exposed
the one with the film crew
My last post was titled erased. This week I’m feeling exposed. Why? Because last weekend, a film crew landed at my house. I have been shattered ever since.
It was a strange, enjoyable, intense and exhausting experience. I’m not someone who enjoys performing. I can do it, and I’m told I do it well enough, but it is not my natural habitat. Fertile solitude is my thing, as I said recently in another performance, on the Homing podcast. So when my cottage was taken over by the crew, it felt like a small invasion. There were only three of them, but they brought a lot of equipment: cameras, tripods, sound kit, light meters, a clapperboard. All of it filled my little house. They were careful and considerate, but film crews have a way of being both delicate and disruptive at the same time: apologising while moving furniture, trying to disappear while making disappearance completely impossible.
For much of the four days, I had a microphone clipped to my bra, with a wire running down my trouser leg to a sound pack strapped around my ankle. Brava me for remembering to untangle the whole arrangement and remove it before going to the loo.
Although most of the filming was in my home, we did some shooting outdoors too, including in my village. I was asked to walk towards the cameraman, pretending he wasn’t there. Then we had to go again because someone followed me down the street gawping at the camera. People came out of shops to stare. This was not what Julie, the director, wanted. So we went again, while Carlos, the cameraman, muttered about how expensive 35mm film is and how little time each reel allows. Four and a half minutes, apparently, which suddenly made every inquisitive passer-by feel like a financial liability.
As I retraced my steps for a second or third time past the butcher, the deli and the Co-op, I thought how strange it was to repeat an action that had originally been natural. The first walk had simply been a walk. The second was a performance of walking. The third was a performance of pretending not to perform walking. By then, I had no idea what my face was doing.
For decades, I occupied a professional role that gave me a certain kind of authority and distance. Academic life, for all its pressures, still allows a degree of concealment. You have to perform, of course and, goodness knows, I’ve done my fair share of media appearances and public lectures over the years. But it is a professional persona. You can hide behind your expertise. Doing a documentary is different. I was no longer simply discussing stories. I was the story. Serves me right for writing a memoir, I suppose.
So, what were they filming, I hear you ask?