The "Flickering Truth" of Film Archives: An Interview with Pietra Brettkelly

Pietra Brettkelly is a New Zealand–based filmmaker known for shooting in such far-flung locations as Kazakhstan, the Amazon, the Arctic, and Uganda. Beauty Will Save the World (2003) was set in Libya's first beauty pageant and featured an interview with Muammar Gaddafi. In 2008, The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Brettkelly was at the Palm Springs International Film Festival for the opening of her latest film, A Flickering Truth (2015). It documents the struggle to reopen the Afghan Film Archive after it had been left nearly destroyed by the Taliban occupiers. The interview was recorded on January 10, 2017, and has been lightly edited.

the moving image (tmi):

Having seen the intriguing snippets of Afghan cinema in A Flickering Truth, I would think that programmers would be excited about screening the archive's recent restorations. I could absolutely see a selection of Afghan films; people would be thrilled to see them.

pietra brettkelly (pb): Yeah, but I'm thinking also of more recent films. One of the guys who works with [Afghan Film Archive director] Ibrahim Arify is a filmmaker named Wahid Nazir who made a short called The Postman [aka A Day in the Life of Postman Khan Agha, 2012], and it's such a sweet film.

tmi:

Arify is such an intriguing figure because he's obviously so familiar with the ways of Afghanistan, but also, he's also very cynical and very bitter. That must have come from really hard-won experience. Nothing gets past him.

pb:

Yes, and what I observed was he had spent twenty years in Russia and Germany, and when he came back he imported those sensibilities, especially from Germany, where, as we know, they like to get things done in a particular way. So, I think he came back thinking, I am going to bring in some German systems here and I'm going to make it work. It took him about a year to calm down and learn to appreciate "Uncle" Isaaq [Yousif] and to see in the old man that he is the archive, and he has something to bring to this place. It was interesting when I was shaping the film, the first scene is full-on. It shows Arify negotiating with some local workers to help clean up the hangar where the films are and there's an eruption from him. I thought, is this a good way to start a film? And then I thought, I do want to start this way because through the course of our time with him, we develop an understanding and an awareness as he realizes the value of approaching Afghanistan at a different pace and not of just butting heads. He saw the importance of motivating and inspiring the people rather than by saying, "This is how it's going to be." But through it all, he had such a love of film. His wife and their sons came to the world premiere at Venice Film Festival. The sons had never been to Afghanistan, they didn't speak Dari, the local language. She said to me—and she was weeping—"You've shown me a side of my husband I never knew." He'd said to her when he thought of returning to Kabul, "This is what I've been waiting for, to come back to my country and do something in film." This is his love. So, through all the bad times when I could see how he was getting very uptight, and his crew could see that they were not fulfilling his expectations, through it all I kept thinking, he loves film. He's not doing this for any other reason. And they learned from him as well. He could get angry with the group, but then they would say, OK, but we understand.

Figure 1.

Director/producer Pietra Brettkelly, director of photography Jake Bryant, and Ibrahim Arify preparing to shoot in the Afghan Film Archive. Copyright Pietra...