Interview with Charles-Henri Belleville in Resources on DFGDocs

by Zoë Morgan Chiswick

Charles-Henri Belleville Charles-Henri Belleville has hit the film scene running; as the youngest filmmaker to be nominated for the Raindance Best UK Feature award, the 24-year-old has a lot more in store. After working on Dirty Sanchez and WAZ Charlie soon made his own mark with first feature The Inheritance and was subsequently nominated for Best New Director at the BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards 2008 and for the 4Talent Awards 2007.

His latest venture is documentary Midnight Madness, telling the incredible story of an unlikely basketball team brought together by one man between the hours of Midnight and 6am. Currently playing at Festivals the documentary will be released in the New Year so watch out for it coming soon at a Cinema near you.

With experience of both documentary and fiction films, DFG interviews Charlie on the similarities and differences between the two forms and the wide world of film which never ceases to captivate and inspire him.

Still from Midnight Madness Having made your directorial debut with a fiction film, what made you want to try documentary?
I really admire directors who can do both [fiction and documentary], like Scorsese who’s just incredible at both. I don’t really think you should be limited by one type of story. As a person I’m very curious: the day I stop being curious is the day I die as a director. A documentary’s like a slice of life, it gets me thinking then I won’t sleep thinking about it.

The subject of Midnight Madness really drew me in. The main concept was set up by a man called Nhamo Shire, who started up this basketball club to combat crime in London. A mother and her child got murdered in the area [Willesden] and his idea was to get kids off the streets and doing something more productive. The tournament runs from 12am-6am: he hired out the gym at Willesden sports centre and ten years on it’s now one of the biggest basketball tournaments in Europe. That’s what attracted me to the project really, that someone was actually doing something, it’s always in the press but nothing seems to be happening. It was about examining a different kind of culture.

Did you find many differences between the two forms?
The big thing initially was that in fiction the actors are professional, they have lines, they know they have to give a performance and look at the camera. The one initial difference with the characters in documentary… was about getting them to trust me and tell their story, to give an honest representation. But then in the editing process there was no structure at all, with fiction you start with the pre-concept. You can never storyboard a documentary, you just keep the camera rolling all the time and then somebody laughs, or falls over and you keep everything together and make it work, make it energetic. The big difference with documentary is that it’s the real world, you can’t cheat, there’s no going back and re-shooting. With documentary when you’ve done it, it’s done. It’s very interesting. I suppose there’s a different kind of pressure.

As documentary film is effectively unscripted, how did you go about formulating the ‘story’?
If you have a good subject and a good story, you can tell a very interesting and unique story and there’s no reason you can’t make it into a film. With fiction film, if you haven’t got a great script, you haven’t got a story. Making The Inheritance, I always had the script to fall back on, whereas in documentary the onus is on yourself, as in, what story am I going to tell? I consider myself a story teller more than a director.

Actually coming into a project I didn’t start [Midnight Madness] was very challenging; I really had to find my own voice in the work. For Midnight Madness, it was about getting the structure of the tournament, the first part was the road shows (around the UK), the second was the regional finals, the third, the finals in London and the fourth was the LA part. Nhamo, who came up with the idea, was the heart of the story. Then there was the history about setting up the team which was nice to play off with the tournament. For every documentary, it’s all about choosing characters. There were two characters inside the tournament; it was about unconventional ball players. The basketball was a tool really, about making a difference.

Still from Midnight Madness As a director, which type of film would you say is your favourite, documentary or fiction?
If you want to make fictional film, you get pigeon-holed very quickly. Lots of documentary-making is learning the fundamentals of film-making, collaborating with the subject... With fiction you spend so much time writing and talking about it, eventually you just have to get out there and shoot. But they’re all great: documentary, short, feature; to make a film for the right reasons is the best way to go forward. To do anything good it takes a lot of hard work, time and energy.

What is your next project?
What I’d love to do is do something in London, I mean, when was the last great film you saw set in London? Paris, New York, there have been such great films made there. I want to make a genre film set in contemporary London, about the diversity of London and coming to London. After two to three months I think you know whether you like it or you don’t.

I love listening to a good story, some people just have a way in which they can articulate and tell a really good story. You can only really make one to two a year or one every two years. There are so many great scripts which just get made into average films. I just want to keep learning and keep being curious.

The Inheritance is being released on DVD in autumn 2008. To find out more information go to: www.theinheritancethemovie.com

Midnight Madness is coming soon in 2009; in the meantime check out the website: www.midnight-madness.com

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