Steve McQueen: ​‘Until things change, these sto­ries will always be timely’

It took 11 years for Steve McQueen to get the green light for his anthol­o­gy film series Small Axe, which tells five sto­ries cen­tred around London’s West Indi­an com­mu­ni­ty from 1969 to ​’82, rang­ing from a Dub and Lovers Rock dance par­ty to the tri­al of the Man­grove Nine.

Set in part against a back­drop of police prej­u­dice and bru­tal­i­ty, and arriv­ing in the wake of George Floyd’s mur­der and this summer’s Black Lives Mat­ter protests, McQueen’s pas­sion project feels even more urgent and nec­es­sary. Here, the direc­tor speaks about the process of con­ceiv­ing and shoot­ing his most ambi­tious and per­son­al under­tak­ing to date.

LWLies: Small Axe was 11 years in plan­ning and six months in the mak­ing. What was it like to say good­bye to your crew when you wrapped production?

McQueen: It was dif­fi­cult because of Covid-19. It was an odd sit­u­a­tion not to be able to embrace your col­leagues. It’s kind of weird when you’re sup­posed to arrive at this cathar­tic moment, or you have a wrap par­ty, but have none of those things. It was a real­ly weird good­bye. At the same time, we’re still fin­ish­ing it. There are a cou­ple of nips and tucks being done as we speak. So it is what it is.

So you wrapped just before the pan­dem­ic hit?

We wrapped pro­duc­tion, but there were these eight to 10-day pick­ups. That was a love­ly sit­u­a­tion at the end when every­one got togeth­er again for those. We were the first crew to shoot on loca­tion dur­ing lock­down and of course all the mea­sure­ments and pre­cau­tions were tak­en very seriously.

I spoke to [DoP] Sha­bier Kirch­n­er about Small Axe and he made the dis­tinc­tion that in mak­ing these films you’re writ­ing untold sto­ries into his­to­ry, rather than rewrit­ing history.

It is rewrit­ing his­to­ry because it’s look­ing at every­thing dif­fer­ent­ly. When you plant things into his­to­ry every­thing changes, because your per­spec­tive on things changes seam­less­ly. For exam­ple, how the major­i­ty of the peo­ple in the UK looked at the police. For many decades, Black com­mu­ni­ties have been talk­ing about how the police are not good. For a long time in the UK there was a slo­gan, ​‘The Best Police in the World’. But now everyone’s caught up with the West Indi­an com­mu­ni­ty, and we’re see­ing the police in a very dif­fer­ent light. So that changes his­to­ry, changes the per­spec­tive of how our peo­ple saw that insti­tu­tion. Now they know what hap­pened to those peo­ple, under­cov­er police­men involved with the Stephen Lawrence fam­i­ly and all the dirty tricks with the fam­i­lies involved in protests and so forth. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

With Man­grove and Edu­ca­tion, they’re almost shot as they would have been in their respec­tive eras.

That also had to do with the colourist Tom Poole. What I was after was how it could have been shot then, because of the Kodachrome. Man­grove has a sort of epic qual­i­ty to me, it starts off small but ends in the high­est court in the land. Frank opens up a café, a hole in the wall in Lad­broke Grove, and ends up in this place that is about the insti­tu­tion of jus­tice, Old Bai­ley. For this tra­jec­to­ry, it need­ed to be 35mm – but also, Kodachrome was the pho­tog­ra­phy of that time. Again, it wasn’t actu­al­ly how it was, but it was what was at hand then. So that was very key to get­ting us into that world. I was real­ly inter­est­ed in look­ing at Gor­don Parks’ pho­tog­ra­phy; not nec­es­sar­i­ly his com­po­si­tions but the colours with­in that. And [William] Eggel­ston as well, from that period.

You shot all five films on a dif­fer­ent format.

It was hors­es for cours­es. If all five films had to be shot on 35mm or dig­i­tal, fine, but what we were inter­est­ed in was the aes­thet­ics of each indi­vid­ual sto­ry. For exam­ple, Lovers Rock was dig­i­tal. It was dig­i­tal because of flow. We want­ed to cap­ture things in the flow of sound. Edu­ca­tion was 16mm, and it remind­ed me of a series that was shown on the BBC called Play for Today. I think it was every Thurs­day evening, they’d have small films that were usu­al­ly very top­i­cal. I remem­ber those films stick­ing to me. The tex­ture was… I wouldn’t say grainy, but they clung to you. Maybe because the sub­ject mat­ters were very indica­tive of the time it sort of stayed with you.

So, I knew I def­i­nite­ly want­ed to shoot Edu­ca­tion on 16mm, and there were a lot of prob­lems with that actu­al­ly with trans­mis­sion, but BBC was very accom­mo­dat­ing in the end. Alex Whea­tle was the Sony Venice. Again, that’s a jour­ney. There’s a speed that we need­ed with that. Red, White and Blue, there’s an epic qual­i­ty because there’s a kind of heart­break­ing, [Elia] Kazan ele­ment to that sto­ry. But also it’s very crit­i­cal and very much about the fam­i­ly too, now that I’m look­ing at it in that way.

Was there much down­time in between shooting?

No. This was made for a lit­tle bit of mon­ey. But one thing I know how to do as a British film­mak­er is struc­ture pound. We had to learn how to do that. It’s incred­i­ble. When you find out the bud­get you won’t fuck­ing believe it. How many of the films have you seen?

The three avail­able. Alex Whea­tle and Edu­ca­tion are still being coloured, right?

Nips and tucks. You’ve only got one chance to see some­thing for the first time, so you should see it as it’s intend­ed to be seen.

How do you think the rapid pace of pro­duc­tion informed how the films feel?

All I will say is that peo­ple say I’m fast. But I don’t know that I’m fast. I’ve nev­er been on any­one else’s set before. But appar­ent­ly I’m fast and I don’t know what it means. Just get on with it basi­cal­ly. There has been a metic­u­lous amount of plan­ning. This has been going on for 11 years, work­ing with [exec­u­tive pro­duc­er] Tracey Scoffield, hav­ing a writ­ers’ room, and that writ­ers’ room evolv­ing and chang­ing, audi­tion­ing cir­cum­stances, like writ­ers I want­ed to work with, which was Court­tia New­land, Alis­tair Sid­dons and Alex Whea­tle to tell his own sto­ry. This has been in plan­ning for a long time. There have been over 150 inter­views done by Helen Bart and myself in research. It gets to a point when you have all that in your arse­nal and it’s time to go. Let’s shoot.

Sha­bier also told me that, in the cli­mac­tic scene in Man­grove where Altheia [Leti­tia Wright] con­fronts Frank [Shaun Parkes], who is con­sid­er­ing giv­ing up, you told him to give the scene entire­ly to the actors. The envi­ron­ment was lit, but the cam­era move­ment was theirs to dictate.

Nothing’s done by chance. Frank sees for the first time what the audi­ence sees for the first time. There’s no con­struc­tion in plan­ning in what you might see, oth­er than plan­ning what you might see. There’s no sit­u­a­tion where it hap­pens and we’re just lucky. There’s no luck that comes involved with it. Struc­ture and metic­u­lous plan­ning comes in, because I don’t know what he’s going to see and nei­ther does the audi­ence. That’s excit­ing! That’s dynam­ic! That is what is putting the ten­sion into that dis­cus­sion and it’s one of the most impor­tant scenes in the film. Frank is chal­lenged. Are you with us or are you against us? So you want it to be first-hand.

You’re work­ing with a dif­fer­ent crew here and in a dif­fer­ent man­ner than your pre­vi­ous films. Was there a con­scious effort to make these films differently?

I don’t know about ​‘dif­fer­ent’. The sub­ject dic­tates to me how it wants to be filmed. I don’t come with a sten­cil and say it has to be done this way. I’m here to ser­vice the sto­ry. Of course, it’s with my hand, but I have to lis­ten to the sto­ry in my own way to under­stand what the sto­ry wants and needs.

The word ​‘time­ly’ is often used in a way that can reduce the issues of a film which hap­pens to fea­ture Black resis­tance to just the cur­rent moment, when in fact it’s a time­less bat­tle that’s been fought for about as long as we can account for.

‘Time­li­ness’ doesn’t real­ly reduce or is exclu­sive to Black movies. Any type of film at any point in time can be time­ly. So it doesn’t put itself exclu­sive­ly on Black films or Black sub­ject mat­ters at all. The fact that we’re talk­ing about what hap­pened to George Floyd this year and com­par­ing it to Small Axe – this could have come out at any time and it would be time­ly. Until things change, these sto­ries will always, unfor­tu­nate­ly, be timely.

Lovers Rock pre­miered at the New York Film Fes­ti­val at a time when we real­ly need­ed the dopamine.

It’s a cel­e­bra­tion of all the sens­es, sen­su­al­i­ty and sex­u­al­i­ty in a time of lock­down. For me it just says we take so many things for grant­ed. Lovers Rock came out at NYFF and the response was tremen­dous, and I’m very grate­ful for it, but at the same time it must ask us to do a dou­ble take. If we haven’t learned any­thing from this peri­od of time then we’ll nev­er learn. I think we all learned some­thing about what we want to do with our lives. I’m not try­ing to put some pres­sure on the film, like every­thing has to be serious.

Obvi­ous­ly, this is about a par­ty, about peo­ple falling in love and being them­selves. I sup­pose for lack­ing the kinds of sen­sa­tions we feel in Lovers Rock, being in lock­down, it sort of height­ens the sens­es of what we take for grant­ed. That’s all. We deny we take things for grant­ed until we see how pre­cious it is. Maybe this film has helped peo­ple to do that. In any case, I hope it would have done that, and if not that, grown a love for Dub and for Lovers rock.

I imag­ine you lis­tened to the tracks in Lovers Rock over and over dur­ing pro­duc­tion. How do you achieve a rhythm when you’ve been exposed to the music for so long?

It’s intox­i­cat­ing lis­ten­ing to that music. I nev­er get tired of it. And I always find some­thing new in it. It’s not a prob­lem at all, in fact it kind of pins you down in a way. I didn’t have that prob­lem at all. It was a joy. A real joy.

Small Axe is screen­ing on BBC One in the UK week­ly on Sun­days at 9pm GMT, with each fea­ture-length episode avail­able on iPlay­er after. In the US, instal­ments will be added to Ama­zon Prime Video begin­ning Fri­day 20 November.