Nico­las Wind­ing Refn on Night Tide and the impor­tance of extreme cinema

Since its launch in 2018, byN­WR has screened for free, on the pur­pose built site and in part­ner­ship with MUBI, some of the strangest and most unique films ever made to no dis­cernible crit­i­cal response.

At its heart, this ​“unadul­ter­at­ed cul­tur­al free­way” (as Nico­las Wind­ing Refn describes it) is an archive and restora­tion project aimed at inspir­ing future gen­er­a­tions of cineast­es. The films that have been bought from libraries, col­lect­ed and painstak­ing­ly restored run the gamut from fetish through cult, punk and pro­pa­gan­da to blax­ploita­tion, cov­er­ing every­thing in between.

Take for exam­ple Jac Zacha’s 1970 dra­ma Walk the Walk, star­ring Bernie Hamil­ton as a hero­in addict and the­ol­o­gy stu­dent named Mike. The look, music and sto­ry – Mike gets in hock to drug-deal­ing entre­pre­neur Judy, who is con­stant­ly tempt­ing him into bed and back on to the demon dope – makes the film feel like an ear­ly blax­ploita­tion out­lier, but it nev­er veers into easy exploita­tion, resist­ing overt sex­u­al­i­sa­tion and vio­lence in favour of some­thing far more per­son­al and soul-searching.

ByNWR’s col­lec­tion is pre­sent­ed in the­mat­ic chap­ters, each con­tain­ing three films, with titles such as ​‘Hill­bil­lies, Hus­tlers and Fall­en Idols’, ​‘Smell of Female’ and ​‘You Ain’t No Punk, You Punk’. Each chap­ter also com­pris­es a vast col­lec­tion of orig­i­nal writ­ing, video and pho­to­graph­ic archive mate­r­i­al, live per­for­mance and oth­er ephemera, both on the films and film­mak­ers con­tained with­in and also on myr­i­ad avenues of con­tex­tu­al inter­est that spring from the movies. It’s crim­i­nal that more isn’t being writ­ten about these films, pre­sum­ably because the project is regard­ed as a benev­o­lent folly.

Since its incep­tion, byN­WR has most­ly oper­at­ed in the shad­ows. How­ev­er, 2020 sees the plat­form stretch out into the light a lit­tle more. There is a book on cult direc­tor Andy Mil­li­gan titled ​‘The Ghast­ly One’, writ­ten by the site’s edi­tor-in-chief Jim­my McDo­nough. There’s the con­tin­ued use of the brand to sig­nal Refn’s for­ays into the space between cin­e­ma and tele­vi­sion: 2019’s Too Old to Die Young and the upcom­ing Mani­ac Cop series.

First up though, they’ve part­nered with Indicator/​Powerhouse for a spe­cial release of one of the key films from the col­lec­tion, Cur­tis Harrington’s Night Tide. We caught up with Refn to chat about the phi­los­o­phy of byN­WR, how spend­ing so much time in these odd, beau­ti­ful worlds may have rubbed off on his own film­mak­ing, and the hid­den gems he thinks every­one should check out.

LWLies: How did you start col­lect­ing these films?

Refn: Pure acci­dent; an acquain­tance intro­duced me to a com­pa­ny in the US that was sell­ing their inven­to­ry. It was called Some­thing Weird and they’d been col­lect­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing obscure films in the US for 30 years. They spe­cialised in pub­lic domain titles and I was able to get their inven­to­ry list. I gave it to Jim­my McDo­nough who put a red dot next to all the things that we should try to get. I have col­lec­tor-mania. I’ve col­lect­ed many things and I like the archival hunt for obscu­ri­ties, espe­cial­ly if they’re cul­tur­al arte­facts. Some of these movies, and I’d nev­er seen most of them, had great titles, and felt like cul­tur­al arte­facts of an era.

Night Tide was a film that I was per­son­al­ly very fond of as I knew the direc­tor, Cur­tis Har­ring­ton, a lit­tle bit before he passed away. I find that movie to be quite unique, so that was my own per­son­al obses­sion. Peter [Con­heim, byN­WR archivist and head of restora­tions] intro­duced me to Spring Night, Sum­mer Night, which I didn’t end up buy­ing at that time. We were lucky to get the entire Radley Met­zger library. Some­times we’ve been able to buy entire libraries of cer­tain film­mak­ers or dis­trib­u­tors. Oth­er times it’s been piece­meal, things have been giv­en, found. I leave it to Peter to sift through the cracks, but I like the hunt.

Why does it mat­ter to you that these films are avail­able for peo­ple to see, prop­er­ly curat­ed and writ­ten about so deeply?

We curate cul­ture. If you want to see a movie on YouTube, there’s mil­lions of them. For us, it was about ​‘what are cul­tur­al arte­facts of sig­nif­i­cance that maybe haven’t been giv­en the time of day, or poten­tial­ly the prop­er respect, or been seen in a dif­fer­ent light?’ Most of the films that are in the col­lec­tion are very extreme cin­e­ma and there’s some­thing for every kind of fetish taste. Nowa­days, when cul­ture is get­ting so neu­tralised and mun­dane it’s impor­tant that we remem­ber that cin­e­ma can still be an extreme lan­guage. And the more extreme it is the more inter­est­ing it becomes.

Do you see your role as being the fig­ure­head for draw­ing an audi­ence in to see this stuff, using your profile?

I owned a com­pa­ny [that could form the basis of the busi­ness], so there’s that part of it. But, for me, it’s not so much about the movies them­selves, it’s more about the idea that cul­ture can be so many dif­fer­ent things and we have a ten­den­cy to for­get that. Part of the con­cept of byN­WR was to cre­ate an online muse­um, that cel­e­brat­ed the past. A dig­i­tal domain that’s end­less, because when you have phys­i­cal bar­ri­ers there’s always the lim­i­ta­tion of the phys­i­cal bar­ri­ers, where­as here it’s lim­it­less. It need­ed to be acces­si­ble to every­one – every month had to be free, because cul­ture is everyone’s domain. And by not charg­ing for it we also sur­pass all the norms, because what we’re doing, gen­er­al­ly no one else can do or does.

Also, the ini­tial phi­los­o­phy of byN­WR was that we would go past all the ideas of what is con­sid­ered great, cor­rect, taste, or good or bad. A lot of our work up until now has been very focused on the films them­selves and we’re start­ing now on the next phase of the phi­los­o­phy by mov­ing into dif­fer­ent are­nas. But, in terms of the films, we for­get that films are actu­al­ly more inter­est­ing the more per­son­al they are. And the more per­son­al they are, the more they rise past good or bad, you know, a rot­ten toma­toes score. We want to inspire young peo­ple by get­ting them to always remem­ber that film, like any art form is a per­son­al pro­jec­tion from the cre­ator to the experiencer.

You’ve been going for over a year now, has the response to the site been what you hoped it would be?

That’s a very inter­est­ing ques­tion, because once we start­ed we realised it was like a mov­ing train that can’t real­ly stop unless it implodes. When you begin, you make your share of mis­takes, but to be frank, it’s sur­pris­ing how well it’s going. It’s very reward­ing every week when we go through our week­ly reports and see that things have just con­tin­ued to esca­late, in a very organ­ic way. We don’t pro­mote, we don’t buy adver­tis­ing. We’re not an insti­tu­tion that needs to gain some­thing in the end, oth­er than to inspire. We’re a dis­cov­ery process.

One of the most thrilling moments was see­ing the Ed Wood-script­ed Orgy of the Dead pop up.

What a fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence! It’s a very, very pecu­liar movie. It’s almost like an art instal­la­tion to me. It’s not a movie. It’s more like an expe­ri­ence, right?

Yes, those rep­e­ti­tious sequences of danc­ing, hyp­not­i­cal­ly strung togeth­er. It is just real­ly excit­ing to have expe­ri­ences like this pre­sent­ed with such a lov­ing approach. Some of the human­i­ty and emo­tion­al com­plex­i­ty in these films is astounding.

Night Tide is an absolute mas­ter­piece in my opin­ion and, incred­i­bly, one of the few films that actu­al­ly was able to bring a fairy tale nat­u­ral­ly on to the screen. I think Maid­ens of Fetish Street is obvi­ous­ly a very per­son­al film, and, my god, who­ev­er made it is so tormented.

There are so many cre­ative inno­va­tions and amaz­ing artis­tic flour­ish­es caused by the pro­duc­tion lim­i­ta­tions these film­mak­ers faced.

Lim­i­ta­tions are far more reward­ing artis­ti­cal­ly than just hav­ing every­thing at your dis­pos­al. Every­thing at your dis­pos­al also means a lot of people’s opin­ions have to be heard, dealt with, or abid­ed by.

These film­mak­ers find a lot of space to express themselves.

They were film­mak­ers that had one vision and that was their own. The Nest of the Cuck­oo Birds I found to be one the most amaz­ing films I’ve ever seen. Is it good or bad? It’s beyond that, in my opinion.

You’ve men­tioned a few titles in our con­ver­sa­tion, but what are your per­son­al favourites to have come out of this project so far?

The things that I real­ly enjoyed were, of course, Night Tide. I think Spring Night, Sum­mer Night is a fan­tas­tic film. Maid­ens of Fetish Street I have a very per­son­al fond­ness for because it’s so extreme. It has this very pecu­liar voiceover nar­ra­tor. I love the pulpi­ness and almost instal­la­tion sen­si­bil­i­ty of Orgy of the Dead. Olga’s House of Shame I find fas­ci­nat­ing. Joseph P Mawra who made that film was a very inter­est­ing filmmaker.

But, over­all, prob­a­bly The Nest of the Cuck­oo Birds and Night Tide, for me, are the most trea­sured tro­phies so far. We have so many things com­ing down the pipeline but they real­ly res­onat­ed. I think there was a rea­son why we start­ed with Nest of the Cuck­oo Birds as our first film, in Jimmy’s first pro­gramme. That was cho­sen because it set the stan­dard for the fron­tier that we want­ed to push.

Night Tide is out now on lim­it­ed edi­tion Blu-ray via Indicator/​Powerhouse.