In "Kubrick by Kubrick", film extracts, archive footage, and hours of in-depth interviews come together to form a unique and original portrait of one of cinema’s most iconic and elusive directors. Producers Martin Laurent and Jérémy Zelnik (Temps Noir) join Arianna Castoldi, Director of Documentary Sales at Mediawan Rights to discuss the long journey they embarked upon to turn this innovative idea into a festival darling and international success.
Unifrance: What can you tell us about how this project got started?
Jérémy Zelnik :The idea emerged through interviews conducted by Michel Ciment. There were more than 10 hours of recordings housed at the Institut Lumière in Lyon that had never been used for a documentary. Kubrick is a director who generates a lot of mystery: he almost never gave interviews and rarely spoke publicly. To hear him speaking about his work, his favourite themes and his working methods, and to discover his warm voice provided what seemed to us a very new and interesting starting point. Michel Ciment very quickly agreed to participate in the project.
Martin Laurent : We knew that Grégory Monro, with whom we had already worked several times, was a great admirer of Kubrick’s work. We knew he dreamt of making a documentary about him. We thought he would be the perfect person to rise to this challenge and take an original directorial approach. Based on an initial pre-project, the Society and Culture division at Arte France (Karen Michael and Fabrice Puchault) expressed their interest very quickly. The hardest part remained, however: convincing the Kubrick family.
Unifrance: Indeed, the Kubrick rights-holders receive many requests but few are granted…
JZ: The family is very selective about the projects that they agree to support. They have rather bitter memories of a film in which interviews they gave were twisted and misused. But Michel Ciment’s support for us was unwavering. He believed 100% in the relevance of the project and, thanks to the trust and friendship he enjoys with the Kubrick family, after more than a year of discussions, we managed to secure their agreement.
ML: That enabled us to access all Kubrick’s personal archives – thousands of photographs and press cuttings that he stored carefully, along with family videos. The family also helped us in our discussions with Warner, who owned most of Kubrick’s drama films.
Unifrance: How is Kubrick par Kubrick different from other documentaries about the director?
JZ: We did not want to make yet another documentary in which directors and experts talk about what a genius he was. On the contrary, we wanted to get close to Kubrick, and perhaps demystify the man. Kubrick was a real perfectionist and wanted to control everything, but he also lived in a very traditional way, near London with his family and his dog. His reality was a far cry from what we might imagine.
ML: The idea was to build the film around the interviews with Michel Ciment, who knew Kubrick really well. So the film is 100% made of extracts from Kubrick’s films and archive footage, in particular testimonials from Kubrick’s actors and partners made when the films were released. Grégory Monro also came up with the idea of communicating the Kubrick universe by reconstructing the room from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which served as a kind of symbol for Kubrick’s mind and allowed us to explore all the most evocative props from his films, such as the mask from Eyes Wide Shut and the sunglasses from Lolita.
To complete the project, we had to secure a lot of funding, both to construct the set and pay significant rights for the archive footage and film extracts. We also needed quite a lot of editing time. Philippe Baillon is a fantastic editor, but it is not easy to make a film from such restrictive material – that is to say, 100% archive footage without commentary.
Unifrance: The documentary has been selected for about 30 different festivals since it was shown on Arte and Ciné+. It has enjoyed great international success.
ML: In truth, the film was always intended for an international audience. With Arte’s support, we decided to make two versions: an hour-long film for television, and a 75-minute film that would enable us to envisage festival selection.
Arianna Castoldi :We started working on the project from a very early stage. We discovered it thanks to a pitching session at Medimed. We started working on pre-sales at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), presenting it to broadcasters from the European Broadcasters Union. We continued at Sunny Side, where the film won the Culture pitch. We were able to secure about 10 pre-sales before production even began.
JZ: We conceived the film as an international co-production. We co-produced it with Telemark in Poland. The model for the 2001 room was made in Poland, where top-level technicians from the film industry were brought on board, including the production designer for Claire Denis’ High Life, and the head operator from The Babadook. They obtained the support of the Polish Film Institute. We also secured the support of Media both for development and production, thanks also to the work of Mediawan Rights.
AC: We launched the film at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2020, and worked with the Cinetic agency for press liaison. The film garnered excellent reviews in the trade press (Indie Wire, Deadline, Variety, Screen, etc.). That really launched the film’s festival career, with selections for Chicago, Sitges, Deauville and Karlovy Vary, among others. And we were able to sell it to TV channels in more than 30 different countries.
Unifrance: And then there is the Emmy Award – what a great honour!
ML: Yes, it is wonderful recognition for a lot of hard work on the project – and for our perseverance. It was a journey that spanned more than four years; it was demanding, and sometimes difficult, but so worth it! We share the award with all the film’s partners, with Arte France at the top of that list. They believed in us and made this film possible.
JZ: The Award is of course a huge recognition of the work of Gregory Monro, for whom this was the second nomination.
ML: This award also spotlights true French know-how on the international stage, through a project led by an independent producer and supported by public service organisations. It is significant, especially at the moment, to demonstrate that this kind of partnership can produce work that more than holds its own against the world’s best content. The French-style documentary industry is a fragile thing, and we have to defend it constantly. This award is the perfect way of doing that.
Unifrance: How did international buyers react?
AC: Right from the first exchanges, many clients were attracted by the exclusive access the film offers to one of the most iconic and mysterious directors in the history of cinema. We discovered a lot of Kubrick fans amongst buyers. In the end, we managed to finalise more than 35 sales to TV channels. This was also thanks to the work we did at festivals, which allowed the film to be programmed in slots other than arts and culture. The most recent sale – one very close to our heart – was to a broadcaster in England.
Unifrance: What’s next for the programme and for Temps Noir?
AC: Our first meet-up is in early February as the film has been nominated for a Unifrance Export Award. In May, the long version will be presented at the Cinémathèque as part of a Kubrick retrospective. The documentary will continue to travel the world thanks to other festival selections and negotiations with new countries.
ML: We are currently working on new projects, including with Gregory Monro, but it is too early to talk about those. Among our films in production, we have a great history documentary about Nelson Mandela’s secret years (Arte, in co-production with South Africa), a profile of Brad Pitt for Arte, and a film about the Océan Viking rescue boat for migrants (co-production with Belgium). We also have a co-production with Israel (Medialia Production) for France Télévision about the town of Hebron (H2, 90’), a documentary co-produced with Italy about the iconic Cinecittà studios in Rome (co-production Palomar – Istituto Luce – France Télévision), and a feature-length film documentary about Thomas Sankara by the multi award-winning director Mads Brugger, which was pitched at the IDFA in November 2021. In general, we want to develop international projects within our line-up to enable films to become events in themselves and reach an ever larger audience.
