Ahead of the world public premiere of Shingetsu, a 90-minute drama which will be screened alongside a series of short films as part of the Film Fringe strand of the Hastings Fringe (Friday 9 September, The Sussex Exchange, 7pm, free), Miranda Gavin talks to director Paul Schoolman (Jail Caesar) and actor Alice Krige (Chariots of Fire, Star Trek: First Contact and Jail Caesar) about war, trauma and healing.
Miranda Gavin: Where does the title Shingetsu come from and what does it mean?
Paul Schoolman: My reference to it is through an old Chinese poem:
The enlightened soul
Like the moon
Casts its light on all.
I study the Japanese bamboo flute, the shakuhachi, and one of the pieces is called Shingetsu, based on that poem.
MG: Is it correct that Shingetsu is the second part of a trilogy of films, the first being Jail Caesar, which was shown last year at the first Hastings Fringe? Can you comment on the trilogy of films?
PS: Well yes, I would love it to be the second film in a trilogy but I have found the third part, How To Write A Love Poem, really hard to write. I think I have to leave it alone for a couple of years and then return to it. Fortunately I have two other very dense pieces to work on. The idea was to start with a very masculine or yang piece, Jail Caesar, then move to male meets female in Shingetsu and then onto pure yin or female in How To Write A Love Poem. I think the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ can be very misleading for yin and yang, the Taoist Master, Arthur Huang uses the terms ‘Initiating’ and ‘Responding’ in his great translation of the Chinese classic the I Ching, and I think this is more correct. Sorry if that all sounds really pretentious!
MG: Where is Shingetsu set?
Alice Krige: Just outside LA in California, specifically the canyons. Shingetsu opens in an area of the Santa Monica mountains that are sacred to the Chumash Indians and continues in a canyon set within a swathe of magnificent federal parkland overlooking, and within earshot, of the Pacific
MG: You (Paul) directed and shot the film, were there any particular challenges that you had to work with?
PS: Well, we shot it outside our house when we were living in California. The land was incredibly hilly so most of the time I seemed to be standing at 45 degrees! Apart from that the shoot was really very fluid and highly enjoyable.
MG: The film is a two-hander with you (Alice) playing the Woman and Gunter Singer playing the Man. How, and why, did you come to cast Gunter and is he a professional actor?
PS: I don’t really know what a professional actor is anymore! Gunter was introduced to me by an English friend in LA. Tim, who had been a Green Jacket. I felt he was testing me because he knew I had worked with very violent men in prisons and he wanted to see how I would cope without guards around me. The irony was that Gunter, far from being violent, was one of the most sensitive people I have ever met. Enormously powerful but extraordinarily sensitive. His behaviour was about 200% professional and he was superb to work with.
MG: Who wrote the script and was any of it developed through improvisation?
PS: We, all three of us (Alice, Gunter and me), wrote it. Alice and Gunter wrote their own parts and I wrote the bridging stuff. There was very little improvisation but masses of research. Alice researched the whole triage-war aspect and Gunter had a lifetime of experience in all aspects of his character, as a K1 fighter, a mercenary, and an elite Austrian High Alps Ski Commando. Although he wasn’t involved in the Balkans, he certainly knew many soldiers and mercenaries who were and saw action in many other places. I screened the film for close soldier friends — Special Boat Service, Grenadiers, etc. They all vouched for the veracity of the piece.
AK: Paul is very modest about his contribution. The story and its structure was his idea and he suggested Gunter and I each write/create our characters and he wove what we created into the whole.
MG: The concept of Yin and Yang is central to your work and that of duality, especially in terms of seemingly opposing forces that are actually interconnected. How is the idea of bright and dark, of female and male, realised in the film?
PS: The Healer and The Fighter.MG: What do you both consider to be the main themes?
PS: Senseless brutality and the reality of healing.
AK: An exploration of the devastating damage caused by war in the lives of two individuals and, most importantly, the possibility of healing and redemption.
MG: Did you self-finance the film?
PS: I’m not sure I can look at it in those terms. We had bought the equipment for Caesar and were waiting to set off to South Africa with it. I come from a theatrical background and the most natural thing is simply to ‘do it’! Neither Alice nor I like the whole hawking around thing. We were offered the money for Caesar but the strings that would have come with it made the idea of working ‘under somebody’ untenable. We set out to do our own work in our own way. And that’s what we did.
AK: As Paul says, we had the equipment and this was a story we all wanted to tell, so we did it on a co-operative and profit-share basis.