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David Ballerini
Contributed by Sara Schieron
Saturday, 19 November 2005
On the 19th of November, David Ballerini, the director of
the film The Silence of the Skylark, sat down with me and a group of
Graduate film students from the Academy of Art University, in San
Francisco. Silence of the Skylark, a film based loosely on the memoirs
of Political Prisoner and IRA member Bobby Sands, was one of the
selections in the New Italian Cinema Festival, held November 13-20 at
the Kabuki Theatre.
Sara Schieron: What interested you in the subject of Bobby Sands?
David Ballerini: I read his memoirs and I was shocked, actually
shocked. I could not imagine that someone could survive such savage
treatment. You saw the film so you know what I'm taking about. The
movie is very realistic about the torturous conditions in the prison
but it was even worse so you can imagine that it was a hard job for
Bobby Sands to survive. Even then it must have been harder for him to
defend his own freedom, his own integrity, his own dignity, his own
mind! I thought it was such a great story and I felt I needed to tell
the story. I remember it was 1998-1997 when I wrote the script of the
film and I remember I was thinking that this is a very up to date story
but even today I almost laughed realizing that it's even more current
now than it was when I first wrote the script and called it current.
Sara Schieron: What is the relevance of the skylark to the story? Your
film begins with the character of Bobby Sands directly addressing the
audience with the story of the skylark.
David Ballerini: The detail of the skylark is actually a story Bobby
Sands wrote. It's a tale he used in his memoirs to symbolize himself in
Long Kesh Prison. I felt the story was so rich and full of meaning and
I felt this had to be the beginning. In the memoirs the skylark story
happens at the end. In fact, the story was published separately in a
newspaper and then added to his memoirs afterwards.
I felt the skylark story was a strong way to begin because it is a
synopsis of Bobby inside the jail. I also decided to shoot it in a
particular way because the style of the shooting of the beginning is in
a certain sense a synopsis of the style of the rest of the film. When
you read his memoirs, one of the most important things is that he never
knew what was going to happen to him. He was in constant fear. And
since he didn't know his pain and fear was stronger. If you know
someone is going to hit you, you can prepare yourself, but if you never
know you are always scared. This was intentional the guards
purposefully did this. I wanted to begin the film with security,
steadiness. Bobby's alone in a room and then suddenly things change and
the menace of the guards, the police the violence suddenly change his
universe. I shot the tale of the skylark steadily to create an even
bigger surprise when suddenly the camera moves and everything changes.
Sara Schieron: You make allusions to birds in the soundtrack of the
film. We hear bird wings flapping and birds singing, for example, when
the prisoners are walking in the courtyard and Bobby meets Andrea and a
prisoner takes off his clothing and says he refuses to be dressed as a
common criminal, we hear birds in the background.
David Ballerini: But those birds are not singing, they are cawing, they
are crows. The only birds you actually hear in the movie are crows.
There are many crows in Ireland just like there are many pigeons in
Italy or Sea Gulls here. Also, I like them. They have an aesthetic
though they are menacing. In mythology, crows are tied to the world of
death. The only singing skylark you hear in the film is in the first
scene, before the arrest and before the protest.
Stuart Thomas: I'm from the United Kingdom and I remember the Bobby
Sands Hunger Strike. Things were presented in a different way in the UK
at that time. You're absolutely correct in terms of the torture of
political prisoners, but in part, that was a response to the IRA's
brutal methods: murder and terrorism. So I wonder if you feel you have
a responsibility, as a filmmaker, to represent both sides of a story.
David Balllerini: I could never agree with any kind of terrorism. The
same time IRA had the practice of terrorism Loyalists did the same. But
my film is not about the political argument between Ireland and the UK.
That is another question. Terrorism is always bad it no reason for
torture. You can condemn a terrorist to 40 years of jail... if the law is
such. But torture is another thing. That's why in my film there is no
UK, no IRA; there is only a human being who is tortured. Terrorism is
never justified but it always has reasons behind it. If you are a
democratic country you can't allow torture for terrorism because
tomorrow you'll allow it for robbery and the day after, allow it for a
late car rental. This is unreasonable and that is what my movie is
about. If I had said ‘the IRA is good and the UK is bad', it would have
been another movie.
Stuart Thomas: Do you worry that people may interpret that as your subject?
David Ballerini: I don't think so; I think my film is clear. There is
no IRA or UK mentioned in the film. I did not want people to think,
"Well, he did this so maybe he's guilty". That's not right. There is
absolutely no good reason to torture another human being. The Judge
that condemned Bobby Sands said there was no evidence on guilt on Bobby
Sands but that for society, it was better to jail him.
Stuart Thomas: As an example?
David Ballerini: No, to be safe. In a civil, democratic country it is a
principle of law that a person should be innocent until proven guilty.
It is supposed to be better to have a guilty man free then to have an
innocent man in jail, because you must defend the innocent. That judge
went chose to the contrary. He said, since Bobby was a Catholic man who
supported the IRA, he was unsafe. Bobby was Catholic and 99% of
Catholic people in Ireland supported IRA. This is why he was condemned
to prison. I mean women, children, elderly, almost every catholic
supported the IRA and he was one in the 99%. This role in the IRA was
to organize taxis to allow Catholics to pass into protestant places.
Stuart Thomas: You mentioned your film was screened in Cork. Did you screen anywhere in Northern Ireland?
David Ballerini: No but we hope to screen at Belfast festival this next
year. There was a man in the Cork festival from the Belfast festival
and he liked the movie.
Sara Schieron: I'm interested in the role of the apparitions of the
moon. It seemed to me that the moon was used as a Celtic symbol but I
brought it up with the students and they thought it was a symbol for
Mary.
David Ballerini: The moon was a symbol I took from Greek Mythology.
It's important in any culture and it is important in Celtic culture but
for me I'm most personally attached to the Greek Cultures. Those scenes
are inspired by a famous myth: the tale of the moon who fell in love
with a handsome shepherd who slept on the grass each night with his
sheep. The moon looked at him nightly and fell in love with him. One
night she decided to come down as a woman and make love with him. I
thought of this because in his memoirs he often mentions grass. He was
always dreaming about being in the pastures and to be free in nature.
So I tied the two tales together but I altered the Greek tale. The
Greek tale is very sensual because they make love but I thought if
someone is so close to death as Bobby was in the later part of the film
sexuality would be too difficult for him. Sexuality is basic and for
sure someone closed in jail for a long time dreams about it. Bobby did
and possibly the first scene when the moon appears the dream would have
been a sexual one but the torturers were smart and that is why they do
not let him even dream of beautiful things. In the second scene, Bobby
is so close to death that the moon is like a mother to him. She only
caresses him.
Nayoung Kim: What was the most painful issue you experienced in the production of the film?
David Ballerini: It took 7 years to make this film so I have a lot of
painful moments. I wrote the script in 1998 and the first screening of
the movie was on the anniversary of the death in May of this year. Of
course the film should have been finished sooner. First pre-production
set up began in 2001. We should have had a 7-week schedule they took
down to 5 weeks. Then during post, I took 2 months to edit and in
November of 2003 it was almost ready but we experienced a common
problem in post. We did the sound mix, digital enhancement for the fly
scene, the color timing, negative cutting and all of that, which should
not take as long as it did but it took us one entire year. The problem
is that people made lots of mistakes a long the way. Mistakes as if
they had never worked before. The film was finished just at the end of
2004. At that point a whole different hell began. The production was
all of the sudden not interested in the film so they sent dysfunctional
DVDs to the festivals. Of course the festivals didn't want the
film, they weren't able to screen it in the applications. So of course,
no festival: no distributor. So I sent a good DVD (I made it myself) to
an important Italian Critic and he liked the movie and he selected the
movie for an Italian Festival. It was a beginning. I was lucky
that one of the guests of the festival was Liv Ulmann, Igmar Bergman's
actress. She liked it so much she discussed the film with Journalists.
Also the wife of Vittorio Gassman liked the movie and she discussed it
too. As she's the director of the Vittorio Gassman Foundation she gave
me the foundation's award.
These two women let people know about my film and other festivals began
to call and even the production said "this is a real movie" and after
festivals the movie had a very small distribution in theatres. I still
tour with it to festivals - just as I am doing now.
In Italy there are many good ideas but there is no longer a film
industry. To make a movie you have a lot of people involved and each
person has a specific role. Each person must have the craft to do your
job. For example: dissolve to black (fade to black) it's an easy thing
to do. But in my film there are no long dissolves to black. They are
all short. There is no way to get a long dissolve because the lab did
not know how to do it and they only had one functioning printing
machine. You are alone. You can ask for the easiest of things but there
are no people who can do it or want to. People work if they like you.
This is not a way for the industry to work. You have to do a good job
because it is your job to do well. In Italy the only time people do a
good job is when they are involved with films with big directors, and
only then because they're scared. There is no industry there.
Gabriel Lamb: The actor who played Bobby Sands did an incredible job
translating the idea of pain and torture into his performance. How
difficult was it to put that into your film?
David Ballerini: Very difficult. Ivan is a very generous actor. Ivan
came from the National School of Prague and they study a lot there and
their practice is Stanislavsky training. He is a completely
transformative actor. The film he shot before mine he was 15 kilograms
fatter because they asked him to gain weight. So he lost 15 kilograms
in 5 weeks for my film, then he spent an entire week on a fast to
understand hunger. Then throughout the film he was always alone, never
had dinner, never interacted with anyone, he was always in the
character. He was so generous with himself that even when he was not in
the shot, he would hurt himself, fall down, do whatever his character
would have been doing if he were in the frame. Consider how many
actors are bored with their work when they have to feed their co-stars
lines. How generous is he still acting out his part, hurts himself even
when he's not in frame. I asked him to take it easy! I was scared we
wouldn't reach the end of the movie! It was such a pleasure for me to
work with an actor like him.
Sara Schieron: You related the character of Bobby Sands to John the
Baptist. Why did you choose that martyr's story to uncover the
importance of Bobby Sands?
David Ballerini: Any culture has a myth of martyrdom. Not just
Christians, every culture has one. Martyrdom is a model by which we can
read reality or produce meaning. No one knew what was happening inside
the jail. History uses the model of martyrdom to produce meaning and we
tell the story of martyrdom to define what can be done. Myth lets us
feel like Bobby's story has been told. This is such an important model
for every culture: the myth of Christ for example. We are made to think
that other culture's beliefs are mythologies, but why don't we see ours
this way? Christian Bobby's culture but it's also one culture among
others. Personally I prefer Greek myth, though I'm Italian and not
Greek I'm sort of a classicist. Bobby Sands was very Catholic and I
felt I had to choose a model from his culture to represent him. Maybe
Bobby identified with John the Baptist. It was his culture and perhaps
he had in his mind this model. I used that myth to build my plot. The
memoirs of Bobby Sands are only the memoirs of one day and I needed a
plot. I didn't think I could shoot a truly diaristic film because for
it to be truly diaristic it would have to be an Irish film and I'm not
Irish. So I needed a means to extract the universal elements of the
story. I used a myth. The development of the story is like the
development of the story in the bible and that's why I allude to the
dance of Salome at the end of the film.
Sara Schieron: Then you used the Christian Mythology to commune with
the story of Bobby Sands, which was a story that you identified with
and a story that spoke to you but not a story from your own culture.
David Ballerini: My own culture is more tied to the classics but I felt
I had to respect the history, the true story of Bobby Sands and that is
why I used a myth from his culture to tell his story.
The Silence of the Skylark screened as part of the New Italian Cinema
Festival at the Kabuki Theatre (1881 Post St at Filmore).
Festivals 
