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making things look too pretty or fussy like so many period dramas do.
“In terms of camera movements, the camera tends to move a lot more for the Jewish family. In those scenes it’s busier and more gestural, while for the Welsh family it’s more rigid, still and formal. And we used lots of close- ups and kept within a certain range of lenses – nothing too wide or too long – to make it seem more old-fashioned.”
The visual references would have come naturally to someone who was a post-graduate in sculpture and film- making at the Slade School of Art. She had also painted and sculpted as an undergraduate but the prospect of ending up in some riverside studio just did not appeal in the long-term. Stills photography also fascinated but making films remained the holy grail especially with her abiding interest in European cinema.
After trying everywhere and everyone – from the BBC to the NFTS – without success, she had to begin at the bottom as a freelance camera assistant embarking on the usual round of knocking on doors. But the arrival of Channel 4 really accelerated matters, not just for her but many other aspiring film-makers too and soon she was getting work on documentaries.
As if her gender wasn’t already hazardous enough in terms of industry advancement – let’s face it, women
cinematographers remain very much an exception to the rule – then her race might have seemed a problem when she was selected to shoot her first feature, Young Soul Rebels, around the turn of the 90s.
In fact she’d already built up a rap- port on earlier projects with its black director Isaac Julien. One of those was 1989’s Looking For Langston, about the black poet Langston Hughes. While on stage with the director at the Berlin Film Festival - where the “sumptuous monochrome” (wrote The Independent) film won an award – the inevitable question came from the floor. “How come a white woman shot this? “Why not?”, Julien replied, simply.
For its part, Young Soul Rebels, set in 1977 against the background of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, went on to win Best Film at the Cannes Critics’ Week in 1991. Apart from the odd feature job as a loader (on, for instance, Barbara Rennie’s Sacred Hearts), this was Kellgren’s first extended experience of working on set in an industry environment – and therefore quite invaluable.
Since then, her career has been a fascinating mix - from Sout h Bank Shows (Jodie Foster, Wynton Marsalis, Terry Gilliam, the Kirov Ballet and many more) to an Under
t he Sun BBC2 documentary, The Women Who Smile, compiled over two months in remotest Ethiopia.
The drama has been varied too, including two acclaimed pieces of Welsh film-making, Endaf Emlyn’s The Making of Maps and Marc Evans’ Arthur’s Departure, which suitably presaged her Celtic connection on Solomon And Gaenor. Lately, she was behind the camera on the live-action
sequences for Cartyn Cymru director Derek Hayes’ part-animation Welsh adventure, Mabinogi.
Long before all that recent LA excitement, Hollywood came calling to sign up Kellgren to light the week-long British ‘leg’ of Al Pacino’s fascinating 1996 Shakespeare documentary, Looking For Richard, a multi-faceted exploration of humpback monarch King Richard III.
The night before shooting was due to begin, she was summoned to meet the great man at the Dorchester: “It was like something out of a Coen Brothers movie. These four produc- ers sat round me in big comfy leather chairs – there was still one empty - smoking cigars and said, ‘We’re in England, and we want to know we’re in England, so lots of big wide shots. Also lots of close-ups of Pacino.’ Already two different briefs. They said that a lot of the footage already shot was too dark so, whatever I did, make sure he could see it. Then Pacino arrived, saying ‘Okay, what have they told you...’
“The trick, I soon discovered, was to try and stay ahead of him, but if you made him wait while you set something up, then forget it, it was ‘Turn over’ staightaway and off he’d go. He was improvising and directing at the same time. It was all about ‘the moment’, that was what was important to him. He’d say ‘Stick with me’, you’d be shooting some- thing and then he’d suddenly disap- pear. Where had he gone?
“Then just as quickly he’d re- appear in frame and know exactly what lens you were on. He was so film literate and his energy was incredible. I just felt very sorry for my crew
because I don’t think they ever got a meal break! On one occasion he’d kept on his radio mike and we heard him say, ‘No, I like her. She’s okay.’ You can imagine my sigh of relief.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Mumbo Jumbo
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NINA KELLGREN BSC
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Photos from top left: Nina Kellgren behind the camera; Endaf Emlyn’s Making Of Maps; Brian Blessed in Mumbo Jumbo; Al Pacino in Looking For Richard;
Nina with Production Designer Hayden Pearce (in cap), Grip Dai Hopkins (in red jacket), Gaffer Andrew Taylor (in front of silver board) and Script Supervisor Llinos Wyn Jones