SCOTTISH DIRECTOR

Forsyth embarrassed by praise

ONCE THE BRIGHT blue faded from Vancouver
skies and stormy, grey Glaswegian clouds rolled in,
Scottish filmmaker Bill Forsyth began to feel at
home. ‘‘It looks like Glasgow here when it rains,”’
he grinned, speaking with the soft, oatmeal accent

of his native land.

By COLIN LAMONT

Forsyth, in town last week
for the retrospective of his
four films at the Fourth An-
nual Vancouver Film
Festival, sometimes loaked
embarrassed at all the praise

‘tained down on him by fans.

and media alike.

With four successful films
in five years, the short,
bearded director is still not
‘toally at ease with his new
found fame. In fact, he was

” 20 years old before he had

decided on a career in film-
making. After leaving school
at 17, he took a job with a
small industrial film com-
pany in Glasgow. All his ear-
ly movie experience was in
making documentaries or in-
dustrial films.

__ Now in his late-thirties, the
Glaswegian whose father
who was a grocer and mother
ran 2 newsstatid, has given
birth to the start of a feature-
film industry in Scotland,
while capturing the hearts
and screens of movie-gcers in
North A.xerica.

“It surprised me how easi-
ly film travelled,’’ confessed
the good-natured director.
“It was reasurring to find
that film was like that.’

Most faithful followers of -

Forsyth’s films declare that it
is the simplicity of piot and
honest character portrayal

-that draws them.

'*} suppose that there may
be too much hardware (hi-
tech special effects) and
distancefrom people going

"+ on in some movies,’’ he com-

mented, -‘‘That may be what
some people are seeing now, |
know when I see a movie I'm
very careful to see if the
director is trying to
manipulate me.”

. Since 1979, with the release

of That Sinking Feeling, the.

dark-haired, bushy-bearded
Scot has struck a universal
theme of human fragility and
man’s attempts to best the
situations he finds himself in
during everyday life. But the
humor is always there for the
viewers to enjoy. .
“When you make your
own films from your own
resources, you tend to do
what you want to do, aid
maybe I’m taking the easy
way out, with a = simple
human situation and two or

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three people to solve it,’’ he
explained jokingly.
His first released film,

That Sinking Feeling, told
the story of Glaswegian
youths, surrounded by pover-
ty, unemployment and a
sense of hopelessness about
the future. It’s a plot that
Forsyth saw acted out in real
life in Glasgow.

It’s the kind of plot that he
has stayed faithful to,

through all the media hype
and bright lights of his rapid
success, he has stayed
faithful to his Glasgow roots,
with both feet firmly on the
ground.

“I was very lucky during
this (five-year) period of
time, all my (four) films were
simple to set up and they
were all made locally. They
didn’t take up a lot of money
so it. was easy to move from
one to the next,’’ he recalled.

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DIRECTORIAL WIZARD of such left field film hits. as

Po
NEWS photo Stuart Davis

we

“Gregory’s Girl” and ‘‘Local Hero’’, Scottish filmmaker,
Bill Forsyth, was in Vancouver last week to attend Van-
couver’s Fourth Annual Film Festival, which rurs to June 6.
Forsyth’s latest film, ‘‘Comfort snd Joy’ is featured at this

year’s festival. . :

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