Steve McQueen on How Directors Shouldn’t Be A***holes and Why “I Have to Get the F*** on With It” as a Black Filmmaker
Oscar- and BAFTA Award-winning British writer and director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, Hunger, Shame, Small Axe, Uprising, Occupied City) got a huge applause in honor of his birthday on Wednesday during a BFI London Film Festival event.
He spoke during a “Screen Talk” Wednesday afternoon and press conference ahead of the world premiere of his new movie Blitz — starring Saoirse Ronan, Stephen Graham, Elliot Heffernan and Benjamin Clementine — which is the opening film of the 68th edition of the London fest (LFF).
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The movie, McQueen’s third LFF opening film, follows 9-year-old George (Heffernan) in wartime London after his mother Rita (Ronan) sends him as an evacuee to safety in the English countryside. Defiant and determined to get back home on his own to his mother and grandfather Gerald (Paul Weller) in East London, George encounters real danger as a distraught Rita tries to find her footloose son.
McQueen said during the press conference that love is a key theme of Blitz. “I am interested in how, through these particular times, love can shine,” he said. “That is the only thing that matters.” During the Screen Talk, he also said the experience was about “love, L-O-V-E.”
Blitz will be released in the U.S. and U.K. on Nov. 1 before becoming available to stream on Apple TV+ Nov. 22.
During his Screen Talk, McQueen shared that Blitz “surrounded my childhood” as a “silent history around us” as he grew up in London. Even though he now lives in Amsterdam, he said he will always be a Londoner and is just a quick flight away from the British capital.
The filmmaker was also questioned about his past films. About Hunger, he said: “I just thought it would be my first film and my last film.” He added: “I was interested in ritual,” or “the spaces in between the world history books” that make a difference to people. “I love this idea of ritual.”
Filmmakers also shouldn’t be horrible to others, he stressed. Being a director “is not about being an arsehole, but about listening,” McQueen said, adding that there are “too many” of the former. Calling actors “highly” intense and sensitive individuals, he said his goal is always to allow a creative team to arrive at a joint effort in the here and now.
After the success of Hunger, he shared how he met some folks in Hollywood who expected him to be white. How did he decide to make a movie about slavery? “There was this deafening silence,” McQueen shared. “It was kind of apparent. It was almost like I had to say this happened here.” And it had to be a Hollywood film: “It had to be an American, because you want to serve it back” and say this is your U.S. history, the filmmaker shared.
12 Years a Slave made him the first Black director to win the best picture Oscar. How was that night? “I met Prince,” McQueen shared during his Screen Talk. “That was great!”
Otherwise, he said about the experience: “It was heavy.” And he argued: “If President Obama was not the president, that film would not have been made.” A lot of Black filmmakers got to make their films because “it was a blockbuster,” he added but noted that the following year there was not a single Black nomination.
After a dance scene from Small Axe was screened, McQueen said it was very emotional for him and others in the Black community who would “get beaten” by police officers and others when they were younger. “If there weren’t these blues parties in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, there would be a huge epidemic of mental health,” or a bigger one, he said.
Discussing his approach to filmmaking and how his personal history affects it some more, McQueen said that as a Black man, he didn’t have any privilege, and therefore was focused on going ahead with his work. “I have to get the fuck on with it” and don’t have the privilege of thinking about certain things others may, he said. Asked for advice, he later also told an audience member to stay focused on the work: “Keep going on!”
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