Reviews - The Doctor Who Hears Voices

This programme was always set to be a cause for debate, bringing up as it does some important issues around the treatment of mental illness and the diagnosis of schizophrenia in particular.

Reviews and comment
Times online
Guardian
Mirror
Telegraph
Expert Family Law

Tonight - The Doctor Who Hears Voices

"A young NHS hospital doctor called “Ruth” is suspended because she is suffering from depression. She does not tell her employers that she is also hearing a voice in her head, telling her to kill herself. To do so would mean dismissal and probably get her sectioned. She turns to Rufus May, an unorthodox NHS psychiatrist* who rejects the use of medication. He believes such voices are full of meaning and that patients should engage with them. He talks to the voices himself. He talks to Ruth’s......"

".....Inevitably, this film raises far more questions than it can possibly answer. But it shines a powerful light on a condition that, for the sufferers and their families, can be, literally, a matter of life and death." (The Times)

The Doctor Who Hears Voices, Mon 21 April 2008, Channel 4, 10pm

The full article from the Times, including an interview with the Director Leo Regan can be read here

Rufus May has his own website at www.rufusmay.com and has also written an article called Underground Recovery about the background to the film.

* Rufus May is actually a clinical psychologist, not a psychiatrist. The Times got that wrong.

Borderlines Film Festival

Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go (PG)

Director: Kim Longinotto
Starring: The children and staff of the Mulberry Bush school
UK, 2007, 1 hour 40 minutes

Wednesday 9 April - BAFTA&SWM Special Gala Drinks 7.30pm followed by Screening 8.15
Thursday 10 April 6.00pm
Friday 11 11.00am
The Courtyard, Hereford

From the best British documentary filmmaker of her generation comes this fascinating insight into the workings of the Mulberry Bush school that caters for troubled kids. Where emotional trauma and violent confrontation are never far away and the staff appear positively saintly. Asking vital questions about how best to deal with difficult children Longinotto, offers no pat answers or facile analysis, just observation of good people helping damaged kids. This is food for thought for anyone who thinks that poor parenting is a crucial social issue. Quietly positive.

On Wednesday 9 April BAFTA and Screen WM are proud to host a special gala screening of Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go in association with Borderlines Film Festival.

In partnership with Screen WM, this event is part of BAFTA in The Regions; a programme of screenings and events throughout England run in partnership with the Regional Screen Agencies.

The BAFTA and Screen WM screening of Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go will be preceded by a drinks reception open to all ticket holders.

Visit www.bafta.org and www.screenwm.co.uk

Screen WM is the regional agency working to support, promote and develop the screen media industry in the West Midlands.

"Remarkable... shot with clarity and human kindness." The Observer

Winner of the Best British Documentary Award at BRITDOC

Text from the Borderlines Website

Johnny's New Kingdom

There are three episodes left in the series, most of the sound is by Tony Jones, but some of it is me!




March 25th 8.30pm BBC2
Episode Eight - In The Midst Of Life…
Summer has finally arrived and Johnny conquers two of his greatest fears – flying and horses! And at his land he’s delighted when a heron visits the pond. Everything is going well until suddenly he receives some shocking news about his close friend Tony Thorne.

April 1st 8.30pm
Episode Nine - The New Beast Of Exmoor?
The time has come to cut the wheat on Johnny’s land and he’s made an intriguing discovery. It looks as if he has wild boar living there. They must be from the herd that escaped onto Exmoor two years ago. Johnny is determined to film them.

April 2nd 8.30pm
Episode Ten - Home At Last
It’s autumn; Johnny’s favourite time of year and as always he wants to film a roaring stag! But he’s got his work cut out judging a bizarre competition on Exmoor and entertaining the people he met whilst filming in Scotland. He’s looking forward to a quiet winter on the land with his wife, Julie.

TX times are subject to change, check listings!

MAD - Dir Leo Regan

Coming soon...
To be broadcast on Channel Four during April 2008









The Doctor Who Hears Voices
Drama documentary, 70mins Kudos/Ch4




Starring - Ruth Wilson & Rufus May
Director of Photography - Johann Perry
Sound Recordist - Mary Milton
Editor - David Hill
Director - Leo Regan


Dr Rufus May is a maverick psychologist.
He thinks madness is a good thing.
Last week Ruth Fielding* came to see him for the first time.

Ruth’s a junior doctor who’s hearing a voice telling her to kill herself.
Most doctors would say Ruth is a danger to herself and others, and have her sectioned.
Rufus is different.
He doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with hearing voices.

Rufus May is one of the most controversial doctors working in the NHS today.
He thinks all mental hospitals should be shut down, there’s no such thing as schizophrenia and medication destroys lives.
He says we should learn to love mad people.
He does.
He was mad himself once.

To protect Ruth’s identity an actor is used to tell her story and some details have been changed.
Everything you see with Ruth is based on original transcripts, recorded over twelve months.
Everything else is documentary footage, filmed as it happened.


This is an unusual project where documentary and drama are used together. I recorded only the drama sections of the project with Johann Perry as DOP. The documentary sections had been shot by director Leo Regan previously over a period of months. Drama reconstruction was used to protect the identity of the real "Ruth" here played by actress Ruth Wilson. Rufus May appears as himself across documentary and dramatised sections which gives real continuity to the piece. We wanted to match the shooting style of the drama sections as closely as possible to the documentary style. The documentary had been recorded almost exclusively with radio mics placed outside the clothing of characters. To match this I put radio mics on the outside the clothing of both actors in situations where we felt Leo would have done this had it been documentary. These weren't always the mics I actually used for recording the sound, most often this was done with radio mics which were concealed under clothing to protect them from wind noise. Hence on most of the exterior shots the Ruth and Rufus are wearing two mics, one functioning and one as a prop. On the interior shots most often they both wear only one mic which is on top of clothing and functioning. There are also a few times where Ruth wears only a concealed mic, for situations where we thought Leo would not have had a chance to mic her up in a pure documentary situation and would just have used his camera mic.

The programme was shot in standard definition on a Sony Z1. In order to stay cable free sound was radio linked to the Z1 from my SQN. Johann carried two radio mic receivers in a bag around his waist which was linked with short XLRs to the camera. Sound was also backed up on a Sound Devices 744T which was also very useful for making wildtracks while free of the camera.

*Ruth Fielding is not her real name.

Christmas Skins!

This is the Christmas Skins I worked on in the run up to Christmas.

IDFA award for "Hold Me Tight"

Hold Me Tight, Let me Go has won the Jury prize at this years International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam.

www.idfa.nl
www.variety.com/

Sisters in Law - US TV Premiere

Documentary Spotlights West African 'Sisters In Law'

Vera Ngassa (left) and Beatrice Ntuba Courtesy of Women Make Movies

Tell Me More, November 27, 2007 · Two women in the West African nation of Cameroon are delivering justice and breaking gender barriers in the courtroom. Their work is the subject of the documentary Sisters-in-Law. Judge Vera Ngassa, one of the women featured in the film, and filmmaker Kim Longinotto discuss the women's unique bond and the idea behind creating the documentary.

You can listen to the interview here.

Any Dream Will Do - Heights Mission

Any Dream Will Do - Acting Class

Review from Eye for Film

Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go

Reviewed By: Paul Griffiths

There are some uncomfortable moments in Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go, but if you have patience and persevere the film is both moving and rewarding.

That could well be the mantra for the dedicated team of teachers and support workers working at the Mulberry Bush boarding school in Oxford. All the young pupils have been excluded from other schools due to their extreme behaviours, caused by the severe emotional trauma that they have endured and still experience. The staff are frequently on the receiving end of verbal abuse, spitting and physical violence as they help the children to overcome the many challenges they pose to themselves and others. With patience and dedication they work through the violent confrontations to help the children regain control of their behaviour and their opportunities to have more fulfilling, less self-destructive lives.

Sensitively filmed throughout, documentary filmmaker Kim Longinotto observes in equal measure the children’s difficult and more relaxed times to present a rounded portrait of each. She focuses in on a handful of children specifically and her balanced view of the charismatic characters ensures that no one is presented purely as just a problem child, a label. Indeed, filming some with their visiting parents is hugely revealing and highlights that while the child may well act outrageously towards the staff, he or she is still very much an innocent, vulnerable victim in the world of adults. With this tragic understanding in relief, when the hard-won successes, small and large, eventually come for everyone there are some extremely moving and humbling scenes.

The film is the latest addition to Longinotto’s growing body of work, following her well-received Sisters In Law in 2005. Her canon repeatedly shows her skill at capturing the humanity of people and situations in an extremely accessible manner, which is respectful to both her subjects and her audience. Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go is no exception.

A simple, moving documentary.

From Eye for film

Hold me tight, let me go - Observer Review

Jason Solomons
Sunday November 4, 2007
The Observer

Among the documentaries that grabbed my attention was the remarkable Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go by Kim Longinotto, about a school for troublesome children who kick, spit and swear until controlled by the amazing everyday heroics of the teaching staff. It's a very British version of the French hit, Etre et avoir, shot with clarity and human kindness.

(From the write up of the London Film Festival)

Hold Me Tight Let Me Go

"Hold Me Tight Let Me Go" is screening in London as part of the London Film Festival.
See http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/lff/ for more details and also the review below.

Director - Kim Longinotto
Sound Recordist - Mary Milton

A moving look at a school for traumatised and violent youngsters

Thu 25 Oct 18:00, NFT1 £8.50
Sat 27 Oct 18:30, Ritzy Cinema £8.50

Mulberry Bush is a boarding school in Oxford that caters for children who have been excluded from regular schools and who suffer from severe emotional trauma. The staff have to endure daily confrontations, a great deal of spitting and swearing from their charges, and valiantly attempt to change the violent and self-destructive patterns of behaviour.

Kim Longinotto (The Day I Will Never Forget, Sisters in Law) draws some fascinating characters and stories from the chaos in the classrooms. With a perfected observational style she captures the humanity of the pupils, their families and the teachers superbly, and, though it is a revealing and moving study, the film is not completely without humour.

As badly behaved as the kids are, it's to the film's credit that the viewer never loses empathy with them. Their relationships with their parents are very telling, while the teachers, skilled, dedicated and impossibly patient, appear positively heroic

Michael Hayden

Other links about the film
British Film Catalogue
BritDoc
Awards Daily

TheRain in Cameroon Falls mainly on the Tin Roof.

Sisters in Law

Sometime in August 2004 after much anticipation a small team of 3 of us left for Cameroon, our mission to make a feature length documentary for Channel Four. We were planning to stay for two months but it ended up being three for reasons that will probably not become clear in this particular article. I often work as part of a very small team in situations like this where I have no chance to see the likely locations in advance and often with little idea of what recording / filming situations I am likely to face. All I knew was that the film was likely to include a large amount of scenes filmed in a courtroom. Potentially quite a large courtroom, and potentially involving quite a number of people.

So, let me segway for a while into the kit I chose for such a venture. I was working with my friend Kim Longinotto who directs and shoots her own material on a super 16mm Aaton. Fantastic! That means I get to do separate sound with no cable tying me to the camera. Useful in all sorts of situations but nice in the courtroom because I can move around independently to get any sound in the court as long as I am out of shot. But, Ah, I hear you say, how are you going to sync up that material? Clapper board? In a courtroom? Or in a big emotional scene of documentary? No I don’t think so. We have a marvellous invention called an “Origin C+” it generates continuous timecode which I set each morning to the time of day, both the camera and the sound recorder “jam” to that timecode. The same timecode is recorded on both picture and sound so they can by united in post production. I use a DAT machine, one day soonish it will be some kind of hard disk recording system I’m sure, but for the moment DAT works fine. On this type of shooting I would rarely get through more than 2 one hour tapes a day and more often only one. I’d always replace the tape each day so the time code always increases for each take. ie. does not change from 18.00.00 from one evening to suddenly back to say 09.00.00 when we start again the next day. Computers and people who sync up film rushes don’t like that sort of thing. In order to help with the syncing up and editing I would keep basic notes during the day and write them up in the evening detailing the scenes we had shot and what film rolls they were on and relate that to the timecode on my DAT tape. I’d also include notes about the microphones I had used and which sound channels various characters were on in order to help with post production. The timecode jamming technique works well for us and the way we work, it can also be used to provide separate sound for video production but does incur an additional post production time and cost which tends to put people off. The DAT machine I use is the Fostex PD4, I’ve had it a while and I chose it because with three sound inputs I get away with using it without an additional mixer. I’m carrying less so am more mobile for the type of “on the hoof” shooting we do, and I’m also swinging my own boom as well as having a couple of radio mic channels on the go.


How do you mic up a court though? There’s a Judge and a State Prosecutor both important main characters. There’s an accused, a defendant and several witnesses. I have 3 microphones where do they go? Luckily he had a chance to see some action in the court before we had to film. Kim chose a camera position and from that potentially a lot of the court was in shot. If I stood fairly close to her I could reach the State Prosecutors position and the Defendants box fairly easily with the boom ( a standard Sehnheiser MKH60 on a pole). I was also guaranteed to be out of shot and it was an easy position to be able to tell if Kim’s camera was running or not. Handily this left two other positions out of my reach where people would speak in the court and two inputs on my DAT. There were likely in each case to be several witnesses so I could not possibly radio mic them all, but I could mic the witness box. I have a (reassuringly expensive!) miniature cardioid mic called a Schoeps CCM41 which with the aid of an(also reassuringly expensive) adapter plugs into a radio transmitter, the mic is very small and placed on a tiny stand in the witness box picked up anyone standing there perfectly. No cables across the Court, no trip hazzard and nothing tying me to anything so am still able to move around should anything dramatic happen without warning - which it often did. What have we left? One radio link, one Judge. Bingo! Radio mic the judge which has the added advantage of my being able to listen in and let Kim know when the Judge was about to enter the court.

With that all set up all there was left for me to do was pray it would not rain, drowning out everything as it hit the tin roof of the court..... more on that another time.