I remember long days of waiting. On busy days I’d sit amongst the public, reading body language, making casual conversation, camera on my lap, switched off but visible, so people knew what I was doing.
If someone was carrying a green form, I knew they were registering a death. This of course was the main challenge: approaching people sensitively at such a moment. I’d find myself hunkered down below their eye-line, speaking in hushed tones, using passive language, summoning all powers of unobtrusiveness.
On quiet days, I could be waiting half an hour for the next visitor to appear. I’d stand in corridors, peer out windows, watch and wait. One stained-glass window bore the Belfast city motto ‘Pro Tanto Quid Retribuamus’ from Psalm 116 Verse 12: ‘How can we possibly give thanks to the Lord for so much life!’
But I had my own more portentous translation: ‘In return for so much, how will we pay…’ For all the love in our hearts, how much pain of loss does we store up for later? This thought became a guiding light for me, a way of describing the ongoing interplay of love and death in our lives. It helped keep the stories focused.
I had a couple of other guiding principles. I wanted people and stories that were ‘very Belfast’: in the jobs they did, in their turn of phrase and in their ways of seeing the world. Of course, ‘very Belfast’ is a subjective notion, and my taste is perhaps nostalgic, looking for reverberations with an older time. And whilst I yearned for local detail, the stories ultimately had to be universal in resonance.
The other rule I set myself was to stay inside the register office as much as possible, and only leave for scenes that felt ceremonial – registration and ceremony being the societal things that we wrap around birth, love and death.
After Arthur registered his wife Joan’s death, he told me that he visited her grave every day to chat to her, and this seemed like the right sort of ceremonial scene to capture outside the register office.
It was raining on the first time I filmed at the cemetery. On the second time it wasn’t, so I had to ask Arthur to put up his umbrella for continuity. A friend spotted him and teased him for losing his marbles: Arthur loves that sort of banter. He could talk for Ireland and he loves to keep in touch, so we often speak on the phone – and that’s another enjoyable stage of the process, when the friendship continues.
Love & Death in City Hall (Erica Starling Productions) is nominated for Best Newcomer Documentary. Producer/Director - Guy King.
Love and Death in City Hall (Erica Starling Productions) is nominated for Best Newcomer Documentary at The Grierson British Documentray Awards 2013. Directed by Guy King.