A Lord’s Call To Arms: David Puttnam Addresses Edinburgh

“I’m not naive enough to pretend that on its own cinema can capture the very soul of significant social and cultural problems,” he said. “But through illuminating the sometimes very different lives and experiences of others - most particularly those of the young, and especially the vulnerable - it can help create that vital context of understanding within which the type of change that sometimes looks impossible begins to look possible.”

Once you cross this “frontier of doubt,” Puttnam said, trust begins to develop. “Before you know it, the unthinkable comes thinkable,” he argued. “Maybe even achievable. In fact, if we ever ceased to believe that, we’d probably cease making movies. This is why cinema and its relationship to history and the real world matters.”

He argued that “far and away,” the most important role of the individual filmmaker is to help “illustrate and explain the ambiguities and the complexities of life.” “In doing so, [they can] somehow help promote understanding,” he said, “and where necessary, create narrative to support or encourage dialogue - leading in some cases to the possiblility of a few difficult but acceptable compromises. That’s essentially, I think, the message that Barack Obama was trying to get across a few weeks ago during his tour of the Middle East.”

“In a tiny way,” Puttnam said this is what he was trying to do in the films he produced that dealt with factual or historic events. “In every case, we tried to produce to films that adhered to some definable concept of cultural integrity… As intelligent and responsible filmmakers, working in a free society, we have a duty to ensure that our chosen medium is a force for good. Especially in this ever-more complex and difficult world… Make no mistake, the challenges that we as a society will face - the consequence of global warming alone - will make today’s issues look like very small beer indeed.”

Puttnam said that its in this future that “brave and political cinema” could really come into its own. “We’ve already seen last week, in relation to events in Iran how digital tools like Twitter can become channels for voices of dissent.  it’s crucial that cinema remains responsive to the political climate if it’s not to look increasingly irrelevant to the really big challenges of the 21st century..”

To help drive that point home, Puttnam finished with a story involving his work on “The Killing Fields,” a narrative exploration of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.

In 1983, Puttnam was asked by the British Film Council to take the film to Kiev, Ukraine for a British film festival there. Puttnam arrived unaware of what a difficult environment Ukraine was at the time, with the East and West sections of the country fighting over political and religious issues. The film screened three times, mostly for students around the ages of 16-25, with Puttnam participating in a Q&A session after the film.

“What was fascinating about it [was that] all the questions from these young people were not about Cambodia, they wouldn’t mention it. They were all about ‘could that happen here,’ ‘what would be the implications,’ and ‘is this a metaphor for Ukraine.’ They got straight to heart of the metaphor within the more obvious narrative.”

Twenty or so years later, after the peaceful Orange Revolution was staged in Ukraine, bringing President Viktor Yushchenko to power and civility to the nation. Puttnam randomly ran into a friend while in Davos, who just happened to be with Yushchenko. They were introduced, with Puttnam’s friend noting that he had produced “The Killing Fields.” Upon hearing this, Yushchenko literally picked Puttnam up, hugged him, and rambled on in Ukranian. Puttnam asked his friend what was going on.

“What he wants you to know,” his friend said. “Is that your film was seen by every school in the Ukraine between the years of 1985 and 1995. And you’ll remember, that even during the worst of worst times, there was never any discussion of the possibility of a civil war. He wants you to know that the reason that that was the case is that every young person - those who had staged the Orange Revolution - had seen ‘The Killing Fields.’”

“Now I can’t for a moment say that when [director] Roland Joffé or the rest of us had any of that in mind when we made the film,” Puttnam said. “But it gives you course to realize the impact and effect and the reprecussions of the story that you are telling, and that erhaps something you haven’t considered suddenly becomes hugely important.”