Interview: Dictynna Hood

Writer and film director Dictynna Hood talks to Jonathan Doering about her work and Quakerism

I first met filmmaker Dictynna Hood when she was an overseer, I an attender, in North London. She subsequently moved on from Quakerism. However, although not a practising Quaker, she still feels some common ground with Quaker values. Perhaps this common ground is one route of entry into her distinctive back catalogue – including the award winning short films The Other Man and Journey Man and her aesthetically striking, dramatically visceral feature Wreckers and forthcoming Us Among the Stones.

Dictynna Hood has also created a series of lapidary mini-documentaries. These reveal the lives and experiences of English Heritage volunteer ‘angels’, ordinary people who work on a rich variety of community initiatives, including church renovation, a school recreated as a gurdwara [a place of worship], and canal reclamation. Ordinary people making riches out of everyday life is a consistent theme in her films.

Her work forges fruitful connections between a wide range of experiences, pursuing a situation’s truth to the vanishing point, which made for a fascinating conversation when we met in East Oxford to discuss her life, work and experiences of Quakerism.

Dictynna, can you tell us a little bit about how you moved into Quakerism?

My sister had been studying Buddhism academically, then did a meditation course, and I thought, ‘Wow, she looks wonderful!’, did the course, then met someone from within Quakerism, went to visit, and felt very excited – perhaps that isn’t quite the right word…

Well, I got that feeling when I started, and still have it periodically.

It is very exciting when people stand and say these things that have come from another place. As a communicator, you want to come from that other place, a ‘necessary’ place for want of a better description. The most remarkable actors are people you don’t have to direct; you might say spirit, emotion, is being channelled from somewhere. It comes through them with a kind of transparency. With Wreckers we thought that it was underplayed, but when we saw it on the big screen, it was all there.

What led you into filmmaking? Was it an ambition from the very start?

No, at primary school I wanted to be an actress. It was about inhabiting other worlds. I was also writing alongside that. But when I got to college it became crystal clear that I wasn’t going to cut it in acting.

Did you study drama?

No, I studied Classics at Cambridge.

So, quite a jump…?

Oh no, not a jump, because anyone who has studied Greek will tell you that it’s a very concrete language, very visual, and they have fabulous drama, which is very cinematic in its structure. In fact, many of the superhero movies have a classical or mythic basis.

The Quest narrative….

Exactly. The Odyssey, The Iliad, all the archetypes.

Did you fall in love with filmmaking at Cambridge?

I didn’t grow up with film but when I was a teenager I really fell in love with it. It came from thinking ‘I love writing, I love taking pictures, I love working with actors…’ It’s a very conglomerative form. I would love to do some more theatre work, but the piece I’m working on at the moment – working title Us Among the Stones – is very visual and more about the pictures. I’ve recently been re-watching [Andrei] Tarkovsky’s films.

What’s your favourite?

I love Stalker, The Mirror, and Solaris. When he got out of Russia I feel that he lost something. Nostalghia and The Sacrifice don’t quite work for me, but those earlier ones are beautiful, partly because they are so culturally specific yet universal. He’s very spiritual, isn’t he? Stalker is about this journey to a room where your desires will come true, what that means and if you even want that to happen. The characters make it to this room, and they choose not to enter. I don’t know if they’ve been changed by this experience, but they’ve been moved. A few years ago I visited my brother in Japan and went into a Shinto temple and felt the same sort of thing. There’s a space behind the altar where you don’t go. That was very moving.

Going back to Quakerism, the things that I have heard in Meeting have been incredibly helpful. They often speak to the occasion that you’re feeling. I think [Quakerism’s approach] is very wise, because you can practise in many different ways and still be a Quaker. I’m all for walking cheerfully over the world, meeting that of God in everyone, which I think is one of the most beautiful pieces of advice, difficult though it may be in practice. It’s Christian advice – ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ is very similar, but put actively. These things are coming very sharply into focus in the current climate.

Do you miss anything (or not) about Quakerism?

I miss the worship, but at a certain point I came to feel quite pinned down. As a filmmaker, I find it hard to belong to places. I felt a bit squashed. Also the ‘back room’ of Quakerism can be hard: there’s a lot of work to do, and no one ‘in charge’. I believe in the collegiate approach to management and the decisions about the colour of chairs which must happen in any organisation. However, the process of it can be very frustrating; I’d taken on a bit too much. My friend is a Quaker, much more of a Quaker than I ever was by nature, but I know that she sometimes feels the same way. I remember an evening when I came from such a meeting and met a friend from academia who had just come from a meeting about the colour of the chairs. You do have to decide these things. The little things actually uphold a structure within which people can manage, they can uphold society – civilisation, even. However, hopefully the outsider can also have a role.

In your films you seem to have many characters with skeletons in the closet, closed to exposure, then the exposure is ambiguous (for instance, the revelation of infidelity in Wreckers, which doesn’t lead to a clear conclusion).

I think that there’s something in that, certainly in Wreckers. In the original script, the ending was much more a straight horror ending. You were meant to think that Dawn (played by Claire Foy) has made a terrible mistake marrying David (Benedict Cumberbatch). But Benedict’s and the other actors’ performances are very nuanced. My editor liked David, and wanted the marriage to work, and you can’t have a horror ending if you want the relationship to have an openness. The role was originally intended for another actor, who would have played it much more openly aggressive. It would have been more ‘I married a psycho’! We did film that scene but it didn’t really work, which is usually a sign that you’re not invested in it. The actors can sometimes dictate quite a lot in my films, I think.

Do you think that there is an honouring of ordinary people in your work?

Many filmmakers are interested in ordinary people; I wouldn’t say that I’ve got a monopoly on that.

I suppose everyone is ordinary and extraordinary, depending on how we look at them.

Exactly, yes.

What I was driving at was the idea of honouring the everyday and seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary, throwing a sympathetic gaze onto it.

That’s one of the reasons why I wouldn’t mind returning to theatre; things are more heightened. But film can do very interesting things with the everyday. You can show little corners, can’t you? My nicest day job has been making loads of little films for English Heritage, interviewing ordinary people doing these amazing things, raising money to do up their factory/church/warehouse/barn and renovating with their bare hands, pretty much. My favourite film is about this engineer. He was a child of the war, and saw all this stuff being smashed up. Then in the 1970s he saw these canals and thought: ‘I need to do these up’. He and his volunteers dug out twenty-three miles of canal. English Heritage finally came in, but it’s amazing what he achieved as a ‘little person’.

I do think there is a religious practice in appreciating the everyday. That does feel important, to capture the moment the actor offers. That’s something we’re working with in my current film, Us Among the Stones, where we’re capturing different moments of everyday magic, creating a collage of life. That’s partly because the project’s digital, so you can grab stuff on your phone, in still photographs or any medium to hand.

It seems that you’re saying that in spiritual and artistic terms, being open to what life brings you is important, being ready to spot what’s beautiful.

Yes, I’ve learnt that. I was very bull-headed to start with, but I’ve learnt from my students and actors. Look at Benedict – he’s still doing radio, which is amazing for someone in his position. He takes his opportunities and I’ve learnt to do that more.

Talking about opportunities, would you like to comment on why there are so few female filmmakers? Do you particularly admire any?

There are a lot coming, I think. There is a discussion to be had, but it’s complex. There’s an initiative that many filmmakers have signed up to, encouraging funders to go for gender parity. In Sweden they decided to do gender parity in public film funds and the result is that their publicly-funded films have won more prizes and people are going to see the female-directed films because they’re on offer. Women of my age are actually the biggest audience. I went to a funding meeting with my producer and we got some funding for Us Among the Stones, but in the end they said it was too domestic. Then we pitched a story based on a novel about a femme fatale, road movie, car, gun, and they said: ‘That’s interesting’, perhaps because it was safer. I did think, ‘How do you know that this domestic drama isn’t going to be hugely enjoyed by anybody who has a family or those who don’t who would like to enter a fictitious one…?’

Quaker faith & practice 21.28 talks about a ‘daily round for beauty as for goodness’ – is this present in your films?

I am not sure about the goodness – my films explore some shadowy and savage emotions. When I went to the Fens [to make Wreckers] I had always wanted to make a film there, because that landscape is so epic, it’s a working landscape, there’s a beauty in it. There’s a spiritual quality to what you’re looking for. I think beauty is only there if it’s fitting. You’re responding… It’s very concrete, it’s about going to the heart of something. There’s a spirit that you’re responding to, in people and places.

When talking about Us Among the Stones, you mention grabbing ‘moments of everyday magic’ on your mobile phone. What is it like when you manage to grab those moments?

I’ve captured many on my phone, for example light patterns on a wall, some of which have made it into the film. We also gave one of the children in the film phones for one scene, to film other characters. I took lots of footage over time, for instance in a hospital, at the sea, different landscapes and houses. We’ve only used a few of these shots but it worked like sketches, and was a helpful talking point between myself and my cinematographer. As the film developed, this kind of filming gave a sense of purpose while waiting for the next stage. One of my students gave me a small format Lumix camera; I made pinhole footage of light among trees, which we’ve used. We’ve also filmed a lot of the close-ups on a similar small format camera, using my old stills lenses. The script’s very detailed, so I was always responding to something in it. The film is partly about nature; when I was filming the sea, the pinhole footage, the animals, I felt happy and focused.

Is there any other work that you’d like to mention?

I’ve been writing a musical, in collaboration with a composer, Jamie Masters, Dr Faustess, about a woman who calls the Devil, but doesn’t get who or what she expects. We hope it’ll be very funny and dark. I also want to make a romantic comedy about a woman going to the underworld to find her lover… I’m moving into mythical territory, but still with an interest in ‘homemade magic’.

It is anticipated that Dictynna Hood’s film Us Among the Stones will be released in 2018.

This is the sixth in a series of interviews in which Jonathan Doering talks to Quakers who work in the arts.

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Comments

Wow, this is so interesting and so so like my own experiences and thoughts, almost can’t believe it: for me too Quaker- (from school) deep continuing influence but not a Quaker; classics ( me at Oxford), what better, deeper, more mythic! have written libretto for oratorio ( David, now being sort to music)  and for an opera; fascination (and publications); with the ordinary extraordinary (am an anthropologist); God/ the eternal in every person; have written screenplay (award-winnimg though not yet optioned) religious,  girl searching for her lover in underground (and more)  very Greek (and universal) archetypal, mystic, needs to be made (Oscar I bet).

These are merely the bells the interview happens to ring with me. Am sure similar but different with many others -  well, with everyone. Thank you so much both interviewer and interviewee,  and of course the editor,  and a blessed peaceful,Christmas to you all

By Ruthfinn on 7th December 2017 - 16:40

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