St Edward's Rhubarb Issue 5

2 ST EDWARD’S r h u b a r b

FromApsley to the Academy Awards

of seasons of Orson Welles, Carol Reed, Kurosawa films etc. I’d also go to the Phoenix in Oxford and the main Oxford cinemas. It’s funny, Oxford is very important too, not just for my education. I had the weirdest meeting with a Scottish filmmaker who was also born in the John Radcliffe. A level results come out tomorrow, and it strikes me that exactly 16 years after your results came out, your first feature film is being released in the UK. It’s quite a journey… I can’t believe it was exactly 16 years ago! After I left school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do and was sitting at home doing nothing. My mum made me an appointment with Mr Fletcher who was in charge of UCAS at the time. I ended up filling out all the forms with Law as my first five choices. For my sixth I just flicked through the book and found War Studies at King’s, randomly put it down, and then received an offer. It was a great course and I actually used a lot of it in the film. It’s a multidisciplinary course which helps you as a film director as you are constantly having to think in different ways. How did you get from King’s to where you are now? I always wanted to do film, but always thought I had to go into the army, because I come from a military background. But when I finished university, I realised I could go and do what I wanted and never looked back. It was very difficult. I couldn’t get an internship anywhere, even with connections so I waitered and laid floors for a year and then managed to get two unpaid internships in a documentary company. But all the time I was writing and my second screenplay got me into the Sundance Screenwriters’ Lab and that really changed my life. I’ve been writing for ten years, and made one short film before making my first feature. If you want to go into film in any discipline, you really have to love what you do and be stubborn, as it’s a long process. A lot of people fall by the wayside. So in retrospect, what would you have told 18-year-old you lying around on the sofa afterA levels? Get up, go out and live some life. Do anything, but have an experience. Travel. Don’t be afraid to fail. I failed for 10 years; I spent five years working on a screenplay that never saw the light of day and it broke my heart. But as a filmmaker that was a key

rounded everyone up. I managed to get inside without being caught, but while boasting to my friends of this fact I didn’t realise that my Housemaster, James Quick, was standing right behind me… The best teacher I had was Mr Lush. He told us that he never got his driving licence; tried and failed six times! He was an excellent teacher – lots of lesson plans and diagrams. I loved playing football. Mr Oxley gave me a role in a play. I played Pete the racist boat engineer in Showboat - he chose me to play a white supremacist! He was a very nice man and taught me history. That role was my first and only attempt at acting. I was terrible at it, and that might have been what turned me into a writer and director! I tried to put on a play at Teddies as well, but we only managed three rehearsals before the exams got in the way. The then Head of Drama encouraged me in writing this play which was a mix of A Streetcar Named Desire , Rebel Without a Cause and On the Waterfront . It was going to be an independent side production. There was a guy I used to play football with called Dave Johnstone who was the James Dean heartthrob character, and then it was just characters in the year that I found entertaining. No-one will ever see those scripts. It seems that you took full advantage of your proximity to London to get a regular cultural fix. I used to take the Oxford Tube up and go to the NFT. It was amazing, I loved it. It had lots

F E A T U R E S

Naji Abu Nowar (E, 1997-1999) was born in the John Radcliffe, and has since divided his life between Oxford, London and Jordan. His first feature film, Theeb , was released in 2014 and won Naji the Orizzonti Award for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival. Here he speaks with Rebecca Ting shortly before the UK release of Theeb in August 2015. (Since this interview Naji won the 2016 BAFTA for Outstanding Debut, and Theeb was shortlisted for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2016 Oscars - Ed.) What are your strongest memories from your time at School? It was a tradition at the time for the leavers to do a prank the night before Gaudy. We broke out of House, met up on the field in the middle of the night and then all charged on the marquee in the Quad. I got stuck in a bush for three hours hiding while the staff