Annabel Jankel was born in London and began her career directing music videos for artists such as Talking Heads, Miles Davis, and Elvis Costello. Along with her partner, Rocky Morton, Jankel directed the features “Super Mario Bros.” and “Skellig: The Owl Man.”
“Tell It to the Bees” will begin screening at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival on September 9.
W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.
AJ: This could be described as a period kitchen sink drama without the sinks. An unholy mashup of social and magical realism, it is a coming-of-age story and a love story–which happens to include thousands of bees.
The film is set in a cold summer in 1952. Dr. Jean Markham, a single upper-middle class woman, has recently returned to the town she was forced to leave 20 years earlier. She meets Lydia Weekes, a factory worker who has been estranged from her philandering husband, with whom she has a son named Charlie. Lydia and Charlie are evicted from the family home when Robert walks out, leaving Lydia with nowhere to turn, until Dr. Markham, in need of a housekeeper, offers Lydia and Charlie a home. The sensitive Charlie starts tending to the bees in the doctor’s hives after she tells him that they will listen to his secrets. When Charlie discovers that his mother and Jean are more than just friends, all hell breaks loose.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
AJ: I loved the story and the quality of the writing in Fiona Shaw’s novel. I also wanted to direct a love story. I found the book to be an unexpected page-turner and was intrigued by all of the characters that made up a small town in post-war Britain. I was fascinated by the clash of class relations and gender that existed. It was a microcosm of wider society, in which homosexuality between men was a criminal offense in the United Kingdom. If it was between women, if even conceivable, the concept was considered simply reprehensible.
I liked the cinematic opportunities afforded to a triangle between the three main characters — in their quiet tensions within a walled-off society, as well as the enveloping atmosphere of the bees. As I read the book, I was infused with a sense of wonder about the beauty and strangeness of the bees’ colonies and hives, and what they represented. I was fascinated by advances in tolerance and acceptance that have taken place over the last 65 years, particularly over the past ten years. I liked the idea of representing a community on the cusp of change and how these developments, in turn, could inform the future in various countries and faiths.
W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?
AJ: I would hope that the conversation would continue regarding what became of the characters, why they did what they did, and the choices they made based on their societal circumstances. In the test screening for the film, there was a lot of dialogue about whether the outcome could have been different, and if it should have been the case.
The ending was very different from that of the book. In the film, the characters take hold of their lives in a way that led to where they individually and inevitably needed to go, given the circumstances of the time.
In my mind, I knew what befell all of the characters: I considered an epilogue which described their outcomes, but that would have put the characters in a static time and place. I wanted them to live and breathe alongside the theatergoers as they made their way home.
W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
AJ: There were various challenges at various points. First, all of the elements, including the actors’ availability, the schedule — as bees have a short summer window — and the various financial elements all had to coalesce seamlessly. We had to shoot late in the summer, so the flowers had long gone and the bees were getting sleepy, so voiceover dialogue had to be written to reflect the later season.
Second, there was limited time to prep and shoot because of the number of scenes in the script. During pre-production we had a script with 240 scenes. We had to reduce about 50 scenes and transpose many to the day for budgetary reasons regarding our strict no overtime — as we were working with a minor — 28-day shoot. Because it was a very fast shooting schedule that did not give us much time for reworking or exploring many possibilities, it was much more run and gun than I had hoped for.
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.
AJ: The film was initially supported with script development funding from the BFI, who later on provided production financing. Daisy Allsop, the associate producer on my film “Skellig,” came on board as producer. Along with Lizzie Francke and Marylyn Milgrom at the BFI, we kept the project alive, as we went through various script development sessions over several years. Nick Hill joined Daisy as a producer on the project when we were closer to a potential realistic principal photography start date, so while I was busy with the creative side, they sourced the financing.
Like many low-budget films, it was a process with several financial entities ultimately providing different levels of funding and investment.
W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
AJ: At a point in my early teens, I decided to pursue art, but I had already fallen in love with film as a young girl. In times of austerity in the early 60s, it was a very rare and exotic experience to go to the movie theater. I reread “Gone with the Wind a few times and managed to convince my mother to take me to the cinema to see the film several times. It was the most mind-blowing experience to see how the book had come to life on this huge cinema screen. I found it to be a more stimulating and awe-inspiring experience than any other that I had experienced in my young life, and I thirsted for more. But growing up in the London suburbs, there was no local cinema that I was allowed to go to on my own.
My earliest memory of going to the cinema was to see “Little Women” in 1961, which broke my heart. I loved the sensation of being in the dark and taken on a journey onscreen, to a place that I had never been before. I decided in my mid-teens that I wanted to be a filmmaker and would regularly go to an arthouse cinema in North London to see films by inspirational directors such as Bergman, Pasolini, and Antonioni. After a foundation course at the St. Martin’s School of Art, I went to film school to study animation. After ten years, I moved over to live action with my first foray into long-form filmmaking with a television film, “Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future.”
W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?
AJ: I received the best advice early on before starting out when someone told me to “know your school.” If you are at one with the world you are inhabiting and creating, you are working in concert with material that enables you to dig deep and mine for riches as you learn your craft.
Personally, I would advise to “pay attention at all times and never assume anything.”
The worst advice I received was “you can’t do that.”
W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?
AJ: I advise them to find a core group of fellow filmmakers and collaborators who can enable one another’s work to be realized. Don’t try and second-guess what other people want. Tell the story or make the images that gnaw at your mind.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
AJ: I have always loved “Ratcatcher” by Lynne Ramsay. It’s pure poetry. It’s brutal and beautiful. It’s mesmerizing and transporting. It’s a perfect piece of cinema and takes the main character and the audience from an agonizingly tragic and tender journey to a quiet place of transcendence.
W&H: Hollywood and the global film industry are in the midst of undergoing a major transformation. What differences have you noticed since the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements launched?
AJ: Both are vital but very different movements. #MeToo has emboldened women from far and wide to bravely face the fear of rejection and persecution to shout against their abuse from the rooftops. It’s a powerful time that is resonating with younger women and girls who are increasingly intolerant of the diabolical practices of what I hope will be yesteryear. Time will tell.
As for #TimesUp, the actual differences will be evident in the data and statistics. It’s not looking as good as it could be, according to the Directors UK stats on women directors, which has seen a decline in women directors on television over the last year.
Regardless, I see a new generation emerging with a lot of female support across different age groups and experiences that is far more willing to engage in this movement. Instead of feeling the need to justify why a woman is being hired as a director, the situation is now reversed — there is a need to justify why a woman who is just as talented as her male peers isn’t getting hired.
I am as enthusiastic and fucking angry as I have been in the past. I salute all of the women who have stepped forward up until now, and all of the ones lining up to do so, to make a ruckus on behalf of their creative and human rights.
