BROKEN/HARD WORK FIXES IT

Director Vicki Psarias likes to be honest. She says she had to fight hard to make her award winning short film Broken, and she would not have had it any other way.

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Psarias says: "It seems to me that too many successful filmmakers play down the hardships they must have had to go through on their road to fame, conjuring up an overly rosy picture of the qualities that it actually takes to forge a career in the arts.

It’s as if they want to blur out their years of eating baked beans straight from the can and doing next to zero as a runner on film sets before making their breakthrough film.

I wish they wouldn’t. I am no masochist looking for complaints - just someone seeking truth, backstory, sources of inspiration!

And I think that the struggles artists go through are integral – essential, in fact - to the process of creating and making films.

In my own case, I know that I wouldn’t have made the film that I wanted to make if I had had it easier and funding had been handed to me when I first asked for it.

I know now that I didn’t have the right level of confidence, zest, experience and maturity that I had gained during the year I went from being rejected from the Tower Hamlets and Hackney Film Fund to actually receiving funding from them.

It seems it is true that tenacity and hard work really does pay.

That long year of not knowing whether I would ever get to make my film was saddening, depressing and demoralizing. Yet in retrospect, I can see it was crucial to my development personally and to my career as a filmmaker.

That rejection made me want success more and I realized that in the face of obstacles, one must raise their game and fight to win.

So I picked myself up, went to work and then worked some more, splitting my time between rewriting the script, working in a clothes shop and teaching English Literature to a class of failing GSCE students who hated reading even more than they hated me.

As well as getting my head down creatively so I could submit another application for funding, I brought those troubled students round to the joys of Seamus Heaney’s poetry and seeing them stand up in class passionately reciting poetry made me realise that when you put your mind to it, anything can be achieved.

It was only when I started shooting Broken that I truly realised that the joy that comes after a struggle and the lessons I had learnt about of being positive when giving feedback and ensuring that students feel psychologically and physically safe', were critical in my approach as a director.

Those lessons made me ensure I led a happy and valued cast and crew and got my film made in the way I envisaged it.

I am a strong believer that things happen when they are meant to – that there is, if you like, such a things as fate - but I am also adamant that you must chase those breaks and push for them with all the gusto you can muster.

So my best tip as a filmmaker: do the day job and pay those bills but never give up, never stop being creative and tenacious, never lose sight of your dreams. Struggle and conflict are necessary and vital in your path as a filmmaker."

Broken recently won the Channel 4 / 4Talent Award for Best Filmmaker.

Photos (above and on main page) by Vanessa Scott-Thompson.

For more information on Broken, Vicki Psarias and examples of her filmwork please see www.vpsarias.co.uk

Filed February 20, 2008.