Nick Broomfield

Nick Broomfield
File:Nick Broomfield01.jpg Nick Broomfield
Born	1948 London, England
Alma mater	National Film and Television School
Occupation	Film-maker
Website	www.nickbroomfield.com

Nicholas "Nick" Broomfield (born 1948) is an English documentary film-maker. He is the son of Maurice Broomfield, the photographer.

Broomfield works with a minimal crew, just himself and one or two camera operators, which gives his documentaries a particular style. Broomfield is often in shot holding the sound boom.

Broomfield was awarded the BAFTA Lifetime Achievement Award for Contribution to Documentary, and was given honorary doctorates from Essex and Surrey University. He was awarded the Californian State Bar Award for his contribution to Legal Reform and is a founder member of the Morecambe Bay Victims Fund.

Career

Education

He studied Law at Cardiff University, and political science at the University of Essex; subsequently, he studied film at the National Film and Television School. Broomfield's early style was conventional Cinéma vérité: the juxtaposition of observed scenes, with little use of voice-over or text.

Documentaries

It was not until Driving Me Crazy (1988) that Broomfield appeared on-screen for the first time. After several arguments regarding the budget and nature of the film, he decided that he would only make the documentary if he was able to conduct a sort of experiment by filming the process of making the film—the arguments, the failed interviews and the dead-ends.

This shift in film-making style was also heavily influenced by Broomfield's experience in attempting to release his earlier film Lily Tomlin, which chronicled Tomlin's one-woman show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. Tomlin claimed that the film was a spoiler for the actual show and filed suit for $7 million against Broomfield. The documentary was shown on public television but not widely released. Eventually the footage shot by Broomfield was used in the video release of the one-woman show.

It is for this reflexive film-making style—a film being about the making of itself as much as about its subject—that Broomfield is best known. His influence on documentary is clear: Michael Moore, Louis Theroux and Morgan Spurlock have all adopted a similar style for their recent box-office hits. Film-makers who use this style have been referred to as Les Nouvelles Egotistes; others have likened his work to the gonzo reporting of Hunter S. Thompson.

Broomfield's best known work is probably Kurt and Courtney about Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, one of the few films selected then banned at the Sundance Film Festival. A previous film, Soldier Girls, that he co-directed with Joan Churchill won 1st prize at Sundance a few years previously.

Direct Cinema

In 2006, Broomfield changed his style again into what he calls 'Direct Cinema', using non-actors to play themselves. He completed a drama called Ghosts for Channel 4 inspired by the 2004 Morecambe Bay cockling disaster when 23 Chinese immigrant cockle pickers drowned after being cut off by the tides. Ghosts won numerous awards and helped raise nearly half a million pounds to help the victims' families.

Battle for Haditha (2007) worked with ex-Marines and Iraqi refugees, as well as known actors. The film was shot sequentially, enabling the cast to build their characters as the story progressed. It also used real locations, and a very small documentary-style film crew. Although they worked from a detailed script, the actors also improvised and added dialogue. The script was based on research with the Marines of Kilo Company who took part on that day, the survivors of the massacre, and the six thousand page NCIS government report. Battle for Haditha won numerous international awards.

Films

• Who Cares? (1971) Broomfield's first film, made as a student using a borrowed camera.
• Proud to be British (1973)
• Behind the Rent Strike (1974)
• Juvenile Liaison (1975)
• Whittingham (1980)
• Fort Augustus (1981)
• Soldier Girls (1981)
• Tattooed Tears (1982)
• Chicken Ranch (1983)
• Lily Tomlin (1986)
• Driving me Crazy (1988)
• Diamond Skulls (1989)
• Juvenile Liaison II (1990)
• The Leader, His Driver and the Driver's Wife (1991)
• Too White For Me (1992)
• Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1992)
• Monster in a Box (1992)
• Tracking Down Maggie (1994)
• Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam (1995)
• Fetishes (1996)
• Kurt and Courtney (1998)
• Biggie & Tupac (2002)
• Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003)
• His Big White Self (2006)
• Ghosts (2006)
• Battle for Haditha (2007)
• A Time Comes (2009)

Other work

In 1999, Broomfield made a series of five commercials for Volkswagen. Each of these featured Broomfield with his trademark sound boom "investigating" rumours about the soon-to-be released Volkswagen Passat.

Awards

Interview with Nick Broomfield (Director) of Ghosts (UK) dramatic feature film during world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival

• British Academy Award (BAFTA)
• Prix Italia
• The Dupont Columbia Award for Outstanding Journalism
• The Peabody
• The Royal Television Society Award
• First Prize, Sundance Film Festival
• John Grierson Award
• Robert Flaherty Award
• The Hague Peace Prize
• The Chris Award
• The Blue Ribbon
• The California State Bar Award
• First Prize, Chicago Film Festival
• First Prize, US Film Festival
• First Prize, Festival of Mannheim
• First Prize, Festival di Popoli
• Special Jury Award, Melbourne Film Festival

Broomfield was also given a BAFTA tribute evening on March 8, 2005.

See also

• Documentary film
• Cinéma vérité

References

• Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, ed. Ian Aitken. London: Routledge (2005)
• Nick Broomfield: Documenting Icons, Jason Wood

External links

• Official website
• Nick Broomfield on meeting Aileen Wuornos (Video interview from Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary)
• Nick Broomfield documentaries (reviewed) courtesy of comicbookandmovies.blogspot.com