One of my best directors that inspired me into film making has definitely got to be Steve McQueen. I mean where can I start, this guy worked all the way to the top to do something that he was passionate about. Steve McQueen grew up in a working class family i can imagine in those days it was pretty hard being black and living in Britain because of all the racism that was around. There were no examples of artists who were like him. When did you ever see a black man doing what he wanted to do? His father kept telling him to get into trade and all the other jobs even, even when his son began to be successful. Imagine having one of the closest people in your life not believing or supporting you. You still get some black parent criticising their children if they choose to go into films instead of science which could take them to become doctors or engineers. But i guess for McQeen it was all about having faith and confidence that what he will produce will actually get him somewhere.
One thing that surprise me about McQueen is that during his long journey to success he has never been interested in pleasing mainstream tastes, but no matter how uncompromising his work, it keeps becoming more and more popular.His first film, Bear, was 10 minutes long, silent, and consisted of two naked men, one of them him, wordlessly circling each other, staring and sparring, to me I really like this film the camera shots and transition are on point! He has made 3 films so far such as Shame which took more than £10m at the box office. The director shot his latest movie in just 35 days, with one camera and a budget of barely £10m, and wasn’t even confident of finding a distributor brave enough to take it.
And lastly one of my favourite films 12 Year a Slave having already earned $40m (£25m) in US ticket sales, multiple Golden Globe nominations and countless predictions of an Academy Award that made McQueen the first black feature film director to win an Oscar.His work also explores the nature of authority, and the choice between collaboration and resistance. I wonder if this is because he is curious about how he would respond in circumstances that he had through childhood.The most obvious theme in all three films is incarceration, physical and psychological if I was to meet him I would as him if he knew anyone in jail while he was growing up? Does he have any idea where the preoccupation with imprisonment comes from? Or if he ever been to prison?
In an interview, Steve McQueen stated that he had a very bad experience in school, where he had been placed into a class for students believed best suited for manual labour, more plumbers and builders, stuff like that. Later, the new head of the school would admit that there had been “institutional” racism at the time.
Cece Nzabandora 