RING NIK POWELL AT NFTS

No school can guarantee graduates a job in film. But the NFTS headed by maverick producer Nik Powell comes very, very close.

Inevitably this means that admission to the National Film and Television School is about as difficult to come by as a lead role in a Tony Scott film. So if you have "Crack the NFTS" at the top of you latest To Do list, you would do well to do a little prep, perhaps including a bit of background on Powell himself. Writer Philip Trevena has made it easy for you to get started by meeting with the man himself.

Trevena says: "Out of respect for the occasion, 15 minutes of down time in the midst of Nik Powell's hectic schedule, we chose to meet at a sedate table in a remote corner of London's Groucho Club. Which was fine until half the city's wheelers and dealers, corporatists and liggers, agents and acolytes and accountants streamed by in a yakking pack, desperate to devour the lunchtime menu beyond us.

Fortunately Nik is a man who knows more about power lunches and dead eye deals than all of them put together, so he carried on happily digging into his shepherd’s pie and green peas washed down with a Coca Cola chaser. Simple fodder for anyone pretending to power, but somehow looking appropriate for this large, rumpled and avuncular looking fella.

In fact, the only way the uninformed might have guessed that this chap is one of the iconic producers of British cinema, of the last 20 years, is the way the eyes of the passers-by glance hopefully and gleam craftily in his direction.

Or to listen to him talk, of course. To savour his special blend of speed and content.

His subject matter is different these days, superficially far removed from his rap of the last quarter century, but he is as proud and upbeat about this new ball game as if he were signing the contracts for his biggest ever film deal.

It was clearly his decision to reinvent himself. There is no question of his being shanghaied. He asked for the post because he had reached a point where he fancied the challenge, and went through the standard interview gamut (for the first time since he applied for a job on a chicken farm in 1966).

And because he always gets what he wants (brief flash from his eyes accompanied by hearty chuckle ) he was chosen. "Salary wasn’t a consideration," he confesses. "But creative satisfaction was and I'm a happy man."

So what has he actually brought to the job? He has no doubt. “Leadership, fun, knowledge, person to person skills and my talents as a producer which are to persuade people to do things in a way that seems natural and not forced upon them.”

His role model in this unique world is the man who started NFTS back in 1971, Colin Young. Inspired by him, Nik wants to nourish an intellectual core in the school along with the world-class technical and production values it is already famous for. He is particularly struck by the way the adventurous Danish Film School has contributed to its nation’s resurgence as an original and inventive movie-making country.

Clearly schools can have a monumental impact, and Nik wants Britain's National Film School to be a cauldron for a new creative phase in British film making. For Nik, one key to this is for his students to fine tune their individual voices for a global audience. So while the staff naturally features pre-eminent British masters (including an Oscar winner), Nik ensures they are backed up by cinema experts and film makers from other parts of the world, to provide further insights from their particular cultures.

Likewise, he encourages his students to feel that the world at large, not just Britain, is where their work and fulfilment can be found. "The School’s motto is: Train the best to be the best, and the best can be the best anywhere."

That said, and the shepherds pie finished, it is time for Nik to switch on his mobile again, flip open the laptop and rejoin the fray. It's all school business now, but he carries it out with the same intensity that he brought to producing so many memorable pictures. The Great Persuader is on a mission.

Nik Powell produced The Company of Wolves and Mona Lisa in the eighties, then some 40 titles, including The Crying Game, through to Ladies In Lavender in 2004. Philip Trevena is the author of Landesmania, a biography of Jay Landesman, one of the pioneers of America's Beat.

Article reprinted from the June, 2005 Premiere Issue of Britishfilmmagagzine.