The Great Acting Blog: "Closure Of Catharsis Q & A"

Closure Of Catharsis is a feature film I made with Rouzbeh Rashidi at the end of last year. It's about a man who wrestles with himself as he attempts to remember a trauma from his past, a trauma which has slipped from memory. The film is structured around a park bench monologue and intercut with mysterious imagery. It's visually poetic and possesses a dark brooding atmosphere. It's a film I'm immensely proud of, and have taken great delight in seeing it gradually accrue an audience over time (in the proper arthouse tradition); Closure Of Catharsis has so far played in Ireland, Croatia and will do so in Chile later this year. In addition, it has garnered very positive reviews, and is well on it's way to a having a sizeable following. The film was originally inspired by Jesse Richards' Remodernist Manifesto, which, broadly speaking, seeks a new spirituality in cinema, "concerned with humanity and an understanding of the simple truths and moments of humanity", and Closure Of Catharsis is full of such moments. Furthermore, and crucially for my own personal cinematic project, Closure Of Catharsis is a film for the cinephile for sure, however, it can also be viewed by those who might normally seek out more mainstream fare - infact, I screened the film for a group of such people and they were engrossed by it - in a cinema culture as soul-destroyingly conservative as Great Britain's, where most films are merely marketing paradigms (many of those going into filmmaking now, would have gone into advertising 20 years ago), this is important. "Audiences" are not the zombific drones we are lead to believe, quite the contrary infact, they long to enter into strange new worlds, and are compelled by the unusual, the individualistic, the provocative. My point is that the production of arthouse cinema among young filmmakers in my own city is non-existent, but it needn't be, and this has always been my conviction. Perhaps then, with films such as Closure Of Catharsis, it's maker, Rouzbeh Rashidi, is showing the way. While so many filmmakers spend their time moaning about "funding" (yawn) or begging us to "like" their Facebook page, Rashidi spends his time actually making films, making cinema, and in the process developing and refining his aesthetic and mode of production, thus arriving at a point where a film of Closure Of Catharsis' calibre can be produced. Rashidi has, in the corners of Dublin and Tehran, quietly rewritten the rules of the filmmaking game.

And so it is then, he and I will travel this week to Bristol, where Closure Of Catharsis will be screened at Cinekinosis, which is curated by acclaimed filmmaker, Juan Gabriel Gutierrez. Subsequent to the screening, there will be a question and answer session in which I am expected to participate in, and, having never done so before, I begin to think about how I can do it well and prepare correctly - this is especially important for somebody as beloved of speaking waffle as I am. I think it is particularly problematic for actors to speak about their work because inevitably it leads to speaking about themselves, which may in turn descend into solipsism. On the other hand, there is the loathsome false modesty, which seems to be the favoured tool for self-promotion among our leading  actors: pretending that they are clumsy and disorganised, cute and innocent (when we all know it takes aggression, ambition and hard work to build a career). Either of these routes is repulsive, and both help to foster the generally terrible image of actors as self-obsessed, trivial and phoney. When I think about those who speak about their work in a way that I find engaging, they tend to be honest and unpretentious, simple, and possessing a genuine desire to communicate something, and in a form which may be meaningful to the listener. In the end then, the same values which I aspire to in my actual work; truth, directness, generosity and strength, should also be present when speaking about my work - it's about taking responsibilty: audiences come to us artists in order to be delighted, and are willing to suspend their own self-consciousness and place their well being in our hands to obtain that delight. The artist, therefore, is in a hugely privileged position,  a position which should be cherished and handled with care, and those who would abuse it should be despised. The audience responds most strongly to the artists who take care of them.