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BEYOND OUR K
BEYOND OUR K
An interview with Barry Ackroyd BSC
Had things turned out a little differently then Barry Ackroyd might now be a sculptor. The 47 year old award-win- ning cinematographer had initially entertained thoughts of that rather solitary career when he enrolled on a course at the Portsmouth Fine Art College.
But though he soon switched his attention to a more collaborative art form, the influence of that early ambi- tion remains in
his work.
“I think my
camera work is very sculptural,” he says, “it’s not static frames beautifully lit, it’s more to do with the juxtaposition of the camera, the subject and the light, which is an art in itself.”
Perhaps best
known for his work with Ken Loach, an association that began with Riff Raff in 1990 and has continued through eight further films.
Ackroyd also learned a great deal from his days making documentaries around the world. These culminated in the Oscar winning Anne Frank Remembered in 1995. But he had always been a film fan, inspired by the works of the films of John Cassavetes, the French New Wave and, of course, Loach himself.
“I think I saw Kes in Manchester when it came out,” Ackroyd recalls.
“And I recognised the kids in that school. I’m from a northern industrial town, with a comprehensive school background, exactly the same kind of background as they had.
“For me the ray of hope in Kes, which has influenced so many people, was that if you could make films about these kinds of people then these kinds of people, people like me, could be making films.”
Ackroyd’s CV might suggest that he is a particularly political animal, with
the recent Loach rollcall – Land & Freedom, My Name Is Joe and Bread & Roses among them – as well as things like the TV movie Hillsborough, to his name.
“I am politi- cal in that sense,”
he adds. “But if you choose to make blockbuster
American films they are just as politi- cal as Ken Loach films, they spread the word of American culture. It’s not the kind of thing I’d like to do, but then I do work on commercials. But having started on documentaries I always thought of myself as a filmmaker as much as a cinematographer. That’s the way I lend my skills to a film.”
Having recently shot Dust for Milcho Manchevski, Ackroyd also worked on key sections of Loach’s newest film, Navigators, which is set around the privatisation of the British railways.
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Photo main: Barry Ackroyd BSC; inset: David Wenham and Joseph Fiennes in Dust
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