A moment with Tilda Swinton
A few months following my encounter with Joanna Hogg described in the previous post, I saw her again at the BFI Southbank introducing her first film Caprice. Tilda Swinton, who is in this film, and celebrating a current retrospective at the BFI, was present also. This film was made in 1986 and is quite a direct souvenir of this period, visually and thematically, but also personally for Hogg and Swinton. They were making underground, experimental films during this period, working collaboratively with like-minds, such as Derek Jarman. Now they're making films with a similar working process that are more widely-known and distributed, and of course often made on bigger budgets.
That evening, with an imminent global pandemic-induced lockdown looming, I met Tilda Swinton outside the cinema. I had in my hands a copy of Jarman's Modern Nature, which I was about to take with me to read on the Tube home. As she walked down the corridor, and probably sensing my desire to connect, she stopped and said hello to me. I mentioned that I'm a massive fan of her work and her collaboration with Jarman. She asked if I'd been to Prospect Cottage yet, and I mentioned that I had a (an ill-fated) train trip booked there for the following week. Again, I couldn't quite articulate what I wanted to express to her: the influence that her creativity, wisdom, and filmmaking has had on me- the profound sense of kindredness that I gain from her presence on screen... that negates physical distance, different lived experiences. She asked for my name, repeated it back to me in a thick Scottish accent, said "it was very nice to meet you" before she was off into the night.
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A very poor image taken on my phone of Tilda Swinton & Joanna Hogg introducing their film |