| Documentary
Documenting the
visceral
UK-born Calum Waddell went from film-fan and academic to documentary filmmaker, delving into the more obscure movies and genres of our time (from Horror to Grindhouse). In October 2015, he delivered a horror master class at the SAE Institute in Cape Town as part of the annual HorrorFest.
W
here DVD extras are often just promo bits thrown in to artificially enhance a release, Calum Waddell’s work takes the form of independent documentaries that are often more fascinating than the movie being supplemented! Several of these documentaries got their African premieres at the South African HorrorFest film festival, and in 2015 Waddell attended the event with his documentary 42nd Street Memories and a linked seminar on the Grindhouse phenomenon (at the SAE Institute). His fascination with ‘odd’ movies started at an early age. “I was an accidental child to a 40-year-old woman whose husband had terminal cancer – but one thing my mother did notice was that I seemed to go quiet if I had a VHS movie to watch. I remember my early loves (at age four or five) were Jaws and An American Werewolf in London. I was censored to some degree, but by age ten I was dining out on the likes of the Friday the 13th series. But I got a remarkable film education. I tell people that and they seem surprised. “The only movie that really upset me during this time was Watership Down. It mortified me and it made me very aware of loving animals. When I first saw Cannibal Holocaust I taped over the movie – I didn’t want anything to do with that because horror, to me, was about escapism and not actually hurting live mortal beings.” Calum produced the documentary Eaten Alive, exploring Italian cannibal films; he has an upcoming book on the subject. “That’s why it took me so long before seeing any ‘mondo’ movies – I needed to be older to allow myself to endure something like Africa Addio, a horribly racist film that also happens to be well made. “Now I love to find context for these odd films, the odder the better, but my
tastes in horror are more escapist than outright brutal or savage.” A love for the medium is
DELVING INTO THE OBSCURE: Calum Waddell
paramount and sometimes, conventional study is not always a prerequisite. “As a kid I was also watching The Godfather, Hitchcock, Disney… I really went to film school when I was a brat. It is all I knew – movies every night from the video store. Now I get to be responsible for bringing stuff like Slaughter High back to the home video shelves in the UK!” Literature played a big role in Waddell’s collision of his inherent scholar and film buff soul. “I read a lot. Books on film theory, politics, history – man, visiting Cape Town was great because the bookshops on Long Street are the bomb… I only went into film studies when I did my masters. But my main interests are politics, history and film – and Korean pop music (laughs). I think studying what you love is inevitable. It was a massive honour to get my PhD research funded at Aberdeen. I am currently adapting my thesis into a book and I am very proud of it. “My PhD might have lasted three years but I was putting a lot of time and effort
into Arrow Video, which I regret enormously… ” In addition to sourcing forgotten titles for re-release, Waddell produced many documentary subjects on strange or just plain fascinating genres and cinematic movements, which kicked off at British distributor Arrow. “They gave us hardly any budget and at the time of working for them I was basically paying my partner Naomi almost all of what we earned as I had my PhD funding and also slogged it out as a film critic. I was doing a lot during this time. I formed High Rising Productions, produced numerous documentaries, including feature length ones such as Scream Queens and Slice and Dice (earning Best Documentary at the .. HorrorFest), worked for other companies too, filmed in Europe and around the world, and was frequently published in many magazines. I’m not patting myself on the back here – well, much – but tell me one other person who got so much done in four years?” That also opens the door to armchair critics. “I laugh at trolls who come online and give me crap – one recently said: ‘I hate you because you are incompetent’ – I mean what does that say about him? I’m so incompetent I did all this in four years and got a doctorate too? “If you want to do something you really need to put your heart and soul into it and I didn’t sleep for a four-year period, man! I was non-stop – boom, boom, boom and I did our documentaries on crappy budgets. Having that burst of creativity was a pro. The cons were often working for people who don’t love this stuff and just want to know that what you are producing will sell units.
“High Rising came about as an accident. I was starting my PhD and Arrow Video came around as a ‘Criterion of Cult’ type idea. We got cash to do a new edition of George. Romero’s Day of the Dead and one thing led to the next. We were all like a little family back then. I thought of them as friends, which seems very strange to say now.” Arrow backtracked on promises and alienated Waddell to the extent that he felt compelled to move on, ending up transferring his expertise to 88 Films. Arrow’s loss, 88’s gain! “Everyone wants the best value product for the smallest payout. That’s corporate capitalism. As a Marxist myself, I always tried to do the best work and just try to have fun with whatever I was given. Sometimes I did some stuff for mere pennies, just because the final product meant more to me than the pay-off. Arrow Video was okay to deal with for a while and then things turned sour.” Besides tracking down forgotten gems, documentary subjects are far from tapped-out for Dr Waddell. “Well there is one you know about which I don’t want to talk up here in case anybody else copies it! There is stuff I wish I had done. Man, I would have loved to film Ian Smith back when he was alive – those last days of Rhodesia haven’t been given good documentation. Colonial history fascinates me. I want to do political documentaries, ideally!” – Paul Blom For more on Calum Waddell’s work visit www.highrisingproductions.com. For more information on SA HorrorFest, visit www.horrorfest.info.
February 2016 | SCREENAFRICA | 21