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behind the camera
ON THE
MERSEY T MERSEY
An interview with Jakob Ihre
BEAT
wo days after he finished lighting his first feature film in Liverpool, Swedish- born Jakob Ihre recently found himself 5,000 metres up in the Himalayas shoot- ing a commercial. There could perhaps have been
no greater or more sudden contrast between working in the urban North- West on a black comedy co-starring popular funnymen Ricky Tomlinson and Johnny Vegas, and then creating an ad for a Japanese glass company on the roof of the world.
But for the amiably deadpan young cinematographer from Gothenburg, it was all in... well, per- haps rather more than just a day’s work, as he reflected on such a dra- matic switch of locations.
Ihre is only just 27 but he’s already packed much intriguing work and trav- el into his, to date, short but enviably varied film-making career.
Short film collaborations with fel- low National Film & TV School gradu- ate, director Pooja Kaul have taken him to India (Rasikan Re) and Hungary (Winter Trail), while another project once saw Ihre perched on one of film history’s most famous locations... the Odessa Steps in the Ukraine.
This was for a 35mm short fiction film called Dust, directed by Michale Boganim, and with memories of Eisenstein’s indelible images from Battleship Potemkin swirling about in his subconscious, Ihre admits he sim-
ply couldn’t sleep before the shooting the scene by the steps.
“Yes, I was very anxious. I felt we had to try and create something amaz- ing because it’s so famous cinemato- graphically. At first I couldn’t think how to approach it. In the end, what we did was this: there’s a tracking shot along the steps but you don’t see them in full.
“At the beginning of the shot, you see a woman cleaning the steps, dust- ing and polishing. She disappears quite quickly but you continue to hear, while tracking, the sound of dusting. You get a nice feeling of history some- how passing over these steps, as if she’s brushing off the dust of history. Of course, we also had to have a shot of the whole steps too. I’m not to happy with that – but it’s in the movie,” he smiled, ruefully.
Dust is one of two films he has made to date with Boganim – the other’s Memoires Incertaines – and both have ended up laden with awards from festivals as diverse as Cannes, Kiev, Tel-Aviv, Leeds and Palm Springs.
In fact, Dust – which began as a piece about the Jewish community in Odessa – has now been given the go- ahead, Ihre enthused, to be developed into a fully-fledged feature film with two more sections to be shot in Little Odessa, New York and in Israel.
Ihre has been shooting profession- ally since he was 18. “Most of my col- leagues grew up with stills images and processing but when I was 12, I was
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Photos main: Jakob Ihre; above: Johnny Vegas in The Virgin of Liverpool