Directors UK members were treated to a special preview screening of Murder on the Lake (aka The Blood of The Rose). The session was followed by a Q&A discussion with the director Henry Singer. We are delighted to publish extracts from the discussion with Henry about his latest documentary film which recently won the Green Award at Sheffield Doc/Fest. The film is being broadcast on BBC4 at 9pm on Monday 1st February under the title Murder on the Lake.

The Blood of The Rose tells the story of the extraordinary life and brutal death of filmmaker-turned-conservationist Joan Root, and of her campaign to save her beloved Lake Naivasha in Kenya. Who killed Joan Root? Was it the fish poachers, whom Root stopped from plying their illegal trade in a bid to save the lake? Was it her once-loyal staff member Chege, whom Root ultimately cut off from her payroll? Or was it someone closer to home? Through telling the story, Singer opens a window onto the simmering tensions in an Africa still emerging from colonialism and anxious to take its place in the global economy. For it is the Kenyan rose, which is exported by the millions from Naivasha to the rest of the world, that has brought – not just jobs and foreign exchange earnings – but the environmental destruction that Root worked so hard to stop and which may have ultimately cost her her life.

How did the film come about? Did the story find you, or was it the other way around?

HS: There was an article in the G2 section of The Guardian in 2007 about the rise of violence and murder in Naivasha, Kenya, and the penultimate paragraph mentioned Joan [Root, the subject of the film]. It talked about her extraordinary career as a filmmaker, her efforts to save the lake; and it mentioned the success of the flower farms there, and the dramatic increase of the population [that was caused by the flower farms’ success]. I just had this instinct that there was something there, a) because she sounded like an extraordinary person and b) because she made films in Africa, which might allow me to provoke some bigger questions about the continent. I mean, her early life was during pre-independence and she came from a colonial family, which felt like one world; and then there was post-independence and the industrialisation of Naivasha with the flower farms, which felt like another world. I just felt that in that mix there might be an interesting film about an amazing woman, but also what interests me as a filmmaker is to use stories to provoke big questions, and I felt there might be an interesting film to be made, as I say, about post-colonial Africa. Her lifespan allowed one to do that.

I went off to Kenya and researched the idea for Channel 4, felt there was a really strong film to be made, but the director of programmes at the time rejected the idea. Luckily the BBC snapped it up, and I then ran across a piece in Vanity Fair about her, which actually filled in some interesting biographical stuff about her. The article also implied that the flower farms were responsible for Joan’s death, so when I first went out there I was actually a little nervous about poking around. But it became very clear very quickly that the flower farms actually had nothing to do with her death.

I originally had this idea of this massive film that would be almost Dickensian; I wouldn’t just include Joan’s biography, but I would also open up the whole world of the flower farms and the flower workers, as well as the slums that ring Naivasha, and include fish poachers, animal poachers and people who illegally cut down trees. It soon became clear that that would be two films in one, so the flower farms and the slums became more of the larger context of the film and Joan’s life: the farms are partly responsible for changing the ecology of the lake as well as creating a population explosion into Naivasha – both factors got Joan very involved in trying to save the lake. Getting the structure right was very difficult -- knowing where to blend in the flower farms, and how much to put in -- but I think we finally got it to where the film flows.

There’s been a book written about Joan now, by the same author of the Vanity Fair piece; the article was optioned into a feature film with Julia Roberts, and I think it’s pretty obvious why it was optioned. Joan’s story appears at first blush to be such a perfect Hollywood story: environmental crusader takes on evil multinational and meets her end. Even as a documentarian, that’s quite a nice framework, but of course the truth as I discovered was rather different, and as I’ve said, that common Hollywood story line of a passionate crusader taking on the so-called evil multinational, at least in this case, just didn’t stand up to any kind of real journalism or research. I’m curious to see what happens with that film and how they develop it. I can’t imagine that’s the line they will be able to take as it’s based on a true story.

Everybody was nervous about talking about the flower farms, including Alan (Root, Joan Root’s ex-husband), and he’s no champion of them. There is a great fear that people will end up boycotting Kenyan flowers. As I discovered, and I hope the film shows this in some way, it’s hardly a black and white issue. There are some very good flower farms and there are some not-so-good flower farms, but the industry as a whole is trying to clean up its act. It is hugely important to the country – they bring in foreign exchange earnings and create jobs, and jobs are the biggest need in Kenya. At the same time they are responsible for the huge changes to the lake. So it’s hardly black and white – it’s a pretty complicated set of factors.

It was interesting what the guy [Peter Sapari] who represented the flower farms was saying, about how without them there’d be no schools here, or roads or hospitals. But then of course, without the flower farms, there’d be no need! It was a blinkered view –the people are here because the flower farms are here.

HS: You’re right. This film was big already, and I didn’t want to take the film in the direction of that kind of debate, but there’s a very interesting one to be had between him [Peter Szapary] and Andrew Enneskillen, who was in charge of the Lake Naivasha Riparian Association, the group of landowners around the lake that have been trying to save the lake for future generations. It is, after all, endangered, and is considered an environmental jewel. Enneskillen argues that they [the flower farms] have a responsibility for all the people that have moved there, but Szapary argues: “we’re a private enterprise; it’s not our responsibility if people come here, we don’t have to build them homes’. So there’s a debate to be had about corporate responsibility – the flower farms argue they are very responsible, critics argue that they must do more, and that the criteria we have in the developed world for ‘corporate responsibility’ don’t apply to the developing world. As an aside, I think there’s a hole in the film, and again it’s because the story’s too big and you don’t want the film to go into policy stuff, but something that doesn’t get enough attention in the film is the level of governmental corruption in Kenya. The foreign exchange earnings are no doubt a big thing, but how much of that ends up building schools, and how much ends up in the back pockets of corrupt forces? Corruption is a big part of the story that actually only gets one piece of sync, although it’s a pretty powerful one from Alan (Root).

I loved that film, and what was really powerful about it was that you stayed true to the story, you didn’t go as big as you dangerously could have done, and consequently lose your audience. I could feel the structural nightmares in the cutting room. I thought it was a really beautiful film, which is profoundly effecting. Very moving and beautifully shot. I loved the pacing, and the way it was shot, and how the reconstructions were so suggestive and not at all crass as they could so easily have been and you used sound in a really interesting way. You had shots around bits of memorabilia, but then you had little bits of sound to go with it. That was a technique that was used over and over again, in so many ways including, most crucially, the point of the murder itself. I thought the strength of the film was that you were able to contain it, but it will no doubt stimulate debate all the same.

HS: That was the challenge for me. We spent 16 weeks in the cutting room! It was budgeted for 10, which I knew would be really hard to pull off.

Joan Root

What makes me proud, and what Ben Stark, my editor, and I were finally able to get right – he’s very good at this -- was that the film just tells the story, but we were able to weave in some really big ideas without ever feeling like you left the story. That’s a very hard thing to pull off. Joan was a remarkable person, a complex person like all of us, but I didn’t want to make a film just on Joan. Some of her friends say how Joan was quite modest, and they weren’t sure she would have wanted a film made of her, and I felt that when I was making the film. But if Joan was anything, I felt that she was an educator, and she and Alan used to go into schools and show their films, and talk to kids about them. Hopefully this film won’t just entertain and engage people; it will also provoke them into thinking about some really big ideas without them really noticing. The issue of ‘development’ is just one example -- I went into this film as a kind of ‘greenie’- well I’m not that green, I just recycle! – but I’m reasonably environmentally-minded. But I’d like that when people have watched this, they’d realise ‘things are slightly more complicated than we assumed’. I certainly learned that. I have to admit I have a bit of a skepticism towards ‘campaigning’ films: I think it’s quite rare to find an issue that is so clear – climate change is one example, though. My experience is that stories and issues are always far more complicated than they first appear, and more interesting.

Were you ever under any pressure to cover some of the bigger themes, and to expand upon them, or were you totally free to make your own decisions?

HS: Totally free. I’ve been very lucky that I’ve been largely free to make my own decisions as a filmmaker. I made it with Charlotte [Moore], who’s Head of Documentaries at the BBC, and she was just very, very supportive. She came in and made really useful comments at every viewing and then just let me get on with it. The film is called Murder on the Lake on BBC4, which slightly horrifies me as it sounds like an Agatha Christie novel and I don’t think really reflects the film fully. I like the title The Blood of the Rose, which is the title the film has at film festivals and internationally because I like the idea of the blood of the English Rose – Joan – but also it is the flower industry that, whatever you think of them, has changed the ecology of that area. That’s what the film’s about, really: how Joan reacted to that.

You have said before that the film you made wasn’t the film you originally thought you were making. Where and when did this happen?

HS: Well I’m really an observational filmmaker; I find making these sorts of films a lot harder because they demand a slightly different approach. Observational films to me are like an extension of my brain; this is like a different animal for me. But I make them the way I make observational films: I go out, and I just talk to everybody. That’s when I start formulating my ideas, and it happened really then [with this film]. But then I shoot it sort of like an observational film – I would never write a script – and I just go interview people. If you’ve got the right crew with you it’s fantastic: the cameraman, sound recordist etc, they all get involved in the content. I say, “I think tomorrow we should shoot this”, and they say, “yah, but maybe we should also shoot that, because…”. Even the shooting, like in an observational film, is a process of discovery and evolution.

But to get back to your question: It changed as soon as I started doing the research really. I started life as a journalist and I think documentaries should be journalistic. People watch them and assume that it’s reportage. In its crudest form, documentary is a combination of art and journalism, and I think with some films people slightly forget that – partly because they’re pushed, either consciously or unconsciously, by executive producers and commissioning editors who are under pressure to deliver audiences. But as soon as I hit the ground and started talking to people, and doing other kinds of research, it became clear that the simplistic Joan the crusader and evil flower farms thesis just didn’t stand up. The challenge then becomes – how do you still make a riveting film that’s actually true to what happened and to the bigger picture? In some ways that’s harder to do. But in other ways it’s easier, because complexity can actually create a far more powerful and interesting film.

The pacing was absolutely beautiful. It allowed the emotions to develop, and just evolve as you get pulled into the story and the emotions of the people. I thought how rarely that happens; so often we’re told to feel this, feel that, whereas this you’re pulled into it, and what you feel is real. I thought the music was great, very haunting. Why did you choose to use music in the way that you did and particularly in one of your interviews about the murder?

HS: I feel I’m not very good at music, and that’s the truth of it. I had a fantastic composer on all my films until the last two named Dario Marianelli, who’s won an Academy Award and also been nominated for another. So when I called and said, “Dario, do you want to do the music for my film? I’ve got £3,000!”, I like to think our friendship might extend to that sum…. And it had before with The Falling Man, but since then Dario’s won and Academy Award – he’d already been nominated once before – so now he just doesn’t have time he’s so sought after, although he remains a wonderful, wonderful guy. Because of Dario, I think everyone thinks I have some kind of amazing gift for music: I don’t, is the truth of it. I felt that the section you refer to just needed music; without music it felt absolutely dead. I felt it needed music that was really atmospheric and slightly spooky, although I probably didn’t even say that. The way I work with composers is I say, “here’s the film”, and I talk about the ideas in the film and what I’m trying to achieve. What I don’t say is I want music ‘from here to here’ and I want this kind of music. I think Andy Cowton (the film’s composer) did a superb job.

How long did you spend filming?

HS: I had 6 weeks in Kenya for research – during which time I only took one afternoon off to watch the women’s Wimbledon final! I had a week back here and then a one week to set up the shoot and then we shot over four or five weeks – I can’t really remember. And I can’t remember how many shooting days we had – something like 25. I then went back a few months later for 3 weeks to set up a follow-up shoot, which was probably five or six days. It’s all a bit of a blur.

The access to the key characters in this story is fantastic. Was it difficult to get the access?

HS: The way I find a film is I talk to all the people myself. Some directors get their APs or researchers to find characters and set up interviews, I prefer to do that myself. I spend an enormous amount of time with people, initially telling them about myself, my work (and giving them some copies of films, if they want) and my initial goals for the film. I then do extremely long interviews with them; on this film, I interviewed one potential contributor for eight hours over the course of a day. Then I go back with a camera and re-interview them, trying to recreate the same atmosphere. I don’t write out or read out questions, but I have a sense of the direction I want the interview to go in and some specific answers that I might try and get, based on the initial interview. So I spend a long time contacting and meeting people. I think it’s really about trying to establish a level of trust. And once you’ve developed a body of work, it gets easier. Lots of people in Kenya had actually seen, or at least heard of, The Falling Man. Asking Chege [he was charged with Joan’s murder but not convicted] to be interviewed was easier than I thought. It was simply a case of saying ‘everyone thinks you did it, this is your chance to tell your story’.

Henry’s film is being broadcast on BBC4 at 9pm on Monday 1st February 2010 under the title Murder on the Lake.