I had to beg to get on the bus as it was the last bus leaving town and then we got dropped at 4 in the morning and we had to walk 25km to rice fields to get to where their rice fields were, with the camera gear and all our stuff in the heat. And then there was a gang of armed thugs with swords and machetes ready to attack the villagers. Thankfully there was no violence, but there was a lot of that type of stuff going on. I hear stories of other people coming back with well over 1000 hours of material. One of the difficulties as well was that I wanted to translate everything because so much of the story is told through what people say and so with the subtleties of what people say we build the narrative structure. It should feel like a drama almost, like a conventional fiction film. Or that was one of the hopes. We wanted to ensure that everything unfolds in real time. There's no people talking about what has happened. You witness the events as they really happened. That was the reason that I stayed for so long. I wanted to make that kind of a film, rather than something else more one-dimensional with interviews. Which is a great way to tell a story, but when the story was really happening, it felt like we should be there if we can. And I was younger and had less family ties so I could do something like that. I don't think I could ever do that again. It was very complicated. We had to translate everything and then read through all of the transcripts and build the scenes up based on what people said, and plant little foreshadowings through the edit.
Did the authorities try to get rid of you at any point? Did they know what you were doing?
No. I never published anything while I was there. I was there for the 6 years but I had never published any materials about what I was doing. So none of my footage was every really online, other than a trailer or the odd wee bits and bobs to help with fundraising and audience building. They never gave me any trouble whatsoever. I had a press card and I was allowed to do my job. If anything they were quite respectful and I was respectful of them as well. I was never on the side of the protestors, I never joined in. I was always outside as an observer looking on, so when there was confrontation I would say to the police "I'm letting you do your job, not you let me do mine please" and they were always quite respectful of that. I don't know what the situation would be like know, I think there's been a real downturn with respect to the political climate there, and they are arresting foreign journalists. There's a foreign filmmaker in prison at the moment for flying a drone over the opposition party's headquarters, but this guy kind of has a chequered past and is a bit abrasive. I think he is in prison probably because of how he dealt with his situation rather than for what he did in itself. So I don't know now that the film is out there I don't know what the situation would be if I were to go back there. But I would like to be able to go back to document the elections later this year.
32 CinÉireann / May 2018