Short & Sweet: Esther May Campbell

08 June 09

A day after collecting a BAFTA for her live action short film September, writer-director Esther May Campbell will have been sharply reminded, if such a reminder was required, of the fleeting nature of such glory.

Quickly returned to her everyday routine, which includes taking her young daughter to school, the Bristol-based filmmaker explains: “All the teachers had seen the Awards on the telly, so I was asked to bring the BAFTA mask in and show the kids. We talked about it for a while and the big question I kept getting was, why it only had one eye. For a five-year-old, that really needs answering.”

A question others might ask is how Campbell, who cites Terrence Malick and David Gordon Green as influences, can sustain a career in film at what some might consider the wrong end of the M4. Yet she clearly does, and even used the contrasting countryside and man-made motorway as the backdrop for her magical, elegiac short. But she admits this is not always easy.

“I do feel quite isolated from the film industry and community,” says Campbell. “Over the years I’ve done many other jobs, making films or directing a bit of television, and almost every morning I wake up and take my daughter to school and on the way back often think, ‘what do I do again?’

“That’s because I don’t often run into film people in my daily life, so it becomes a concerted effort when I go down to London or if somebody approaches me. There is a sense of separateness, which can also be quite enabling.”

Once you box yourself in, then you have to be really creative to find ways out of it...

Although softly spoken and thoughtful in conversation, Campbell feels her hackles rise at the notion that a female director must choose between career and family. That she has both is testament to her tenacity, and also her ability to work round a problem by not automatically accepting the received wisdom.

“What’s been really curious in the last year or so, as I’ve worked more with various agencies and organisations, is this sense of the way they feel things should be done. It’s very interesting to me that there would be only one way to develop a feature film, or one way to write a script. All I know is that when I follow the trail of films that I adore, nine times out of ten those films broke with such convention.”

Campbell is currently working on several projects, two of which are features. These were in development prior to her winning the BAFTA, so it’s not yet clear how this honour will help her career develop further. But it is interesting to note that one of the features will be made under Dogme-style constraints to maintain a purity in its means of telling its story.

“These constraints are important,” Campbell adds, “because it feeds the creative mind. Once you box yourself in, then you have to be really creative to find ways out of it.”

The ultimate constraint of a short film, of course, is the limited time in which a filmmaker must communicate a coherent story. Campbell achieved this feat with aplomb, though she admits she had no particular ambitions for September beyond making a good film that would be seen and enjoyed by audiences.

“Each short film means different things to each filmmaker. For me – and this sounds a bit poncey – they’re very much the opportunity to dip back into your artistic source. Just before we shot September I was offered a gig directing a TV drama serial, but I turned it down because I had a hunch I’d get the funding, finally, for the short.

“It was a super-hard decision, but this seemed more important for me at that time. It came down to the fact that I really wanted to make this piece of work, I wanted to go back and find out what it was about this story and this set of images that I was so interested in.” Short films, in Esther May Campbell’s own phrase, offer a perfect way to re-direct the creative compass – and the BAFTA on her desk is a sign that she’s clearly doing something right.

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