In the 1990s Bavo Defurne made his name with a series of gay-themed short films that were successful enough that they were collected together into DVD compilations. However then there was a bit of a gap until he returned in 2012 with his first feature film, North Sea Texas, the story of teenager Pim and his burgeoning sexuality in 1970s Belgium.
It’s a great movie and was such a success in the UK that it’s no being re-released on Double Play Blu-ray and DVD, giving us our first chance to see the movie at home in HD. To mark that release, we caught up with Bavo to talk about the movie and what he’s going to do next.
How did you get involved with North Sea Texas?
I missed a train, and saw a book [André Sollie’s source novel] and I thought the words on the back were interesting. Two boys, a romance etc. I enjoyed the book and thought it would be a good movie.
When it came time to adapt the screenplay, was it difficult?
No, not at all. It is quite a short book. Normally there is so much in a book it’s difficult because you have to work out what to cut out. With North Sea Texas it was almost the opposite, as it was such a short story. A bit like Brokeback Mountain is very short, that it was more thinking how we can expand it into a film.
Even though it’s based on a novel by someone else, do you feel it reflects your own experiences growing up?
Mmmm, yes, but not too much. Of course it is somewhat based on the author of the book, and there is definitely some of me in there, but just as much as there is of many people. One of the great things has been with things such as Facebook and Twitter is to see teenagers and other people saying, ‘Pim is me’, ‘That film is my life’. In some ways it is all of us.
Normally films with young gay characters involve that person being confused and coming to terms with their sexuality. However North Sea Texas is almost the opposite of that – Pim is the only one who’s clear on things, while everyone around him has issues. Was that something you consciously wanted to get across in the film?
Yes, I think with many gay films, they are still a lot about straight society and reacting against that. For example Brokeback Mountain, it’s still about the straight society and the oppression gay people feel. It is understandable in the 1950s that it is that way, but still so many gay films are about reacting to straight people and gay people realising their sexuality. With North Sea, Texas, it is what happens next. Pim still has some confusion, but in that one area he knows who he is and what he wants.
You can say it is a fantasy world of the 1970s, if you like, but it’s one of the things I’m most proud about in Belgium, for 10 years now gay people have been allowed to get married. And while in some countries it would be difficult to get money to make a movie like this – in Russia for example – but In Belgium we can. So things are getting better and we can make stories about that and not just about straight society and showing anger about it.
One of the most impressive things is how the film recreates the 1970s. Was that difficult to achieve, especially as you didn’t have a limitless budget?
Yes, it was interesting and, as you say, we didn’t have a lot of money. But the production designer and the director of photography did great work. And we found ways to do it. For example, one of the shirts Pim wears, that was my father shirts from the 1970s that we found somewhere. It had been hidden away in the attic, but we found that and other things to make it like the 1970s.
Where did you find the main actors, particularly the person who played Pim?
Well, we cast in pairs. So we found someone we liked for Gino, but we couldn’t cast him until we’d found our Pim, as if they didn’t work together we’d have to find someone else. However luckily when we found Pim he had an immediate magnetism with Gino. At the time Pim was a ballet dancer and Gino was in a rock band, which worked well. It would have been very different if they’d both come from a ballet background or both rock ‘n’ roll.
There was bit of a gap between your short films in the 1990s and North Sea Texas, especially as they had seen so much success. How come there was a gap?
Ask me! Yes, there was a hole, but I have been very busy and certainly didn’t plan to not make many films. We put together various things, but I think perhaps we were too ambitious. Things that we wanted to do but which didn’t come together for various reasons.
However I am hoping there won’t be a big gap until the next one. We’ve been putting together a project called Souvenir, about a Eurovision singer who didn’t find success after ABBA came along and stole the limelight. Now she is working in a factory and when she finds romance, and her new lover has to try and convince her to sing again, something she thinks is behind her.
We’re about halfway there with that. In a week or two I have to go to a pitch competition in Berlin at the European Film Market. It is really good as there were 220 scripts cut down to 10, and then three to go to Berlin, and we are one of them. So I am hoping that goes really well.
Watching North Sea Texas and some of your short films, you can see the inspiration of earlier movies and artists. Are you a big fan of film history and particularly LGBT film history? I was reminded of Jean Genet in some of your shorts.
Yes, Jen Genet, although it depends on what period as his films range from very visual early ones, to very talky one later. But not just him. I look back to earlier European filmmakers and the people who inspired them. Often those from the silent era who made incredibly visual films and them went on later. Such as Douglas Sirk, who’s known for working in America and his melodramas, but he was German and started there in silent films. Also F.W. Murnau and people like Hitchcock, as well as those who were inspired by them, such as early Fassbinders.
Do you think the fact much of your work tackles gay themes makes it more difficult to get it made, or does it not make too much difference?
In some ways I think it is harder. I meet some straight filmmakers and they so, ‘Oh, it is so easy for you, you have the gay film festivals!’ I do love gay film festivals, but for every 100 film festivals there is one gay one. So I think in some ways it is more difficult.
What was the experience of taking North Sea Texas around the world like, as it played at a lot of film festivals and won quite a few prizes? Was the reaction different in different place?
It was good and yes, there was a different reaction. In LA they liked it, but the questions were about the budget, and whether it was legal to have sex scenes with two 14-year-olds. Then in San Francisco it screened at the Castro, and it sold out – something like 1,400 seats – and at the end people were standing up and clapping, and saying ‘That film is about me!’ So it seems the stereotype is true, in LA it is all about the business, while San Francisco is more hippie and romantic.
And it was great to hear how many people see themselves in the film. At Palm Springs there was an older man who was saying that while the film is set in the 1960s/1970s, it was just the same as for him in the 1940s. I thought ‘Wow, that it great’. And talking to Udo Kier, the cult actor who’s been in Lars Von Trier and Fassbinder, he was talking about how it reminded him of when he was a boy, dressing up in his mother’s clothes.
One of the reasons we’re doing this interview is because the film is getting a Blu-ray re-release in the UK. Not many gay-themed films get released on Blu-ray Britain, so you must be proud that North Sea Texas has been such a success in the UK that it’s now getting a Blu-ray re-release?
Wow, yes, that is great. And the Production Designer and Director Of Photography did such a great job that it is a good film to watch on Blu-ray or on the big screen. There is so much that we put in there. My mother watched it again recently, for probably the fifth time, and she was saying about all the things she hadn’t noticed before. There are lots of Easter eggs filmmakers put in you can see watching it again, so Blu-ray is good for that.
Thank you, Bavo.
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