Interview [Part 6]: Amma Asante, Director, “Belle”

Amma Asante has been an actress, TV writer-producer, and movie director. Her latest is the period piece drama Belle, written by Misan Sagay and directed by Asante. The movie opens this Friday, May 2nd in theaters across North America.

I had an engaging and informative conversation with Amma after she had just returned from the U.S. to her home in The Netherlands.

Today in Part 6, Amma shares her thoughts about how she hopes Belle is received by moviegoers and how it conveys a message of hope that things can change for the better:

Scott: As we’ve discussed, you have several points of personal connection with this story, so I’m curious… As people go to see the movie, it ends and the lights come up, what feelings and thoughts are you hoping this story will evoke in the viewers?

Amma: You know what I do? When I’m starting a script, I write two or three thematic words down on little pieces of paper. I fold them up, stick them in a drawer, and try and forget about them. My wish and my hope is that somewhere in my subconscious those words will stay with me and that those words will come back at me through audience reactions and in what people say to me.

I’m hoping that people come away with a feeling that they’ve seen a very officially beautiful movie that on the surface seems like a very simple story but beneath has a script that’s dealing in very complex stuff. I’m hoping that the message of who we are and what we can do with the world when we’re courageous is expressed to an audience.

The one thing I think we all as writers and directors wish for when we’re writing a story and making a movie is that people don’t leave the theater and immediately think, “Oh, what are we going to eat now? What flavor milkshake?” but that we’ve had enough of an impact on our audience so they want to talk about the movie.

They want to have discussions about the movie. They want to have discussions about issues, themes, plot points in the movie. I hope it’s going to inspire debate and discussion. I’m in the process of achieving one of my wishes now which is that the iconic house that Dido grew up in London, Kenwood House, now has a room named after Dido. Previously that didn’t exist.

Together with the painting and I hope the movie and the room that’s now dedicated to her, she will not be infamous anymore, but she will be a name that is very intrinsically a part of our British history and belongs to all of us. What happened in England with the Zong case had an impact on America. She didn’t just help change England. She helped to change our world.

I hope that people will be more familiar with her. I hope that what it does is it inspires people to find out more about her because I had to build a lot of fiction around this story to hook it together. Everything we know about Dido historically is in the movie. Everything we know about Lord Mansfield historically is in the movie, but it’s sewn together by lots of fiction.

John wasn’t a lawyer neither in the original script that I received or in history. That is a creation that had to be put together. I want people to go out and seek the real story, but knowing that the nature of who Dido was, who Lord Mansfield was and who they were to each other, and who John was to Dido is essentially correct.

Director Amma Asante on the set of Belle

Scott: Well, that idea of people having a discussion and talking about this afterwards, there’s still some relevance in this world. Even in the world of Hollywood, you look at the percentage of women directors and directors of color involved with Hollywood movies and I guess even overseas, the numbers are ridiculously low.

Amma: Yes, yes.

Scott: What’s your take on that? Do you feel like that situation will change? If so, how’s it going to happen?

Amma: I feel like I couldn’t be in this industry if I didn’t think it was going to change, because I feel like a future and a near future in which the thought of that not changing is so depressing that it would be hard for me, I think, to move forward. I feel like it has to change.

We know that when women produce scripts, movies, they’re pretty successful. We do pretty well in terms of how audiences respond to our material. To me, this is a change that is important not just for women but for all of us, and for the industry. The more variety, the more lenses.

When I talk about the lens I’m talking about writers as much as anything else; the more lenses through which stories are told, the bigger the variety of stories and the better that is for the film world, full stop, the better that is for audience, full stop. My take is that I feel like something is happening. I feel like there’s a sort of energy that’s brewing at the moment. There’s a lot of focus on this issue at the moment.

There’s a lot of non‑typically film magazines, just straightforward women’s magazines if you like, straightforward general magazines, who are jumping onto this point and are realizing that the figures are atrocious. The opportunities for women at the women are atrocious, and something’s got to give.

There’s no reason for it. There’s absolutely no reason in terms of why. Anybody can explain why women shouldn’t be ‑‑ we’re 50 percent of the population in most Western countries ‑‑ why we shouldn’t be doing more when it comes to storytelling in television and movie making. My feeling is, I want to help to change this by example so that young women that are growing up, do not grow up the way that I did. Never really seeing a woman like me, but so that they know I exist. They are aware that Jane Campion exists. They are aware that those very few females who are telling stories today are…tell them this is possible. Show them, by example, that this is possible, that a career in writing, a career in film making, a career in storytelling, is absolutely possible.

I feel that that’s the best way that I can contribute and change the status quo, really, and help contribute to change in the status quo.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Part 4, here.

Part 5, here.

Amma is repped by CAA and United Agents.

Twitter: @AmmaAsante.

For an interview with Belle screenwriter Misan Sagay, go here.

For when and where to see Belle in U.S movie theaters, go here.

At the request of the Writers’ Guild of America, West, I am including this clarification from the Guild with regard to Belle: “Consistent with WGA credit determination procedures, the writing credit was based on a blind reading of the material written by all of the writers and the readers were given no information concerning any writer’s union affiliation.”

Comment Archive