Capital Punishment

Mike Figgis prepares for Friday night's LFF screening of 'A Portrait of London' in Trafalgar Square.

Oct 24 2006

Mike Figgis would rather be in the edit suite than talking to me. It's nothing personal, only he's got less than a week before he unveils his ambitious contribution to the London Film Festival's birthday celebrations and he's nowhere near finished yet. He lost his notebook in King's Cross at 4am this morning and yesterday his computer crashed. 'I'll be glad when it’s over,' he laughs. He looks like he'd sooner cry.

The original plan, as he hatched 'not that long ago' with festival head Sandra Hebron, was to select a gang of British filmmakers, all of whom would make a five-minute 'movie-image of London' that Figgis would edit into a 45-minute film. The festival would show the film, for free, in Trafalgar Square.

'I thought it would be as simple as making a few phone-calls,' Figgis says, a little weary behind the eyes. 'But, of course, it's nothing like that.' Promises came and went. Schedules clashed. The phone went quiet. And the clock continued to tick. Figgis received contributions from filmmakers such as Sophie Fiennes and John Boorman, and others such as the actor and theatre director Simon McBurney, but in the end, not enough people committed to the project. Figgis decided to take to the streets himself.

'I approached a number of artists, with disappointing results. They weren't getting back to me, or saying, "Yeah, great man", but looking at the calendar and realising that Frieze was the week before. I asked the Chapman brothers, who said they'd do something, but didn't come back to me. But who knows? Later today, they might turn up with this wonderful five-minute film. I have my doubts.'

He says that 'the journey has been one of adjusting' and lists the footage that he's been shooting over the past few weeks. His mood lifts a little and the project starts to sound fascinating. He's been filming Plan B rapping in Shoreditch, the actress Alexandra Staden tap-dancing at King's Cross, a dancer on the roof of Centrepoint in the dead of night and a whole host of international singers – 'we've got French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Turkish, Danish' – on the streets of the city. He's commissioned original music from Luke Gordon. There are even rumours that Kate Moss, who Figgis recently filmed for an Agent Provocateur viral ad, may appear in the film.

'I realised at a certain point that the phone calls weren't going to do it, and directors and visual artists weren't turning up and maybe it would be interesting to approach artists directly and film them.'

He shakes his head at some of the redtape he's faced when filming in the city, which is ironic considering that Film London is one of the event's chief supporters. 'It's been a real eye-opener for me about how difficult it is to film in London. I thought New York was tricky, but it's a walk in the park compared to shooting in London. I tried to get a blanket permission to shoot in London, because this is being sponsored by the Mayor's Office, but that's not possible.'

But wasn't the foundation of Film London three years ago supposed to make filming here more simple? 'Well, the mind boggles, that's all I can say. To the extent that, last week, we've had to deal with this with some good British humour, and so we conceived of a piece about how difficult it is to shoot in London. That will be a little comedic thread that will run through the evening.'

Ultimately, Figgis's guerilla approach – a necessity, not a choice – sounds exciting. He's flying by the seat of his pants. Who knows how it will turn out when the crowds turn up in Trafalgar Square on Friday? He'll be editing until the day. When I tell Figgis that I wouldn't normally write about a film that I hadn’t yet seen, he looks me straight in the eye: 'Me neither'.

'A Portrait of London' will screen in Trafalgar Square at 7pm on Fri Oct 27.

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