See Me Film Spotlight
Today’s film spotlight focuses on the short film See Me directed by Lee Campbell.
What is the title of your film and what inspired said title?
SEE ME: A WALK THROUGH LONDON’S GAY SOHO, 1994 and 2020 (2020)
The title reflects the narrative of this poetry film – a walk that I made during lockdown in 2020. As I walk down the streets that were so important in shaping my life as a young gay man living in London, I revisit the gay bars and pubs that have been my safe spaces for the last twenty years and more, spaces that are now closed. Where there was so much activity ‘to be seen’, I reflect upon being in those closed spaces where I could perform my visibility as a gay man. I was seen and there to be seen. An honest reflection – good and bad experiences included in my poetry recollections. As I walk, I listen on headphones to the compilation music tapes that I made when I first came to this area as a teenager in the 1990s. I reflect upon the difference between me in 1994 and me in 2020 and how my relationship to this area of London has changed, may no longer have the same appeal as it did in 1994 or a different kind of appeal in 2020.
Tell us a little bit about the story and origins of your film.
The film weaves across sound, image, time, rhythm and place and is made up of a number of layers both sound and visual layered on top of one another, talking to and informing each other. It is made using digital transfer versions of c90 tape compilations I made between 1992-1995, juxtaposed with moving image footage of me in 2018 and 2020 and a typeface font graphic ‘See Me’ that I designed in 2005. The c90 cassette on screen is the cassette compilation that I still have from 1994. The film also includes drawings and photographs and other artworks from my personal archive as an artist from the last 25 years.
Whilst I reflect upon the past, I am reminded of my troubled relationship to this area/gay culture. As artist Clunie Reid commented upon this work: ‘What is brilliant in the work is that Lee is troubled about it, that gay culture is not straight forward. The drawings with the irony create a kind of troubledness about gay culture and discloses (Lee’s) personal relationship to it’
Any films or filmmakers that inspired this film?
No specific filmmakers/films but I have always loved the music video accompanying Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy where the singer, Shara Nelson walks around streets in Los Angeles. Also, Jacques Tati’s surreal filmic direction was an indirect influence.
What is the goal of the film for you?
To encourage the viewer to ask to questions/reflect upon what lockdown and closure of queer social physical social spaces may mean for the LGBT community. As one viewer of the poem commented, ‘It has certainly been a time for introspection, voluntary or imposed and this odyssey into the past is a stimulating evocation of how identity is formed and celebrated – and lost, albeit temporarily if the human condition’s ability to recover its sense of self resumes its familiar position in life.’ As I suggest towards the end of the poem/film, in this ‘new normal’, what spaces are available for queer people to perform their visibility? What is the future of those spaces that I discovered on my walk that are currently closed? Will the queer people that once inhabited these spaces become invisible/unseen as their safe spaces have disappeared?
At the time of making the film, I asked myself, ‘So where do I go now to meet other queers?’ Sure, I could ‘meet’ other queers online but that is no way comparable to a set of physical bodies the same room.
What has the journey been like getting the film into production?
The editing together of hours’ worth of music from the cassette tapes which I had to digitalise from analogue took forever but I knew I had to persevere! I think the hard work paid off! In the words of Ben Bowles, Margate Bookie Film Festival, the finished film is a ‘a very original way to document lockdown … a very personal film. The mixed media works very well. I dread to think how long it took for you to splice in the music from your comps!’.
The film in its original format did not include the poetry and that version, once released, has a fantastic reception with official selection screenings at Gateway Film Festival, Peterborough, UK, London ArtHouse Film Festival, London, UK and featured in the journal, You Are Here: The Journal of Creative Geography. Most notably, it won Best Psychedelic Fantasy Winner at 20021’s Retro Avant Garde Film Festival NY and an Honourable Mention at Screener Short Films London last year too.
One thing you learned from this project?
Lockdown forced me to use what was at hand to me – recycling the old mix tapes I still had as a teenager into a film. I guess though bricolage is something I’ve always done in terms of making collages that I did as a teenager. The idea of building a queer identity was so different pre-Internet.. In the manner of bricolage – building /constructing what is at hand/available, as a teenager I could be said to be the queer bricoleur making my collage constructions.. At the end of the day I had to experience the same cultural elements (as heterosexual folk around me) and make something entirely different with it. I was seeing things in things that were not (necessarily) meant for queer people. I was making things queer, these little building blocks in my identity and it was not meant to be there at all.
How can folks find you and your film online?
www.leecampbellartist.blogspot.com
https://filmfreeway.com/LeeCampbell
Insta: lndnqueerfilmmaker
Twitter: leejjcampbell
Any last pieces of advice for fellow filmmakers?
That you can don’t need to have a huge budget to make a memorable and moving film. In the spirit of the bricoleur – use what’s at hand. You may surprise yourself!
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