Street Film’s new documentary ‘Saviours’ about the St Saviours Boxing Club in Dublin and featuring 2008 Olympic Bronze medalist Darren Sutherland, will go on nationwide release tomorrow Friday October 3. IFTN chats with Ross Whitaker – co director of the film about the two year filming process, the observational mode of film making and why the film is much more about the fights through life, not just in the ring.
Having screened at screened at a host of festivals including Galway, Boston, South By SouthWest, South Africa and Chicago, ‘Saviours’ directed by Liam Nolan and Ross Whitaker of Street Films, will now be released by Eclipse Pictures in the following cinemas; Cineworld, Dublin, Lighthouse, Smithfield, Movies @ Dundrum, UCI Tallaght and Vue Cinema in Liffey Valley– not bad for a film that started out with no funding what so ever.
The documentary follows the boxing and personal lives of three young men from St. Saviours Boxing Club in Dublin – Abdul Hussein,, an asylum seeker from Ghana, Dean Murphy - a local lad from the flats and Darren Sutherland , a young man of Irish-Caribbean parentage. With guidance of from their coach John McCormack a former British Professional Boxing Champion and his support of coaches, the three boxers aim for victory in the Irish Senior Championships.
Ross Whittaker talks of his experience of filming and building a relationship with the three men and why it is also appealing to people with no interest in the sport.
Ross, did you always want to make a documentary on boxing or where did the idea come from?
There was a whole list of things I wanted to do a documentary about. The thing was that I always thought boxing clubs would have great stories in them. They are usually full of great characters and humour and something to pass on to the kids or whoever. We have seen this in documentaries, in many fiction movies and in this case as well.
I suppose there is always going to be characters there, that have a lot at stake in their lives; a lot of emotions, lots of drama, so it seemed like the perfect place to do an observational documentary that would actually have fascinating dramatic, stories in it.
And how did you end up filming in St Saviours Club?
I started working with Liam Nolan who is the co-director with me on this project and he had actually done a radio documentary in St Saviours. When we first met and started talking about doing project he said “Oh I did a radio documentary here” and I said “Brilliant, let’s do a TV documentary there”. He was slightly hesitant at first as he didn’t necessarily want to go over the same ground again but I chipped away at him a little bit and we eventually decided to go down there and started going down there on a regular basis for about two years now.
In relation to the three boxers the doc focuses in on, how did you approach them to take part in filming?
I thought that Darren had a really interesting background story which we don’t get hugely into in the film as we try to keep everything in the present but we could tell he was an interesting character and great talker. Abdul had the immigration story; it was pretty obvious he was articulate and was happy to take part. Dean came to us in the end. We had followed a number of other characters and broke it down as we went but Dean was just around the whole time chatting to us and the more we spoke with him the more we liked him and thought there was something interesting there. He gradually made his way into the film and turned out to be a really interesting guy to follow.
As you said, the film is an observational documentary… what benefits and challenges came from filming in this mode?
Always a big challenge in trying to do something observational is access in the first place. Luckily with the boxing club they are such amazingly open and friendly people that they were happy enough to let us at it. I think we treated them with a lot of respect. It might sound funny but simple things like having good manners and going along on time and chatting away to people off camera, through that we gained the access that way. Once we were in there, I wouldn’t say it was easy but they began to ignore us and that made it such a fascinating way of filming - to be able to film anything you want and people not to be concerned about it because they trust you. Again for us it was a huge challenge but we were able to do it fairly quickly and we went from there.
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Witnessing the boxers’ personal as well as their professional journeys, would you say that the film is about much more than boxing?
We wouldn’t really see it as a film about boxing per say at all. It was our chance to show a different side of Dublin; it’s another side of Dublin that you don’t normally see, another side of Ireland but not a necessarily depressing place at all. It is a really warm and energetic place where people are volunteering to help others to improve their lives.
The boxing club was a place around which to bring a number of stories together and then the competition within boxing was a way to structure the story so you could get a sense of where people’s progress was in their lives in relation to how they were doing in their boxing. We wanted to show a different side of Dublin, the people that lived there and the things that were happening in their lives.
It must have taken a high level of patience, to see what story would develop from the characters?
Yes but that is just want we love to do - spending time with the characters. That is just what we love to do. It is a complete pleasure for us. It is what we want to do with our professional lives. We are clearly not in it for the money as you are not going to make any money out of this project and many more like it but its just what we love doing. We want to be able to put across stories which are true, meaningful and moving stories that actually affect people.
Having filmed the guys for so long you must have really become very involved in their lives?
I suppose the hardest of the three stories to take would be Abdul in his situation. He is struggling with immigration problems and we filmed some pretty upsetting stuff. It’s very hard to stay behind the camera in those situations and not just put the camera down and give the guy a hug. What you are doing in these kind of things is you are trying to create a story that is more than just you behind the camera and that might move other people to feel or act differently in relation to problems that they don’t get to see otherwise.
What camera did you use?
We shot mostly on a PD170.
Can you describe how it got funding and how it became to be released?
We shot for probably two years and we didn’t have any funding what-so-ever. We did try a number of times to get funding from different sources and sometimes it’s just that a particular project isn’t for that particular funding source and that’s ok. When the Irish Film Board changed hands a guy called Alan Maher saw some footage of what we had shot so far and really liked it. Without the Film Board coming on board none of this would have happened. They are really the ones who made this happen and believed in the project and thought these are the guys who can pull this off and make an interesting film out of it.
Once that had been finished we put it into festivals and dropped the DVD to distributors. Alan Maher was the first person on board and the second was Siobhan Farrell of Eclipse Pictures. She believed in the film and thought it had something. She has put so much work into getting the word out there for ‘Saviours’, it’s incredible. It just takes a few people to believe in something, sometimes for things to happen and for us it was the IFB and Eclipse Pictures who we will be thankful to forever.
What has been audience reaction to the film at the festivals?
The experience we have after screenings so often is that girls, women and even older women who have been at the festival and decided to give it a go; they come up to us and say “I really loved your film, I had a tear in my eye at times, this was a fantastic film, I don’t even know anything about boxing but I loved your film”. It’s very hard to get the word out there that this film will actually appeal to perhaps a much wider audience than just watch boxing on TV. We are just hoping that this will get through a bit and that people will go with their mothers, sisters or girlfriends and they hopefully will all enjoy it, I think that is the case.
What advise would you offer to anyone who wants to make an observational documentary?
A few years ago I met a documentary maker called Ron Marle who is a famous Canadian documentary maker and I was interviewing for Film Ireland Magazine. He said to me “There are cameras, laptops, microphones that aren’t expensive anymore and advises anyone to get your camera, get your microphone, just get out there - don’t talk about it do it” and this is a really important thing. Another thing that we always concentrate on is to try and let people tell their own stories and not editorialise it too much. Just love and believe in your subjects and allow them tell their stories. If you do that you should be fine.
What are Liam and yourself working on at the moment?
We have both been working for other people. I have just finished an hour long documentary for on Bernard Dunne the boxer for RTÉ called ‘Big Time’ and Liam has just done a series for Setanta.
We would love to do another project like ‘Saviours’. It’s just for the kind of stuff that we do it is all about getting access. We have tried to get access to lots of different, really interesting things but Irish people I think are inherently shy and when you say what we would like to do, is come and film you for the next year, it is kind of off putting. I don’t know how we are going to access to the next thing; hopefully it will happen soon but we are always on the look out for something really interesting to spend a lot of time on. At the moment we keep coming up with different ideas and trying to find the right to get access on them.
You must have been delighted after the success of Darren in the Olympics it is such a good time to release the movie?
Yes, it was a great coincidence. Anyone who goes to the film will quickly learn that we had no idea that Darren was going to be so successful. There is even at a point in the documentary where Darren gives up boxing so at that point we were just following the story of a guy who was hugely talented but doesn’t know if he wants to do it. It’s a big thing for the film that Darren has done so well and we wouldn’t be getting half as much exposure without that. He is delighted as well and he is one of the biggest advocates for the film.
‘Saviours’ is released by Eclipse Pictures on Friday 3rd October.
