Page 6 - Fujifilm Exposure_19 Spider_ok

An interview with Chris Menges BSC
“I’ve learned from so many people, so what I pass on would have been learned from someone else anyway.”
Chris Menges speedily reels off his “inspi- rations” (Raoul Coutard, the early Milos Forman films, documentarist Fred Wiseman and, especially, John Cassavetes) with an almost wide-eyed enthusiasm. It’s only when it comes to talking about himself that the conversa- tion goes into slo-mo as Menges uneasily, at times even rather painfully, picks his way through a remarkable career which is now in its sixth decade.
There have been Oscars (The Killing Fields, The Mission), BAFTAs (TV’s Last Summer, The Killing Fields) and Evening Standard Technical Awards (Local Hero, Angel) not to mention copious trophies for A World Apart, his first of (to date) four films as director.
Most recently, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s British Independent Film Awards. After the screening of a too-brief compilation of his best work, Menges’ mumbled acceptance speech was gracious but even briefer. Never was the old saw, a picture tells a thousand words, more apt.
But if this latest catch-all accolade after so many other glittering individual prizes suggests some sort of finality in his cinematographic progress, then that couldn’t be further from the truth for Menges, now 61.
In fact it was rather appropriate that his Lifetime Award should have been presented by Stephen Frears, for the director and Menges have just started working together again for the first time in 15 years on the noirish, Dirty Pretty Things. A “picaresque thriller” set in London involving asylum seekers and the black market in body parts, it co-
continued on page 6
EXPOSURE • 4 & 5