Sean McAllister – A Northern Soul: Interview with the Director.

Since making Hull’s Angel in 2002, Sean McAllister’s documentaries have been set in Iraq (The Liberace of Baghdad, 2004), Japan (Japan: A Story of Love and Hate, 2008), Yemen (The Reluctant Revolutionary, 2012) and Syria (A Syrian Love Story, 2015). Now with a string of BAFTA nominations, a Sundance Special Jury Prize, British Independent Film Award and a Sheffield Doc/Fest prize behind him, the filmmaker has returned to his hometown. In 2017, McAllister became the creative director for the City of Culture’s opening event, Made in Hull; a multimedia light and film extravaganza which projected the vicissitudes of the city’s history and its cultural heritage onto its landmark buildings. The show drew over 300,000 visitors to the event, its huge success a contributing factor to Hull University’s decision to award an honorary doctorate to the filmmaker. After curating Made in Hull, McAllister opted to remain in the city for the rest of the year, living at his ninety-year-old parents’ home whilst making his latest film, A Northern Soul.

 

Hull City of Culture opening show

The 2017 City of Culture award was regarded as an opportunity for the maligned city to regain its sense of identity and pride after decades of neglect. Since the 1970s, Hull has had its heart ripped out with the devastation of the dock and fishing industries, enduring high levels of unemployment and its associated social problems. But the tenacity and self-deprecating humour of the Hull people saw them through the hard times and this ability to laugh at themselves is evident in a locally produced T shirt which reads: “Come to Hull. It’s not s**t anymore.” A Northern Soul is testament to the city’s fighting spirit. Highlighting the economic decline of his hometown and the devastating impact of cuts in public spending whilst simultaneously honouring the resilience of its people, McAllister’s documentary poses the question: What effect can the City of Culture have on a working-class area like Hull?

A Northern Soul was premiered at Sheffield City Hall as part of Sheffield Doc/Fest in June before playing to packed crowds in Hull for a week’s screenings and Q&As with the director in July. McAllister was thrilled with the response his film received in these two working-class cities. Speaking of its premiere in Sheffield, McAllister told me: ‘For a very downbeat, backstreet film, it was a triumph as it was a film at a northern film festival which celebrated the north.’ He also detected a mood of self-analysis in the Hull audience, ‘a kind of cathartic need to make sense of 2017 with the film reflecting what the City of Culture means to grassroot art and artists and the plight of ordinary low-paid working-class people.’ The Hull screenings were so successful that McAllister decided to bring the film back for a further eight dates in August. However, the elation at the film’s initial success was tempered by the British Board of Film Classification’s announcement that the film was to receive a 15 certificate, meaning that a considerable part of A Northern Soul’s target audience would not be able to see it and preventing the film from being toured around schools.

McAllister took to social media to register his anger at the decision. ‘It says so much about the top-down disconnected UK we live in. It’s this that has led us into the current mess as a country now. Voiceless communities continually ignored, abandoned and misunderstood by people who think they know better than us but don’t even really know us,’ he tweeted. There followed a round of local and national TV and radio interviews where McAllister, increasingly exasperated, stated his refusal to dilute the film’s realism by editing out the offending material. Instead, the makers of A Northern Soul are challenging the BBFC’s ruling by campaigning to get local authorities to lower the rating. The campaign in Hull- backed by its three local MPs- was met with immediate success. On 20^th August, the City Council Licensing Authority reasserted its original 12A certificate, issuing the following statement to explain its decision: ‘Strong language was used only by the subject of the film to express emotion in interviews with the filmmaker, was never directed at an individual, or used in an aggressive manner.’ Since then, a further ten local authorities (Lambeth, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Southampton, Hackney, Bradford, Calderdale, Halifax and Doncaster) have overturned the BBFC’s 15 certificate and granted the film a 12A rating, despite suggestions that the councils would uphold the BBFC’s ruling.

 

Steve Arnott and Sean McAllister

The subject at the centre of A Northern Soul’s ratings dispute is Steve Arnott, the film’s main protagonist. Steve is a struggling warehouse worker and a rapper with a dream to take hip-hop to the children of the deprived estates of Hull. His employers donate a van which is converted into a recording studio and decorated with graffiti artwork. With one-in-three children deemed to be living in poverty in the city and music provision in education chronically underfunded, Steve and his team of volunteers take the Beats Bus into schools hoping to engage disadvantaged youngsters, handpicking eight children to record a song which they perform at festivals and even audition for Britain’s Got Talent. Increasingly frustrated with the amount of contact he has with his young daughter and facing mounting debts, during the course of the film Steve is investigated at work and demoted at his job. Despite these setbacks and periods of self-doubt, his formidable endurance and unfaltering enthusiasm for the Beats Bus project is remarkable. Acting as a kind of outreach MC, Steve shows an affinity and intuitive talent for nurturing the children he mentors with the film vividly demonstrating how music has the potential to transform young people’s lives. With meticulous attention to its emotional resonance, McAllister presents Steve’s story with an astonishing sense of empathy.

 

Still from A Syrian Love Story

Not content with merely performing the role of observer, McAllister’s commitment to his subjects illuminates all his work. In drawing attention to his own visible presence, rather than passively recording the events, the filmmaker’s persona becomes an integral part of the documentary narrative. This method was most evident in A Syrian Love Story. Whilst in Syria, McAllister became so entangled in the politics of the country that his activities aroused the suspicion of the authorities and he was arrested and interrogated. Filmed over five years, the documentary features Amer Douad and Radgha Hassan, a married couple in Damascus who are forced to flee the country with their two sons, first to Lebanon and then to France where they are granted asylum in the small town of Albi. As tensions arise in the relationship, McAllister is treated as a confidant by Amer and Radgha. Consequently, his growing friendship with the couple becomes an adjunct to their faltering love story.

In contrast to A Syrian Love Story’s depiction of revolutionary turmoil and marital breakdown, McAllister’s presence back at his parents’ home in A Northern Soul is a much more relaxed affair. With Mrs McAllister fussing over her son’s appearance and insisting that he takes his father out of the house to stop him ‘stewing’ in front of the television, Mr McAllister accompanies his son to some cultural events, most memorably a ‘gay tea party.’ At this point in the film, you are left with the impression that Mr McAllister would rather stay at home watching the rugby on the television, the minor details of the idiosyncratic nature of McAllister’s relationship with his parents providing a light-hearted counterpoint to the much bleaker story of Steve’s struggle to pursue his dream. In addition to providing a source of humour, McAllister had a political motive in utilising this counter-narrative. ‘Wherever I go, I try to film the social setting so being at home with my parents was used in a quirky way but, politically speaking, it was interesting to see them enjoying their retirement as working-class people and looking at two generations down the line who were totally desperate.’

This utilisation of the domestic sphere is a common feature of McAllister’s films which refract the political through the personal, prioritising the human-interest aspect of the story at the expense of strident polemics. ‘I got into filmmaking believing I could change the world and then realised I’d be happy to just change myself and the person in the film,’ McAllister explains. ‘In other words, the film becomes a catalyst for change for the protagonists.’ McAllister is cautious about appearing to lecture in his documentaries, trusting the intelligence of the audience to make the political connections and consciously omitting what he describes as ‘heavy handed, on-the-nail commentary’ for a less explicit ideological engagement. ‘I always believe that if the film has the feel visually and emotionally then people arrive at those feelings themselves’, he explains. His methodology is apparent in the international documentaries which create a sense of solidarity through the exploration of the inner emotions of his protagonists. ‘Many of the people back in Hull wouldn’t know about the situation in Damascus. But when they see a character they can connect with, their concerns cross international borders. And I think that’s where in a small film (The Reluctant Revolutionary) someone like Kais- a revolutionary in Yemen- who is struggling to pay his bills, becomes tangible and real. When people attach and connect to him they step into the political framework a bit easier. I try to make my films about 70% character and 30% politics so after watching a film in Iraq, or wherever, they might watch the news in a more informed or interested way because they have engaged in the country through my characters.’ 

Steve Arnott in A Northern Soul

Favouring what he describes as a ‘less is more’ approach, McAllister’s objective in A Northern Soul is ‘to become a catalyst for change so that Steve can walk proudly, defiantly forward having exposed himself and risked so much and given so generously by being in the film.’ For McAllister, A Northern Soul represents ‘the opposite of what documentary used to be- or can be- which is stealing from people.’ His hope in making the film is that ‘the documentary process gives back to Steve the strength to change and a chance to move forward’. It is this antithetical approach to the didacticism of the Griersonian documentary tradition which makes McAllister’s films so engaging. Nevertheless, McAllister realises that his film does have a radical social message to convey and that he believes the audience seeing A Northern Soul will appreciate how Steve is fighting back and that they ‘will feel empowered in themselves to do something.’

By presenting what he describes as ‘multi-dimensional, multi-layered and complex’ characters, McAllister aims to counter the dominant media image of the working class, typified by the pernicious influence of “poverty porn.” Treating working people with dignity rather than as flotsam to be manipulated and abused by TV producers, McAllister believes that the commissions for socially divisive programmes such as Britain on Benefits should never have been granted as they insidiously attempt to divert the responsibility for the country’s economic plight onto the poor. These programmes ‘attack and demean working people as just benefit charities, deflecting the real truth that the biggest blame is in Parliament, the Palace, Kensington and Knightsbridge. Somehow, we don’t get the same programmes, or access, to hanging around with those layabouts.’

A Northern Soul is a powerful documentary which presents and angry broadside to the current political climate of austerity. It paints a depressing picture of the social landscape and the lack of opportunity for working people in cities like Hull. But, in its direct address to the working class, the films ultimate message is one of hope. It is an inspiring piece of filmmaking; a defiant plea for the self-empowerment of the working class which appears could already be having an impact.

A Northern Soul is a 10Ft Ltd production that continues the company’s ongoing relationship with the BBC. The film was made in partnership with BBC2 with support from the BFI, the National Lottery, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and in association with Sharp House. On 19^th September, the Resolution Foundation screened the film- with ministers and MPs in attendance, at its Westminster cinema, so there is some hope that this will, at least, raise the issue in government. ‘In a sense, I’ve done my bit with making the film,’ McAllister states. He hopes that by screening A Northern Soul to policy-makers, ‘maybe pressure can be applied on them for bills in Parliament and specific requests that are going to ease the burden, particularly community arts funding and music in schools.’

As A Northern Soul is ultimately about giving confidence and optimism to those communities left abandoned by the government, McAllister seems more excited about taking the film around the country than the potentially significant events in the capital. A Northern Soul will be screened on, what McAllister calls, ‘the sleepy coastal forgotten town tour’ which includes Hornsea and Bridlington on the north-east coast and the Margate Film Festival. For the director, showing the film in these places is the real deal.

‘A Northern Soul is all about the forgotten and the unheard. The film gives them a voice,’ McAllister says. ‘Steve represents so many unheard voices around the UK and we want to take the film to those people and places and triumph with them and say, “You’re not being unheard anymore, you’re now being heard and you can come together as a community of people who don’t put up with this s**t constantly”. People can come together and create change if people believe in it. If anything, the film should make them feel better about themselves even if that change isn’t immediately achievable. They should feel better about themselves just watching the film, knowing that someone like Steve is out there and done what he has done. And they can do it as well.’

Filmography

Working for the Enemy (Mosaic Films, 1997)

The Minders (10Ft Films, 1998)

Settlers (10Ft Films, 2000)

Hull’s Angel (10Ft Films, 2002)

The Liberace of Baghdad (10Ft Films and Team Production, 2004)

Japan: A Story of Love and Hate (10Ft Films, 2008)

The Reluctant Revolutionary (10Ft Films, 2012)

A Syrian Love Story (10Ft Films, 2015)

A Northern Soul (10Ft Films, 2018)

Further information on A Northern Soul can be found at www.ANorthernSoulFilm.com and on Twitter @northernsouldoc

Sean McAllister’s website is at www.seanmcallister.com

*This article was originally published at The Colin Young Annual Lecture which was given by the filmmaker at the National Film and Television School on Thursday 27th September 2018. The author would like to thank Sean McAllister and 10Ft films for their assistance in promoting the article at the event.