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Exclusive: Interview with "Ghosts" director Nick Broomfield

"Ghosts" is not yet in the States but on DVD in the UK. This docudrama looks at the true and tragic deaths of 23 Chinese cockle-pickers in Northern England in 2004. Nick Broomfield (Tupac & Biggie / Kurt & Courtney) takes us on a stunning and intimate portrayal of single mother Ai Qin and the human smuggling route she follows from China to England. The film chronicles the innocent lives and the harrowing conditions illegal immigrants face trying to eek their way into the global economy at any cost.

Based on true and real events, it's a clever and delicate departure for the director. Broomfield pulls off a marvelous feat by getting us completely inside the world of illegal immigrant smuggling and the gangs that populate it.

MUSIC: The Chinese language and music to the backdrop of lush rural England creates a startling collision. It is rumored that the music is in fact the cast singing off camera between takes. It's simply a soundtrack you couldn't design - it's so perfect and so special that it must have happened by accident. It might really be one of the reasons why you feel you're inside this group of people, looking out, on this horrifying journey. Ryuichi Sakamoto created some original music for the score and weaved traditional Chinese instruments into the cold harsh realities of a modern day slave trade.

Remarkably the cast of Ghosts and the lead performance by Al Qin are all performed by Chinese former illegal immigrants. At every angle the film connects you to this truly sad affair and provokes us to ask what is the real cost of the food and products we buy?

Premiering at the London Film festival last year, this film is yet to get a release in the US.  

We had the opportunity to interview Mr. Broomfield (who is working on his first full theatrical release "Battle For Haditha"), via his cell phone while he was preparing a roast for some dinner guests in his kitchen:

SEEN: What made you make “Ghosts”?
 
NICK: It started off as a story of modern slavery, really, [which to] my amazement [happened] in England, which we all think of as a fairly civilized country. There are all these people who are like a non-people living here in caravans, 15 to a house in parts of England. Completely under the radar, completely unprotected. Like Dickensian England, it’s all here. These people are working for Sainsbury’s, Tesco’s and ASDA, [they] all pretend they don’t know it’s going on. And the government pretends it doesn’t know it’s going on. They’ve designed everything so that those people can be used to keep the cost of living low. There like this sub-human race and I realized that this is really widespread. About 3 million people in the UK [are] living like this. I certainly didn’t know how widespread it was.
 
SEEN: There seems to be a couple of processes that seem intrinsic to how intimate this film was. One of them was the decision to cast real Chinese immigrants as your cast. What was the thought behind this?
 
NICK: It was key really. I wanted to use people who had experienced it themselves. People who had an emotional experience, who had left loved ones behind in China who had traveled thousands of miles for months and months in the backs of trucks, who had lived in real shit conditions. [They had] just gone through the experience of being a complete stranger in this new country and not speaking a word of the language. At the same time the Chinese are amazingly emotional which I hadn’t realized. They are amazing family people. For them to leave their children behind is such a big thing. I guess there’s so much poverty in China now that they really don’t have any choice. They either go to Shanghai or to Europe to send their money back. So I wanted to get people who could really identify with that, and not get an actor who would try to pretend and try to understand what it was like. [I wanted to get] people who’s whole heart and soul would be put into their performance, which is really I guess what we got. It was much more convincing because we got them.
 
SEEN: Watching the film was a very interesting experience as you felt completely inside the story.
 
NICK: I wanted the film to be from their point of view. It’s very much their way of seeing England and their way of relating to each other. It’s their journey we’re filming. It’s all based on things that very much happened. It’s a weird thing to see the English countryside through Chinese people who are obviously very alien to it and don’t really understand what’s happening.
 
SEEN: Music seemed a critical part of this film and helped disarm the viewer to fully integrate us into the film and the story. Can you talk about that process?
 
NICK: I really had very little knowledge of Chinese music. It was a very lengthy process of firstly asking the cast what their favorite music was. A lot of them were very musical and they listen to Chinese music all of the time. They sing Chinese songs to each other. All the singing in the film was their idea. It was their favorite songs. The main song at the end of the film was an idea from Al Qin, a song from her parents. We had tons and tons and tons of CDs we put into the system and we played them for days. We spent whole days listening to music really.
 
SEEN: Is music a big part of you making films?
 
NICK: It is. But I’m someone who does not remember music very well. I know when I like something but I don’t get into the process. Going through the process, choosing things is a long and painfully process normally. I think some of the things we took from the song at the end of the film - the lament - it’s very soulful.  It’s the heart of Al Qin in a way. Then we worked with two composers Molly Nyman and Harry Escott who do a lot of Michael Winterbottom’s films as well. They did a lot of music for the film which was really very good and in a way I wish we used more of it. And then completely out of the blue, Jeremy Thomas - one of the friends of this project - got a copy of the film to Ryuichi Sakamoto and he was completely moved by the film so he gave us some cues. Also Peter Gabriel saw the film and was also very moved. He came up with a lot of suggestions because at the time he was working with a Chinese composer and was very interested in Chinese music. Peter was very helpful and had lots of suggestions - he pointed us in the right direction. Actually, in talking to you, I fully realize how wide we searched.
 
SEEN: There has been some suggestion that some of the on-camera performances of the characters singing together had a big influence on the music for the film.
 
NICK: A lot of that was just what they were doing. Singing in the van was just a way they entertained each other. There was a lot of natural behavior, again, having used real people. The Chinese are very musical, they love singing, they love opera and folk songs. Different parts of China have different styles of music. Mr. Yu was from Beijing and he was very into Beijing opera. Some of the extras were from the countryside and one really loved to whistle so beautifully.  They would all change the words to songs to sing about the kind of day they were having and what they were thinking about.  It helped them survive being here I think, it made them feel very together. It bound them together as one group.  I think music does that.
 
SEEN: It very much comes out in your film. Congratulations on something so incredible.

[Note: to find out how to support the UK charity that helps support these immigrants visit:

http://www.ghosts.uk.com/

For more info on the film visit:

http://www.ghoststhemovie.co.uk/]

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