I AM BREATHING by Emma Davie
(co- director)
Produced by Sonja Henrici of Scottish
Documentary Institute
A feature documentary asking “ How
can film communicate the
experience of a 34 year old man,
paralysed with Motor Neurone
Disease ?
How can fiction and documentary
combine to find a new and original
filmic language to tell this story
ethically ?
How could we as filmmakers
empower Neil, the subject of the
film, so the story felt like his even
though he died 6 months after we
started filming ?
How could we get this film out to a
large audience all over the world to
raise awareness of this disease ?
•
I am Breathing explores how the language of
documentary film can relate the experience of a
young man paralysed by Motor Neurone
Disease. 34 year old Neil Platt had 6 months
left to live when he asked us to start filming with
him in 2008.
•
I started to film this in collaboration with fiction
film maker Morag Mackinnon I filmed and edited
it and was the main director over the period but
the process was fuelled by our discussions and
questions. We wanted to combine documentary
and fiction to find a fresh form which could tell
this hard story; to create an original filmmaking
language that would make Neil’s "felt"
experience be at the centre of the film.
•
Our task was to make a film " with" not "about"
Neil Platt. Underpinning the 4 year process of
filming, editing, distributing was the quest to
communicate his physical and emotional
experience of being "stuck" to a wide audience
whilst avoiding the ethically questionable
sensationalism such stories can evoke.
•
The force of Neil’s character and our desire to
communicate his experience, led to a large
scale feature documentary which has played in
festivals all over the world, won awards ,good
reviews and will be pivotal in raising awareness
of MND through an innovative global screening
day on June 21st .
•
It was commissioned by Film 4, Danish Film
Institute, Welcome Trust, DR, YLE, MND
Association, Creative Scotland and has been
sold to many distributors and broadcasters .
I AM BREATHING by Emma Davie
( director)
INTRODUCTION
INDIEWIRE “Docs to watch” 2013.
David D’Arcy. Film critic
“ the film is alternately heartbreaking and
disarmingly sardonic” .
Basil Tsiokos Nov 1th 2012 Indiewire
I AM BREATHING by
Emma Davie
Originality
The film was ethically complex. We had to question the
nature of documentary in such circumstances and come
up with an approach that empowered Neil so he was
not a “ victim” or defined by his suffering.
When filming, I wanted to to use the camera to attempt to
communicate the ‘haptic” experience of his paralysis to get under Neil’s skin.
I deliberately tried to re-create his subjective experience of
the world about him - often in unexpected ways. We also
tried to “enter’ both the frustration and determination of
his attempts to communicate by using the words he
created in his blog (through his voice recognition) to
become a motif up on screen. This formed the
backbone of narrative, creating both a fragility but also
an intense sense of his character.
By using his words in his blog to narrate the film as text up on
screen,and mixing fiction with documentary to evoke his
memories, we created a new filmic language which was
genuinely explorative but importantly allowed Neil to be
presented in an honest and unsensational way.. By
using narrative approaches from fiction, and how to
bring us into a character's " world" , we liberated the
documentary form from just using " real" footage and
inserted imaginary sequences to evoke his inner world. .
“the extreme close-ups, the camera positioning
( often filming from Neil’s pov) and the eternal
drone of the ventilator, which constantly drowns
out other sounds, quite literally suck the viewer
into Neil’s world. The film is incredibly personal,
yet universal”
Joost Daamen IDFA Catalogue
•
We began filming with Neil in 2008. The film for him was a
means to raise awareness about Motor Neurone Disease. Neil
had a genetic form of the illness and was scared his son would
inherit it . He felt communicating about it , could help raise the
funding for crucial research.
“I am Breathing”
by Emma Davie
Process
•
His need to speak pushed the film to become more ambitious.
We realised it wasn’t just a story about MND but about a man
looking at the big questions of life at this charged time .
•
Neil died 6 months after we started filming. We started to piece
together his blog which would enable us to form a narrative
mingling the material we shot with this
•
We pitched the film at the Scottish Pitch in Edinburgh to
funders and broadcasters from all over the world in June 2008 .
It generated interest and won Best Pitch and we got
development funding from The Welcome Trust and Creative
Scotland. We were invited to pitch the film in Docs Lisbon (
2009) and Nordic Panorama ( 2010) as well as Sheffield
Meetmarket (2011) and managed to engage many funders and
broadcasters.Over the next 3 years we edited the material ,
fllmed new imaginary scenes with collaborators, embedded the
story of the science through working with leading scientists
such as Prof Chris Shaw from King’s College London who we
filmed with twice.
•
In the development period we worked with Danish editor Janus
“ranks among the year;s most powerful films “
Billeskov Jensen as a mentor. He has won 2 Oscars for
Hollywood Reporter
original editing in documentary and fiction e.g. “Burmah VJ” ,
Billie August’s work etc . His deep questions helped us probe
the material further and see how far documentary could go
when the motives of the film and edit were to understand- not to
entertain. I edited trailers and rough cuts and for a short period
we also. Ultimately I finished the film in Copenhagen with Peter
Winther from Nov 2011-April 2012 ( Morag stayed in Scotland
as had a baby).
“I am Breathing”
by Emma Davie
RIGOUR
The repeated questioning required to address both narrative
and ethical issues meant the process was exceptionally
rigorous. We also had to be very clear in order to resist being
swayed by demands of funders and broadcasters.
This rigour continued in the edit itself. We initially edited
segments and trailers to explore narrative structure and
communicate to funders. The final edit began in 2011 and
lasted 5-6 months. It was mainly done in Denmark with the
editor Peter Winther and myself.
" Very strong film. ...But it's the way
the other more abstract, slightly
metaphorical material, and the footage
reflecting the bits and bobs of an
ordinary life made incredibly poignant by
the curtain coming down on it, which
really lift the film to a whole other
level. It certainly belongs on the big
screen, since the emotions are universal,
and made even more potent by the
admirable refusal to let sentiment seep
into the proceedings. The final, grainy
self-shot material in the hospice is
about as powerful a sequence as you could
ever hope to see."
Trevor Johnstone Sight and Sound 2013
We constantly showed it to other prominent members of the
Danish film community including editors and directors. This
nvolved booking cinemas and inviting representatives from
the Danish Film Institute, other directors and producers to the
screenings. (Top directors such as Mikala Krogh, Pernille
Groenkjaer,Eva Mulvad, editors such as Camilla Skousen )The
questions asked during these screenings challenged our
approach. For example, we saw how intense images of his
suffering became alienating for an audience and how by
leaving more to the imagination, the film
became more powerful.
We needed to create space for the audience to feel. This fitted
in with other explorations I have made into narrative in
documentary.( see interview with Jean Perret in DOX “An
rreducible Otherness” June 2009)
“I am Breathing” by Emma Davie
IMPACT
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The film has played at festivals all over the world.
It opened at the IDFA festival in Amsterdam in November
2012 where it was nominated for Best Feature
Documentary. This is the most important festival for
documentary in the world and this prize, the most
prestigious.Only 16 films from all over the world are
nominated for this. (selected out of 3,500 submissions
from around the world) The film was shown 5 times in
large public screenings which sold out and was also shown
in a side fair on video where it was the 4 th most seen film
out of 100's. It received great reviews including " one of
the year's most moving films" from the Hollywood
Reporter.Since then, the film has played at top
documentary festivals all over the world, including True
False in the States, Hot Docs, DocsBarcelona, DocEdge in
New Zealand. It has been chosen to represent best of
IDFA in Russia and also Best of Hot Docs in Vancouver
and won Best Documentary in River Run Festival;
“an emotional and unsentimental diary about life and
Once we have toured the film to festivals it will play on tv
around the world.The film has already broadcasters on
board including Film 4, YLE in Finland and DR in Denmark
so this will guarantee large audiences.We also have a
distributor - DR Sales who will ensure the film is sold
internationally and we have edited a one hour version for
this purpose.
Simultaneously ,we are developing a website which will
have interviews with scientists about cutting edge genetic
research and its impact on finding a cure for Motor
Neurone Disease.
The filmmakers, Emma Davie and Morag MacKinnon with
Neil’s widow Louise Platt and producer Sonja Henrici of SDI
at IDFA where it was nominated for Best Feature Documentary
( Nov 2012)and below at Hot Docs Docs Festival ( May 2013)
in Toronto where it was selected to tour as “ Best of the Festival” .
This also launched out distribution with KinoSmith in Canada to
cinemas across the country.
•WEBSITE
I
“I am Breathing” by
Emma Davie
IMPACT
We are currently planning Global MND Day with the film
reaching global audiences in June 2013 through
distribution to selected cinemas , festivals and VOD
screenings. We are developing this with the MND
Association to have maximum impact on the
general public internationally.
The take up has been more than we could ever have
hoped for. We have over 300 offers to screen the
film all over the world ranging from a huge cinema
in New York,in China, in Nairobi, to a boat on the
Bosphurus, a house in Yorkshire. It has caught the
public’s imagination and we have had a 4 page
article in the Telegraph and many good reviews
from international press.
It is our hope by raising this awareness that the film will
help the scientific struggle to find a cure. Care
givers and groups who work with the terminally ill
also want to use the film to help people face this
difficult time.
Prof Chris Shaw has recently discovered some of the
genes responsible for MND. With more funding,
other genes could be located. It was always hoped
by Neil that by raising awareness of the illness, it
would facilitate more funding for research. Chris
Shaw will appear on our website, and will participate
in a Q and A at Bloomsbury Theatre with me on
21st June discussing recent discoveries which give
hope: