, then they're not going to be outdated by a sudden turn in history. Some of the best Vietnam films were made long after the conflict was over.

HL: The Northern conflict has been used in, some would argue, an unscrupulous way by filmmakers as a dramatic backdrop.

RS: Well that approach was outdated even at the time. If you're talking about the most crass examples of the balaclava genre, then hopefully most of that has passed by now, but I cannot agree that the more substantial films, like Hush a Bye Baby and High Boot Benny, would be immediately outdated by the change in political circumstance. If they have any validity as films, they will supercede the historical moment of the ceasefire. If timid funders want to look for excuses to pull out of projects, the can always find them.

I was involved, sailing very close to the wind, with a three part drama for Channel 4, called In a Time of Violence, set in the most knife-edge moment of South Africa's history, when everyone knew that things might change completely, there might be a military coup, no one knew what would happen in the April election of this year, and so one took a deep breath and thought –let's go for it– if something unexpected happens we'll put a date caption on the front.

HL: I suppose one of the reasons I'd be asking this is because, in relation to drama, most of the productions which have come out of Ireland in the last fifteen years have had a fairly large British investment, especially from broadcasters. There are certain types of subjects and settings which British film financiers have been enthusiastic about, and one of those is settings in the Northern conflict.

RS: Yes, but it's overdetermined isn't it, because again you can make interesting comparisons with American Vietnam films. There isn't a direct parallel, but to some extent a society's fascination with its own contradictions can be seen on one level as a disavowal and on another as a determination to deal with them and understand them. As an independent producer, before I went into Channel 4, I made a programme called Ireland, the Silent Voices, which was about the British media on Ireland. It didn't address the underlying set of political issues, it just looked at how British films and television have dealt with the conflict, going through bannings, censorship, news and current affairs, right through to mainstream features like Odd Man Out and The Long Good Friday. That was an ambitious undertaking, not without flaws, but the objective was to pose the questions, not the solution.

HL: Having lived and worked here now for almost a year, what's your perception of differences between Irish and British culture and society?

RS: The relationship between the two countries is a thought-provoking question. We should leave aside questions of competitive comparison, that masculine framework, with the inevitable triumphalism at the end of it, as to who's bigger or better. One would like to dream of a day where difference could be non-hierarchical: where there would be a celebration of difference, rather than what's better or worse.

But if we stand back from the myriad of cultural differences, which are extraordinary and pervasive –the fact that English is shared as a language is just an illusion– the underlying structural differences are often actually differences of scale. Some things work in a close-knit country of 3.5million people, and some in a country of 59 million. However, you can invert the whole question of scale by bringing in the Irish diaspora! It's not a simple thing, but there is a difference there. Also, the fact that Ireland has a sense that it is within Europe, whereas Britain confuses Europe with the Continent. Britain doesn't understand itself as part of Europe, but where else could it be?

HL: Do we see that in film and TV?

RS: Economically, a larger scale makes for a more effective basis for certain operations. But there are counteractions, including the supreme irony that this Government is committed to a much more substantial engagement with its film industry than its nearby, larger neighbour. There are cultural as well as political reasons for that, such as the way in which Britain is always half-looking across the Atlantic in terms of film. A dynamic is possible in this film community which means that, when a critical mass of different types of films is available, there is an interactive space to argue about. That argument may not lead to a resolution, but it's a healthy argument, which is more difficult in the US, for example, because of scale and diffusion, with so many people spread around a large country.

HL: But in a relatively homogenous culture, for the size of the country.

RS: That's debatable, where you draw the lines, whether something is homogenous or not. It's always important to look more closely, because there's always a movement to create identity in a unified way, to construct an 'imaginary' of Irish culture that effaces contradictions along the lines of cultural traditions, class an gender.

HL: In the 1980s, following the de-activation of the first Film Board, the slogan used by those lobbying for its reinstatement was that Irish people had the right to tell their stories to themselves.

RS: There's an interesting emphasis in that slogan on the verbal. 'Telling our own stories' is the metaphor, but it's not 'painting our own pictures'. Maybe in another country, like Italy for instance, there would be a more visual emphasis.

But yes, if the wherewithal is available to make an Irish film –a film that engages with Irish culture– its effects, its interaction with that culture may be much more immediate, focussed and energetic, because of the scale of that culture.

HL: Do we have examples that justify that in any way?

RS: You don't expect me to back up my opinions with concrete facts, do you?

HL: I ask because of those arguments and slogans for indigenous cinema in the 80s. Without getting into perceived merits or demerits of specific films, the question of how much the first Film Board's films actually intervened in the cultural discourse of the country at the time is an interesting one.

RS: It's easy for people who are involved in filmmaking, or the study of film, to mislead themselves and overestimate its effect. Some people believe that by creating a perfect film they will change people. This is not true. People change as a result of a lot of factors over a long time. Cultural and political effects are notoriously difficult to gauge.

HL: I'm not only talking about 'consciousness raising', but a perceptible, visceral effect upon the society. Family, for example, had a visible effect in entering the discourse of the country earlier this year.

RS: But the perceptible effect is quite superficial. If it's 'rude, controversial, politically provocative', and so on, it gets noticed and debate. Family had more to do with language.

HL: Is that not true of a lot of 20th century art?

RS: But the more subtle effects may be the more important ones. Someone was saying at the Imagining Ireland conference last year that there are two stereotypes, on the one hand the Connemara cottage, and on the other Roddy Doyle's working class. In Family, it's about the impact of an image of an area of working class culture that hasn't been taken seriously on the screen before. That's something deeper than just 'ohmygod, it's rude or brutal' or a 'bad image'. Scale again –there's a common vocabulary that means you could have a debate about a film in a bar –not just the IFC bar– in which most people would have most of the terms of that debate at hand. My impression is that might be more difficult in New York, talking about American cinema.

HL: Let's talk about my 'misrepresentation' of your analysis (Film Ireland 40), at the Film Base AGM, of modes of production outside the US, with particular reference to the situation in this country.

RS: I think I was inviting misrepresentation in a way by making such a polemical intervention. What I was trying to do was get a sense of what's specific to Hollywood and the industrial mode of production, and what's really different about non-Hollywood production, which is everything outside America, with the small exceptions of Bombay or Hong Kong. But your quotation of the provocative line that I 'couldn't see a film industry in Ireland, Italy, England, etc,' left out the second part of my sentence: 'on the Hollywood model.' I was trying to say that, outside of Hollywood, across the world, other cinemas can be more successful by playing to their own artisanal strengths and diversities, which are not the same as the strengths of a very highly centralised and industrialised process based in the bottom left hand corner of America. However one defines what constitutes filmmaking activity in Ireland, it's surely very different from what constitutes the extremely successful audiovisual industry in America.

HL: Perhaps there's a danger in that the language recalls the old culture/commerce divide. Industry has been a word used by people on one side of that divide, one that people on the other side therefore prefer not to use.

RS: You're right, it's a minefield. That was not the intention. The simple polarity between commerce and culture in film doesn't make sense. But even if you're going to paint the spectrum with a broad brush stroke, the Board's intention must be to cover a range of larger and smaller scale forms of film, from those which may well reach smaller audiences and achieve some cultural success, and which are frankly unlikely to make a lot of money, through to quality films which are aimed at a popular audience, and which should make a good commercial return.

HL: Is there a difference between those two types of film?

RS: If you look with any accuracy, there are commercial elements in even the most small budget 'art' film and there are artistic elements in the largest budget commercial film. Like the terms 'documentary' and 'fiction'. If you look closely at those they dissolve at the edges and are contradictory. One of the problems is that this facile dichotomy crops up so constantly because people take an extreme position and define themselves that way. There are certain producers who have a phobic fantasy that this Film Board will exclusively support 'elitist art films'. There are other filmmakers elsewhere in the culture who are deeply worried that the Film Board is putting too much of its resources into what they describe pejoratively as commercial cinema. What I'm trying to say is that one must refuse that destructive dichotomy, that polarised spectrum, that either/or choice.

HL: There is a perception that there are three types of areas, at the production finance level, that the Board is involved in at the moment. One is that the Board is coming in on the larger type productions by the more established companies with track records at in or around 10%; secondly, coming in with production finance on a number of indigenous small productions at a level of 20%; and thirdly coming in at a very early stage on an even smaller number of low-budget indigenous productions at an even higher percentage again, around 40%. How would you react to that perception?

RS: I'll try not to use too many expletives in responding to such a wild and inaccurate depiction. It's so clumsy to talk about rigid financial categories for funding films, which are complex cultural entities, with three levels, percentages, etc. Each film has a different budget, there's a different degree of desire for it, a different need in terms of our input, and there are no hidden, invisible categories that people will come up with if they dig around. When I started at the end of last summer, I was aware that the Board used 10% as an initial bench mark. From the beginning I thought the Board's financial input had to be more flexible, and they pointed out that they had used the word 'approximately' in front of the 10%. Sometimes 10% might be too high for a large budget film, because 10% of £50 million is a very large proportion of our funds. On the other hand, for a low-budget film, 10% doesn't make sense; to offer a £500,000 feature £50,000 would not be reasonable. So, rather than waste time searching for simple formulae, the best understanding of our approach is that we try to look at each film on its own terms.

HL: What kind of film has that been so far? I'm trying to see if there are any lines to be discerned. Are there particular types of projects the Board is interested in?

RS: There is serious enthusiasm and commitment evident in the range of films we have funded in the first year, which include a larger budget enterprise like Circle of Friends, through medium-sized films like Moondance and Words Upon the Windowpane, to lower-budget pieces like Korea.

HL: I may be asking an unanswerable question, which only the audiences can answer. But, in the same way that we can analyse the output or the involvement of any other institution, people are beginning to wonder what type of output that will be in the case of the Film Board. There are recognisable elements in the films supported by the first Film Board.

RS: I am very cognisant of the achievement of the first Film Board, and it's absolutely clear that any success we have is predicated on building upon its work, but I would hope that we would cover a much more concerted and wider range of films than the first Board was able to.

HL: Is there, then, a correlation between the low-budget film and what is seen as art/European cinema, or a range of subjects or treatments that would be perceived as indigenous?

RS: No; the 'indigenous' extends to large scale popular cinema like In the Name of the Father, My Left Foot and The Crying Game. Surely those films are identifiably 'indigenous'. Can't something successful be indigenous?

HL: What I'm wondering about is the notion of low-budget film as films which are in some sense 'difficult', or solely targeted at a niche audience.

RS: It's dangerous to make that simple synchrony; there are problems in raising the larger scale budget necessary for the high production values of popular film. Possible financiers, especially from the US, will say which of our recognisable stars will be in this picture? This affects the cultural integrity of the piece if you're not careful.

On the other hand, if you make a low-budget 'indigenous' piece, what is necessary for it to reach a wide international public, apart from brilliance? It's very little in terms of external information or compromise. The most specific textured piece from a very distant culture can be understood and enjoyed in this culture. For sure, not every nuance of meaning will carry through, but even if you don't have access to that level of background information, once you've got the basic context… You need to be careful of the notion of constraining the indigenous in terms of local understanding. That's the whole power of cinema. Look at the films in the Oscars last year like Green Papaya or Hedd Wynn.

HL: There's a pan-European perception at the moment that in some European countries, like Germany, the status quo is state-backed and filmmaking has run itself into an over-funded cul de sac, divorced from the audience.

RS: I don't know enough about that particular example, I don't see why that would have to be so, I would have thought that an intelligent degree of igniting production through state input into a mixed economy of film is pretty crucial to achieving the range and kind of critical mass we're talking about here. That seems to be, with the exception of a nearby island, pretty much accepted in most parts of Europe.

HL: There is a lot of talk around about a crisis facing European cinema, and, if we're living in a country that more and more defines itself in European terms, as you say, presumably we're going to become more involved in that debate. What would be your reaction tot some of the questions of declining audiences for European cinema?

RS: Something like The Crying Game –which has better 'gearing', in relation to the cost of its production to the money it made back, than Jurassic Park– is an indication of European cinema playing to its strengths, reaching its audience, engaging with its own culture and other cultures. The key term is diversity, because it's through that you have a range of films that can function differently and sometimes very surprisingly. Economic success comes unexpectedly. The chemistry of audiovisual production is very difficult to analyse or predict. It doesn't work like other commercial forms of investment.

HL: So should we apply the Hollywood dictum 'nobody knows anything'?

RS: Certainly one should be aware of the fallibility of critical judgements, but that awareness doesn't mean that it is no possible to do things carefully and intelligently and make a reasonable stab at decisions that are not arbitrary or purely subjective. But there is a subjective factor and you'd be mad not to admit that.

HL: Isn't it true, though, that there's a big difference in consensus in advance of production of a film and consensus after a film has been produced? It's unavoidable, in any situation regarding film production, particularly in a country as small as this, and given the Irish propensity for thinking that if somebody gets something, then somebody else loses out, that those choices are going to be the subject of debate.

RS: Of course it's easier after, but actually there's often a different kind of divergence looking at the finished film. Anything that keeps the debate flowing at some level is good. It's important that decisions are made project by project, and not weighing two projects against one another, you look at each on its own terms, and then see what the whole picture is.

HL: But you can't avoid comparing them to some extent, can you, if you're in a position where you're talking about a basket of projects?

RS: You talk about them one by one, and then look at the whole picture. But if, for example, you have two projects about the Beef Tribunal, then you'd have to choose between them, heaven forbid. But, by and large, you don't have to make that choice, you can go through each project and not have to compare. One other thing about decision making is that it's a Board which works consensually, we don't sit around the table voting. But even within a consensual mode of operation, in order to achieve pluralism, we have to respond to passion, and recognise that we'll never agree on everything. Some of the strongest films that can be made divide the sheep from the goats. Some people will rave about them enthusiastically and some people will condemn them. That energy is important.

HL: How much is the Board, particularly with low-budget, indigenous production, looking for input on crewing and creative decisions?

RS: The issue of the proportion of Irish workers involved in a production, especially the Heads of Department, is something we address in every film, whatever level of budget. There is no rigid quota, but it's something the Board is always concerned about. Creative input is another can of worms. In discussing a film at all of its stages I hope we can make a useful input. It's important, though, that we don't strut in with cigar and jackboots, that only leads to an Oedipal reaction! That respect for autonomy of the independent producer, whose film it really is, is carried into the dialectical discussions that there might be around a steenbeck.

HL: That sounds terribly civilised, but co-production partners might not be so civilised if you're working with a hard-nosed co-producer who might be making demands which the Board and the Irish producer might be trying to resist.

RS: Call me old-fashioned, but I believe in the power of reason, and, if you're trying to convince a director or producer, you should be able to do that through rational argument.

HL: Producers have said that things are a lot better than two years ago now, with the many changes, but that it's still extremely difficult to finalise packages. Is the Board moving towards being an enabling body, in helping to put together potential co-production partners?

RS: In funding of co-production the independents are the best people to propose their projects and achieve the right deal. The Board tries to lend support, through talking to broadcasters, US distributors, etc, but the front line is really the independent producers themselves. We've tried to help from the beginning, but only when appropriate –when someone is not so experienced then it might be useful to say have you thought of x, y and z. Maybe we are getting more pro-active.

There are too many examples of low-budget endeavours where producers try to jump-start the production, with all good intentions, but with the full budget not in place. Of course I sympathise with and support that bravery, but I think that we also have to be clear, and in some cases brutal, about saying that, unless a film is properly budgeted, and that budget is in place, including a contingency, we cannot commit our money into a structure that is not stable.

HL: That should be virtually automatic, shouldn't it?

RS: The Board must not be seen as anyone's nanny who will always turn up when it all falls to pieces and there are tears. We're not insurers or completion bonders, we're a part-funder, and we can't bail out every production that runs into severe financial problems. That's why independents are independents.

HL: People have been worried about that particular problem.

RS: So have we.

HL: You have talked about creative documentaries, with potential for theatrical or festival distribution, and the implication is that these are documentaries which are not likely to be funded by television. But essentially these will have to be part-funded by television.

RS: The expectation is that they're bound to be part-funded by broadcasters and eventually shown on television. I think the emphasis was on a 'theatrical aspiration' to set our sights on more ambitious documentary making than supplementing standard television output. I wanted instead to carve a pretty thin slice off the top of that –the more creative, ambitious, high-impact, feature length documentaries. It is so difficult to get documentaries into cinemas these days, often one is just talking about some special screenings and a festival presence.

HL: What are the objectives of Short Cuts, the new shorts funding initiative?

RS: The shorts are the first area in which w e have achieved a partnership with RTÉ. Hopefully the scheme will provide another rung of funding, supplementing the marvellous work that's been done by the colleges, Film Base and the Galway Film Centre. In the lean years, it's been a fertile area of production, of necessity. Hopefully, Short Cuts will provide modest but viable budgets for new talent to work through from a materials-only short en route to a first feature. It is crucial that this partnership gradually extends to the full range of new Irish features. Apart from the economics of the operation, it's important that a broad public can see the films that we have been involved in, after their theatrical release, on television. We must establish new Irish cinema as a partnership; it is in our mutual interest.

HL: There are various types of short film scheme in the UK and here, and they're perceived in different ways; some as being more script based, while others are seen as being more about developing specific talent, like Short and Curlies.

RS: Short Cuts is between those models, in that certainly there are filmmakers to whom I very deliberately said 'you should think of this scheme, as it may be relevant to you at this point in your work.' In the end, though, the decisions will be made on the specific projects that are proposed, so no cards are marked in advance.

HL: And would you get involved in putting the different elements together?

RS: I'd prefer not to. I would hope they would come to us with them in place. In some cases, if it seems that there's an element missing, we should try to be helpful in that, but hopefully they'll mostly be in place.

HL: What has been the effect of the Board's Galway location?

RS: The principle of decentralisation is supportable politically and has a number of very real advantages. I must also say that personally I very much enjoy living in Galway, although that is rather beside the point. It would be dishonest to deny that there are specific operational problems in relation to the proportional spread of filmmakers around the country, but I think we're coping well. There are pros and cons, I guess, but remember I've had no experience of working in Dublin.

HL: Do you think it's had an impact on the situation in Galway?

RS: I don't know, difficult to say, really. The notion that people stand a better chance of receiving funding because they come from the West coast is laughable.

HL: What kind of projects has the Board been receiving so far?

RS: It's early days yet, too early to get an adequate sense of the overall spread, but one thing I'm curious about is the preponderance of projects that are set in the 50s. It's a particular moment of Irish history which quite a lot of films seem to circle around and I'm interested in the reasons behind that. It's also the case that there are not nearly enough women directors, comedies or imaginative contemporary dramas in Irish. It's probably true that there are a lot of oedipal dramas and male rites of passage around, but we're beginning to achieve a critical mass which will widen that out a bit.