Once again the Indie Gems Film Festival is upon us, and among this year’s highlights – alongside the much-discussedGayby Babyand the documentary musicalPrison Songs– comes Peter Cousens’ ambitious, poignant story of slavery and redemption,Freedom.
It tells the history of the Underground Railroad, an organisation responsible for smuggling slaves from the United States into Canada during the mid-19th century. Starring Oscar winner Cuba Gooding, Jr., and from a crew brimming with the best of American indie talent, Freedom was a labour of love like no other.
“The experience was classic East Coast of America filmmaking,” Cousens explains. “We really hit the ground running. If you ever find yourself stranded on a desert island, make sure you’re with an American independent film crew. They can turn absolutely nothing into whatever you need. Plus I had an amazing DOP. Dean Cundey was DOP for Apollo 13, Jurassic Park, all of the Back To The Future films – a really experienced guy, in other words. I remember he said to me, ‘Look, there’s no point in storyboarding. We get there, we get the actors in front of us, and everything will change.’ Which is true. The actors arrive and they provide a whole new element you can’t anticipate. There were a few planned train and helicopter [shots], but that was it. We might have a vague idea of what we wanted, but more often than not the best thing to do was wait and see.”
As a first-time film director, Cousens was destined to face a raft of challenges, chief of which were those he had no idea to expect. Yet this task was arguably even more daunting than most. Not only was the Australian actor helming a major US production, but he was directing some of the highest calibre performers out there – including the criminally underrated William Sadler – in a story charged with political, cultural and historical significance.
“Those thoughts all crossed my mind too, at first,” says Cousens. “Everyone knew the situation, that I was a first-time director coming in from a different discipline. But we all spoke the same language when it came to storytelling. I was collaborating with these really terrific people, who all did their own jobs so well, while my job really just amounted to making decisions.
“The great thing about film is that everyone is striving for the vision of the director, but it’s also the most daunting thing. Everyone will turn around and look at you. I got quite determined to make clear decisions and stick with them. You go with your instinct, which was really all I had. I was ignorant of so much, ignorant of ramifications. I’d have trouble making some of the decisions I’d made now, knowing what I know. I’d be more nervous about the outcome, so ignorance really is bliss. It of course all turned out, but it was a real instinctual process. You have to trust your understanding of storytelling.”
Although Freedom is by no means an improvised or unstructured feat, the level of spontaneity and adaptability that went into filming is impressive. With little time for exhaustive location scouts, Cousens and crew found themselves dropping the cast onsite and watching how the characters organically emerged throughout each scene. At times, this was best expressed once the scene had closed, and actors were caught unawares in that space between action and reflection.
“A lot of film doesn’t get a great deal of rehearsal time,” Cousens says. “We certainly didn’t prior to shooting. It’s a very spontaneous reaction to what’s happening in front of you, and you only have a very short time to get what you want. Trying to either create performances that maybe weren’t there, or creating the shape of a scene.
“I remember talking to Cuba about it, and he was saying directors will often use outtakes, these pieces of film from after they called ‘cut’ but let the camera run. We did that quite a bit – kept the camera running to hopefully capture the actors in a slightly different space, just a few seconds afterwards, while they might still be holding onto something. I asked Cuba what he felt about that, because it’s actually his work after he’d stopped working, so to speak. And he said that it happens quite a lot. He thought you had to be quite ruthless, that a director needs to grab what he can from an actor and often that might be in those idle moments when you don’t know the camera is on. You might get a look, an extra few words.”
With Indie Gems, Australian audiences are getting the chance to see Freedom for the first time, and Cousens can’t wait to see the response. While the film has dabbled with some of the major festivals, it’s the independent celebrations that often see the most engaged viewers.
“I’m a bit green with festivals. We’ve been asked to take Freedom to India and to South Korea, they’re going to do a big opening, which is interesting. But it’s a bit of a new world, this role of festivals. The great thing about festivals like Indie Gems is that they’re so much better than places like Toronto, because you get hijacked by the studios there. But this idea of these smaller independent festivals is just great for the film and for the audiences as well. They really provide something unique and grassroots.”
Freedom(dir. Peter Cousens) playsFriday September 11 – Sunday September 13 as part of the Indie Gems Film Festival, at Riverside Theatres, Parramatta.
