DOCUMENTARY ‘For people who are vulnerable, it’s an incredible challenge’
Larry Schwartz
Sue Thomson was impressed. “By god, you have watched this film carefully,” she thought as Eric Bana paused from narrating her documentary in a South Yarra recording studio earlier this year.
With no footage on screen, the filmmaker wondered at Bana’s familiarity with a cast that included people suffering mental illness from Uniting Care’s St Kilda drop-in centre playing alongside actors in a 2011 production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
“He would stop during the read and say, ‘Sue, is this when Marlene is angry with Mark because he was laughing too much?’ I said, ‘Yeah that is that bit.’
“And then, ‘Sue, is this when Sharon has to try and get Pat back?”‘
The film’s director, Thomson largely financed Tempest at the Drop-In with co-producer husband and RocKwiz co-host Brian Nankervis, who remembers the day she came home from her first rehearsal “energised and captivated”.
Bana is known for his advocacy work including narrating a series of Mental Illness Fellowship Victoria commercials. Thomson approached him at the suggestion of former Australian of the Year, psychiatrist professor Patrick McGorry. Nankervis, who had done warm-ups for his first shows, emailed Bana’s management.
The emails went back and forth for months. Then Thomson received some funding from the drop-in centre and started cutting the film. She wanted to know “whether Eric is coming on board or not”.
She did not like her chances when told Bana would view the rough cut on a flight to Singapore. Would he really choose to watch “some funny little documentary from Melbourne”?
Bana was impressed. So much so, he not only agreed to narrate, but waived his fee. “As an actor, I know how nerve-racking and emotionally taxing it is to get involved in any production,” says Bana, who has starred in movies such as Hulk, Troy and Chopper. “So for people who are somewhat more vulnerable, it’s an incredible challenge.”
Interviewed before flying to New York to prepare for his role as a policeman in director Scott Derrickson’s “paranormal thriller” Beware the Night, Bana says he was moved not just by the way in which the players dealt with the play but its aftermath. “We all know what it is like to finish a film or a production and come off the other side of it,” he says. “It is a huge emotional void.”
The actors and drop-in clients had previously acted together in Maxim Gorky’s play The Lower Depths. Producer and performer Joseph Sherman, a parent at Thomson’s children’s school, wanted her to film The Tempest collaboration.
Thomson was reluctant but was won over when she went along to a rehearsal. “For me, sitting in the church hall watching this eclectic group of people working together was one of the most exciting things.” She’d borrow cameras from Renegade Films, which produces RocKwiz, and engaged Uri Mizrahi (After the Deluge and Kokoda) to edit the film.
She wasn’t alone in her initial wariness about the project. So was Sharon Kirschner, a community worker and drama co-ordinator at the centre, but Kirschner quickly took to the filmmaker and trusted her.
Thomson remembers her anxiety at a screening, wondering if some people would want out.”But these guys are so completely open and devoid of normal social constraints that they loved it.” Thomson hopes the national broadcaster or SBS will screen Tempest at the Drop-In.
“I would hope that everyone watching this film will feel something,” Thomson says. “I want people to feel compassion, sadness and joy …”
Larry Schwartz Writer 