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COMING SOON
THEFORGIVENESSOFBLOODALBANIA
fter British DP Rob Hardy BSC Ahad finished Justin Chadwick’s
The First Grader in Kenya, he
travelled to Albania to shoot The Forgiveness Of Blood for Joshua Marston, who together with co-writer Andamion Murataj, won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.
The First Grader, for release later this year, was a tough shoot but, according to Hardy was “a walk in the park” compared with Blood, which took him to the North West of Alba- nia on the border with Montenegro.
“It was the hardest place I’ve ever shot. It was a beautiful part of the world with a wall of mountains stretching from South to North. But the landscape itself is strewn with rubbish. The culture seems to be that nobody wants to take responsibility for anything that’s outside their own sphere. Corruption was everywhere and seemed to depend on what day it was or what the weather was like.” Marston, the California-born former journalist and teacher turned director of the Oscar-nominated Maria Full Of Grace, about a pregnant Colombia drug ‘mule’, called Hardy up after seeing the DP’s Red Riding episode in New York.
“I requested the script, which Josh, a multi-linguist, has co-written with an Albanian writer and found it was very different to the norm. It’s a
Photos left: Scenes from The Forgiveness Of Blood and on location with DP Rob Hardy BSC
CORIOLANUSSERBIA-MONTENEGRO
very honest contemporary story centred around a 15-year-old boy whose ambition is to start an internet café in a country that’s essentially ripping itself apart with every regime change. He’s also falling in love with his classroom sweetheart.”
So far, not so hugely out-of- ordinary. But here was the kicker: the film was to be shot in Albania with an all-Albanian cast of non-actors. The film also deals with the country’s knotty problem of blood feuds which were first set down in Albania’s ‘Great Kanan of Leke Dukagjiniis’, a 15th Century book about codes of behaviour.
Says Hardy: “Josh asked me to come on board because he wanted to give the story much more of a cinematic scope then he had
with Maria.
“He said he’d need pushing every day to get to that point because as a writer-director who’s obsessed with performance he might clock into autopilot which, for him – as I’d noticed it had been on Maria – was medium close-up all the time. It was a real challenge.”
The Forgiveness Of Blood
was originated on 16mm ETERNA Vivid 500T 8647 and ETERNA Vivid 160T 8643
ilmed in Serbia and Montenegro, FCoriolanus, adapted from
Shakespeare’s play by John Logan
(Gladiator), marks the directing debut of actor Ralph Fiennes who also stars in the title role.
Set in “a place calling itself Rome” this is the vivid, contemporary re-telling of a brutal political thriller in which Fiennes is joined by Gerard Butler, Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Cox and Jessica Chastain.
To shoot his film which he’s coveted ever since first playing Coriolanus on stage 10 years ago, Fiennes called up Barry Ackroyd BSC after they’d first met on the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker in
which he had a colourful cameo. What was his ‘brief’ for the film? Said Ackroyd: “Directors often say to me, ‘do your thing’, whatever that ‘thing’ is, but The Hurt Locker itself wasn’t a reference as such; it was to use the signature work I do plus the big, composed frames Ralph
had in mind, to tie the style to the subject.”
References? “With the battle scenes, I’d had experience shooting those. We did, however, look at Peter Brook’s 1971 King Lear, shot [by Henning Kristiansen] in black-and-white with some very beautiful compositions and framings. That was an influence.
“Coriolanus is much more in the realm of what I do lighting-wise; that is, trying to eradicate all the paraphernalia and just concentrate on the subject, the words and
the performances. It’s very stripped down.”
Coriolanus was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA 500T 8573 and ETERNA 250D 8563
Photo above: Gerard Butler (centre) in Coriolanus; above l-r: Actor/Director Ralph Fiennes, focus puller Oliver Driscoll and DP Barry Ackroyd BSC
54 • EXPOSURE • THE MAGAZINE • FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE