Candid camera

Documentarian Kim Longinotto has been acclaimed at film festivals around the globe as one of the finest contemporary filmmakers. Her latest masterwork, Hold Tight, Let Me Go, is an affecting portrait of a school that caters for emotionally traumatised children.

For more than three decades documentarian Kim Longinotto has been recognised on the international film festival circuit as the World’s Greatest Living Filmmaker. At 53, she has won awards and acclaim all over the planet. So why haven’t you heard of her?

Is it because she’s that bit more ethical than many of her peers? Is it because she’s out there doing the sort of work that allows the rest of us to sleep peaceably at night? Is it because she’s championing the underdog while other filmmakers are chasing neo-Nazis with hilarious consequences?
Sadly, the answer is almost certainly ‘yes’ to all of the above. In an age when the documentary is increasingly dominated by intemperate tirades against George W. Bush, the military-industrial complex and the extra-terrestrials running the World Bank, Kim’s films are as close to organic as cinema can get. Eschewing voiceover and agitprop in favour of takes that are just as lengthy as they need to be, her quiet methodology could not be further from the brash tactics once popularised by former beau Nick Broomfield.
“I don’t think about it as a construct or as naturalism,” Kim tells me. “I don’t really find subjects, I make friends. I love what Nick does but with my work I don’t want you to be thinking about me, or the camera or the filming. I don’t want to be present at all. When you watch my film. I want you to feel that you’re there and going through the emotional experience that I am without knowing I’m around.”.
Despite her silent, sensitive approach, Kim is no verité purist. An admirer of Michael Moore, she insists on different strokes for different folks and admits she is more inclined to draw structural inspiration from the soapy sprawling narratives of The Sopranos than the Maysles brothers, Frederick Wiseman, Barbara Koppel or any of the other pioneers of fly-on-the-wall non-fiction.
“I love story-telling,” she says. “And I love what Michael Moore does. He’s so passionate and his work is really very important. I was knocked out by Bowling For Columbine when I saw it for the first time.”
Even if Kim were to suddenly forego her uncanny ability to play silent witness, one suspects that she would still have trouble emulating the mass appeal of the likes of Mr. Moore. Her subjects are difficult, sometimes harrowing and always a hard sell. A champion for the unseen heroines of the modern world, she has created revealing portraits of everything from Islamic sexual politics (Divorce Iranian Style ,1998, and Runaway, 2001), to gender bending Japanese subcultures (Shinjuku Boys, 1995).
Her 2002 depiction of female genital mutilation in The Day I Will Never Forget is one of the most important pieces of reportage to emerge in recent years. Though it is happening off-camera few who have seen the film will ever forget the screams of a nine-year-old girl as she is ‘operated on’ in a nearby tent.
“It was horrible,” Kim recalls. “I felt like a monster by just being there. But the doctor we were with begged us to stay. She told us that at least if the camera was there, they’d take care to leave the girl without stitches.”
Kim’s latest film, Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go is an affecting portrait of Mulberry Bush School, an Oxfordshire boarding facility that caters for children suffering severe emotional trauma.
“I was approached to do it but I really hated my time at school so I thought it would be horrible to have to make a film in one,” she says. “I went there for half a day and I just found it fascinating that when the kids would act up, they weren’t punished, but rather encouraged to talk about why they were acting up. I was stuck by the teachers as well and the fact that they really seemed to love the children. It seemed to me there was an important lesson for all of us. As a society we’re so eager to punish even when there are much more effective and humane methods of dealing with undesirable behaviour.”

Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go will screen as part of The Belfast Film Festival, April 11–19