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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/dec/15/asif-kapadia-2073-amy-winehouse-senna-maradona-trump>
"It was some time in the early 2000s and Asif Kapadia, already a successful
film director, a wunderkind whose first feature in 2001,
The Warrior, won the
Bafta for outstanding British film, was travelling back from New York.
“There’s a beautiful, gorgeous sunset over Manhattan. I’m in a limo being taken
to the airport. And I was taking photos of Manhattan because I was driving over
Brooklyn Bridge and it’s just all so cinematic and I became subconsciously
aware of the driver watching me in the rear view mirror.
“I get to the airport and I’m in the Virgin lounge when my name is called out.
And I thought: ‘Have I left a bag or something?’ But then five or six people
come: homeland security. And they stop me in the lounge in front of everyone,
the only person of colour in there, and empty out my bag, and they say:
‘Someone’s reported you.’
“‘You’ve been acting suspicious.’ And it’s like: ‘Who are you? Why are you
here? What were you doing?’”
An itinerary of his trip and its purpose proved his credentials and he was
eventually allowed to go and boarded his flight. But for nearly a decade
afterwards, he found himself on a “watch list”. “I would get stopped and
interviewed two times before I got on a plane, pulled out in a room. I started
realising that every time I show my boarding pass, instead of a green light
going off, a red light goes off, and then you have to be taken somewhere for an
interview.”
He avoided the US and when he could not avoid it, for example when he was
working on his documentary
Amy, about the singer Amy Winehouse, which wowed
audiences and critics alike and which went on to win an Oscar, “I had to get a
letter from my teacher”.
“Everyone else in the crew would go through and I’d get pulled up. I had to get
a letter from the head of Universal to say: ‘Asif is working on this project
for us.’”
Kapadia is three years into making his new film,
2073, when he tells me this
story for the first time; how “being watched and paranoid” became his normal.
He’s feeling it again. It’s a month or so after the atrocities of 7 October and
the invasion of Gaza and every day feels like a new chapter in a global horror
show. For Kapadia, an outspoken child of Muslim Indian immigrants working in a
notoriously elitist and cowardly industry, it feels like there are extra
dangers to navigate for anyone who speaks out."
Via Mark Lansbury.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
