Our Chemikal Romance: Interview with Niall McCann

“Is this us peering back into the past, or gazing hopefully into the future?” Stewart Henderson, the founder of Chemikal Underground, in Irish filmmaker Niall McCann’s new film, Lost In France, doesn’t quite know the answer.
The music documentary-meets-concert film reunites acts of Glasweigian record label Chemikal Underground and brings them on a nostalgia-tinged roadtrip to Mauron in France, where they all played in 1997. Featuring artists like The Delgados, Mogwai, Arab Strap and Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, the musicians reflect not only on the importance of that time in their lives, but on the impact they had on the music and arts scene in Glasgow.
McCann’s previous features include An Exile’s Home In The Bronx, about Irish immigrants playing Gaelic football in New York, and Art Will Save the World, his 2012 film about English musician Luke Haines of The Auters. It was so hard to get Art Will Save The World made that McCann contemplated abandoning film altogether. But he encountered Arab Strap’s Aidan Moffat after a gig in the Grand Social in Dublin and decided to visit Glasgow. There, the idea for Lost In France was born.
“I knew I wanted to make a film about Glasgow because it’s one of those great musical cities,” says McCann, “but it doesn’t really get the attention it deserves compared to places like Detroit. It’s just a far more interesting and diverse place, art and music wise, than somewhere like London. There are a load of great characters, and what I like about Glasgow is that it’s not just one unified sound.
“It’s not like Britpop or the electronic scene in Sheffield. You’ve Mogwai, you’ve Arab Strap, you’ve the Delgados, you’ve Chvrches now – they’re all very diverse. So when I was over with Aidan, we were talking about his memories of being in Arab Strap and working with Chemikal Underground. He mentioned this trip they all took to Mauron, and the minute he mentioned that to me, I figured that I had a way to tell this story.”
Class Is A Huge Factor
Getting the bands to remake the trip to Mauron works as a brilliant device within the film, as it brings the musicians together and allows them some space and time to look back over the intervening years. There have been monumental changes since Chemikal Underground’s original visit to Mauron. At the time of the trip, most of the musicians didn’t even have mobile phones – now the internet completely dominates their industry. 
“It’s a bit like journalism or filmmaking now,” says McCann. “All these creative arts have become so much more difficult. People see the arts as something that’s meant to be a hobby. I know loads of journalists and filmmakers who have to work for free, and musicians aren’t making money. So I wanted to draw a parallel between the two time-frames and talk about what happened.”
A predominantly working class, industrial city, Glasgow was hit hard by the recession in the 1980s. 
“There’s an attitude that London is great and Glasgow is an afterthought,” McCann muses. “There’s a needling thing there which I think is a class-based issue. Glasgow is a very working-class place. And what we’re talking about in terms of the music industry is, I think, inherently linked to the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of proto-capitalism.
“I think people don’t really want to talk about the impact of class and economics. You can see the resistance we’re having to conversations about achieving some form of gender parity in the arts. But I think class is huge factor, too. I don’t know many working-class people in Ireland who make films. It’s nearly impossible, and I think it’s intentional. Because who are the people who get to make films, and what are the messages going to be in the films getting made? It’s not going to be anti-status quo, or anything going against the grain.
“Of course wealthy people are angry, but it may be a different form of anger. So the whole film isn’t about class, but it is a thread. Because if the music industry continues going the way it is, working-class musicians are going to be completely crowded out. It would suit governments if there were less angry voices from marginalised people getting out there.”
No Happy Endings
One telling moment in the movie is when Alex Kapranos mentions that all the musicians he knew were on the dole: far from the small-minded modern view of social welfare catering to the lazy, it was the way artists survived.
“The changes in attitudes towards social welfare over the past 20 years are a part of this changing political landscape,” asserts McCann. “In Ireland, it used to be that everyone was on the dole at one point. But now, I see people on the dole and they’re made to feel worthless.
“I was on the dole a while ago, and they make you feel like a criminal,” he adds. “The media’s against people on the dole. People on the dole are the enemy, like they’re somehow scamming your money. The real enemy is above all of us. When those conservative, right-wing attitudes about social welfare creep in, it does affect the arts because people aren’t given the time and space to create.”
McCann is openly critical of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, as well as the Tories in the UK. 
“What amazed me about Glasgow is that people are openly socialist,” says McCann. “There’s a real collective sense of organisation that I’m not seeing in Ireland. Socialism here is seen as a brand, it’s a t-shirt, it’s not a real and viable form of political organising. Though maybe I’m just not hanging around with the right people.”
Like the musicians of Chemikal Underground, McCann feels compelled to keep fighting the good fight and making art – all the while raising awareness about these issues.
“I don’t really believe in happy endings,” says the director. “When it comes to capitalism, the odds are stacked against all of us. And so you just have these minor victories – excuse the bandname pun – to keep you going. Even Chemikal, they’d do anything to keep these musicians going. It’s very easy to become despondent. But you have to find ways to keep on.”