Breaking Boundaries – Interview with Tadhg O’Sullivan

Tadgh Healy speaks to director Tadhg O’Sullivan about his new film The Great Wall. Shot across a number of European locations, and set against a reading of Kafka’s At the Building of the Great Wall of China, the documentary considers the “political architecture of power” in Europe today.

How did the idea for The Great Wall come about?

I’d always been interested in borders and the political architecture of power. I spent some time in Palestine a number of years ago making a film for Al Jazeera. I made two trips there over a couple of years and the degree to which architecture was used as a means of articulating power just blew my mind. That sent me off reading more about the academic theory behind it.

I began to think there was a film in it, but wouldn’t be inclined to make an analytical film. There are plenty of very good films that do that, but it isn’t really my style of doing things. So, I was looking for a way of doing something around it and I came across a quote from this particular Kafka text. I realised that this was a more allegorical and poetic way into the subject. Once I had that as a framing device then the rest started falling into place.

Would there be any other writers or theorists that you think could fulfill the same role as Kafka?

I think there are a lot of writers whose work is increasingly current. For example there was a film that came out last year called Concerning Violence which used Frantz Fanon, but it was backward looking. What I didn’t like about it was that it placed Fanon’s ideas in the 1960s, which was when they were written. But it failed in my analysis to realise how relevant they are today.

Less tangentially, there are plenty of writers who would work as a kind of prism to look at this subject matter. The likes of Agamben, Gramsci, and Foucault would be more analytical writers. Whereas these are all theorists, the power of Kafka is that he’s not a theorist and he doesn’t pretend to be. He’s a storyteller, and that’s far more interesting to me. As a prism to look at the material I think Kafka is far more rewarding, because as a filmmaker you don’t want to lean on the source material; you don’t want to let Antonio Gramsci do all the work. For me, that was where the Fanon film fell down. Because Kafka is so open, so mysterious, there is a huge amount of room for me as an artist to bring my own ideas in. Then my work and Kafka’s come together, to create a third set of ideas in the viewer’s mind.

Did you have any difficulties gaining permission to film?

Yes and no. There are certain things you simply wouldn’t ask. You’re not going to ask to film inside a detention center in France, full stop. You might as well not bother asking. Whereas from doing a bit of research, I was aware that gaining access to the inside of detention centers in Bulgaria was a lot easier. I had a list of places I wanted to film, ranging from riot police and temporary barriers in an urban context, to big walls at the exterior of Europe.

There’s also the European border agency, Frontex, who manage the different border interventions around Europe and are very approachable. Europe has this culture of openness and transparency. You might have your doubts about it, but if you ask nicely, you can be taken up in a plane with a camera over the south of Italy flown by Estonian pilots, and you can hang out on the Polish-Ukranian border with a guy patrolling for smugglers.

So, I didn’t have any insurmountable problems but I guess knowing the lay of the land meant I wasn’t asking for the ridiculous. 

Boy_Fence_Santi_Palacios

Could you describe how you produce the audio for your films?

I record sound for all my own films, that’s just something I do. My own approach is to tend not to rely too heavily on sync sound; I’m more interested in creating an atmosphere with a soundtrack that evokes a place, a landscape or a situation. To do that, I tend to record a lot of sound at the place. In Melilla, I spent a lot of time on the roads by the fence just to get the distant sounds of dogs at night and calls to prayer, and then in the edit built up an atmosphere as I remember it ― not in a dishonest way, but distilling the atmosphere. I think with documentary you can get a little ground down with trying to convey a place too exactly. I think that realism is fine for a lot of film but I’m not too interested in it myself. I’m more interested in creating worlds where ideas can blossom.

A theme of the film seems to be that wherever there is an unequal distribution of wealth and power, those with these things will inevitably build walls ― visible and invisible ― to protect them. That said, some walls in Europe are bigger than others. Ireland refuses a very high percentage of asylum applications. Do you think there are factors unique to Ireland?

There’s many facets to that conversation. Within the academia of nationalism, there’s always a distinction drawn between countries which have been colonial powers and those which were colonial subjects. Those which were colonial powers tend to have a less ethnic definition of what their nation is because they’ve opened themselves up to different ethnicities. For example, what it means to be truly Dutch is more of an abstract philosophical thing. It’s something they scratch their heads about a lot. What it means to be French is a set of values. Nobody ever talks about a French race; it’s an absurd idea. And Britain is constantly questioning what it means to be British.

In countries like Ireland there’s much more of a concern about the watering down of a pure ethnicity. So when you look at Ireland, I think it’s relationship with nationalism allows for that idea of ‘us and them’ far more problematically than in other European countries.

“I’ve spoken to people who’ve lived in Dublin having fled the Congolese war 15 years ago, but still they walk down the street and feel separate.”

In the Kafka story, the narrator is essentially migrating across China for work. He is building a wall to keep others out, yet those attempting to enter Europe today are criticised if they are economic migrants rather than refugees. For me, your film aligned the narrator with today’s migrants and thus insider with outsider ― the distinction between those building the wall and those crossing it was blurred. Was this something you were conscious of?

In the story, the fact that the narrator is moving around China doesn’t change his insider status. What’s interesting is that the story uses a very explicit definition of what’s inside and what’s outside. But what I’m trying to do is to update that. Free movement within the inside can be complicated. It’s something I came across in Melilla, the Spanish enclave on the African continent. You’ve got mostly African men in the Moroccan hills around Melilla who look over the rows of high fences and think if I can get over that I’ll be in Europe. It does tend to be men because, as a route, this takes such physical exertion and strength. It might take them three of four runs at the fence over a couple of months but eventually they get over, and there’s absolute jubilation at having crossed the border. And on one level, they’re not wrong to be jubilant. They have made it, but what’s depressing is that they’re stuck in an administrative limbo where the definition of what’s inside and what’s outside is not so simple. Legally, Melilla is in quite a vague territory where it’s not actually in Schengen [the borderless area within Europe, as set out by the Schengen Agreement].

barbed sea Tadhg_OSullivan

There are different kinds of inside?

Exactly. Even at the very end of that journey, when they’ve got papers, they’re in Stockholm, they’ve got a driving license, they may even have work, even still there are cultural barriers. I’ve spoken to people who’ve lived in Dublin having fled, say, the Congolese war 15 years ago and now have kids, but still they walk down the street and feel separate.

You go to Trinity ― I remember somebody telling me they’ve never walked through Trinity College in all of the 12 years they’ve lived in Dublin. You walk down College Green and you see that wooden door and you know it’s a shortcut to Lincoln Place or to Pearse Street Station, but you wouldn’t dare cross the threshold, even though everybody else is coming and going and nobody’s looking. There are black faces amongst the crowd but for this person it’s still a cultural barrier they’ve never been quite able to walk across.

I think what’s interesting to me is that in the film you have this three metre high, triple layer fence, and that’s the border between Africa and Europe. But what I’m trying to do is draw the viewer into thinking for themselves about what are these other, more abstract borders which are within the geographical lines on a map.

I was struck by how at ease some of the migrants were in front of the camera. Did you explain to them the thinking behind The Great Wall? What were their thoughts?

It’s not so much about the film. I think you can get bogged down in the specifics of your project, your aesthetics and your style. With this, it’s really just about human relationships, and that goes for all documentary work in my experience. The camera is secondary to your personal relationship with people. If people agree to help you, in my experience they’re not particularly interested in your aesthetic reference points. In this specific context of refugees and detention centers, people also have a desire to allow the world to see what they’re going through. The anonymity and the lostness that they find themselves in induces despair, so to make themselves visible is something that sometimes people are happy to do. That said, for every person that’s in the film there are many more who didn’t make it into the edit and there’s a lot more who I hung out with but just weren’t comfortable working in that way, and that’s absolutely fine. I always think it’s an amazing gift when somebody agrees to let you film them.

A screening of The Great Wall, followed by a Q and A with Tadhg O’Sullivan, will take place in Trinity on Monday 12th October.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *