Marc Isaacs

From The Times, July 2009:

Isaacs’s fascination with the sort of complex and intriguing characters who populate his films started in his teens.

“I hit 13 in 1980, and it was a very interesting time because there were riots going on and life was very unstable and fragile. That was the first time that the world seemed not as fixed as I had thought. I also had a job in Petticoat Lane market. And the characters around there were incredible — Jewish market stall traders, skinheads, Bengalis. Growing up in that era was a kind of awakening in terms of being interested in what was going on around me instead of being focused in on your own little street in suburbia.”

Isaacs was born in the East End, but his family soon moved out to “a hellhole called Redbridge [in northeast London]. It’s bleak now, but was really bleak back then. The boredom drove some people into crime — most people into crime in fact — and others into shady areas of documentary film-making.”

Marc Isaacs’ breakout film Lift was excellent – fresh and humane. Filmed over the course of several months in the lift of a council block in east London, he slowly develops a realtionship with a number of residents (I wonder if people on the ground floor started using the lift to get in the film?). He shares only snatches of conversation with his subjects, but we learn a surprising amount; as much from their non-verbal interaction as their words.

His latest effort, Outside The Court screened on BBC2 recently is remarkably similar in format, except it takes place outside Highbury Magistrates court. As in Lift, we get to know a number of individuals – some charming, some pitiful and some amusing. It lacks its predecessors intimacy, however and its freshness. Time for a change?

 

Murder 2009

DCI Jason Hogg

Interesting look at a murder investigation recently carried out by the Hampshire constabulary. The film focuses on how the investigating team approach the problem of identifying a victim and catching a murderer.
Some googling provide further information. Strangely, thisishampshire identifies a Detective Sergeant Richard Rowledge as the man leading the investigation. In the documentary, the Senior investigating officer is DCI Jason Hogg (shown above).

Ziaul Haque, 27, worked at the Euston Ibis hotel with 26-year-old Sylwia Sobczak of Tottenham. They were in some kind of relationship which turned sour and ended with Haque murdering Ms Sobczak. Her burnt body was found by a dog walker on a bridleway half a mile from the centre of Dummer in Hampshire on May 8.

A very sad tale from the new London – a kind of Dirty, Pretty, Things without the happy ending.

Reading the newspaper reports, it’s disappointing to note the relish with which they report that the body was found near the estate owned by the parents of Tara Palmer-Tompinkson.

 

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