BBC Fresh Profile: Geej Ower and Simon Oxley

Geej Ower and Simon Oxley, the director and producer of the film Know Hope, discuss their inspiration and hopes for the future.

How/why did you get started in documentary film-making?

GEEJ OWER: Documentary film-making is a fairly new venture for me. I have a background in theatre directing, and theatre is fundamentally all about storytelling and the exploration of characters and that's what excites me about it; it's exactly the same in documentary making. I'm constantly fascinated by people and where they come from and what makes them do the things they do. Maybe I should have gone into psychology but I messed around with a camera for too long.

SIMON OXLEY: My background is not in documentary film but feature film. I have worked with Merchant Ivory Productions for the past 9 years before moving away to do my own thing. One of the areas of film that motivated me to start Greatcoat Films was documentary and this film is one of our first projects.

Why did you pick this subject for Fresh?

GEEJ OWER: Street art is a part of youth and art culture all over the world, whatever city you're in. It's always going to be an inspiring and relevant topic for young audiences.

SIMON OXLEY: Street art really allows for an open approach to documentary as it’s such a fresh, rapidly evolving and infinitely varied art form. Working on a brief with such creative free reign really allowed us to stamp our stylistic mark on the film in addition to just documenting a subject.

What motivated you to make this film?

GEEJ OWER: Know Hope is a street artist from Tel Aviv, not much older than myself. Growing up in such a politically charged environment has been a major source of inspiration for his work, which is what we wanted to learn more about. He has a huge following in Tel Aviv but is fairly unknown in the UK, so when Simon heard that he was coming over to London with a new exhibition we thought it was the perfect opportunity to spend a week with him and try to create a film that captured what he was about as an artist.

SIMON OXLEY: As a company we want to be involved in the arts and feel like there isn’t enough serious documentary film readily available about new artists and exhibitions - we had been talking with Lazarides about making a film with one of their artists for a while and Know Hope fitted the bill perfectly. He is young, his style is unique and he has something important to say which he says with eloquence both in conversation and through his form of street-art. Working with Geej we tried to make a film that compliments his technique stylistically as well as communicating his approach to his work and the motivation behind it.

What camera did you use to shoot your film?

GEEJ OWER: I shot with a Canon 60D, 5D and a Nikon D800, with 24-105 and 50mm lenses.

Who/what inspires you?

GEEJ OWER: Everything and anything. Night buses are great. There are also a plethora of brilliant directors at the moment, Emily Kai Bock, Nabil, who just make beautiful stuff.

SIMON OXLEY: People’s passions and working with talented people to collectively create something arrestingly visual.

What are your plans for the future?

SIMON OXLEY: Greatcoat Films are collaborating with Dave Goulding to produce a film on Malian kora master Toumani Diabate and his son Sidiki. We’ve spent some time with them both recently and shot some preliminary footage and interviews including a wonderful performance at the Royal Festival Hall in November. We think he is someone whose story and music need to be brought to a larger audience as he is an extraordinary musical talent who everyone should have the chance to hear. This is our big project for early 2014 which we hope to get on TV or cinema screens later in the year.

GEEJ OWER: My dad has recently digitised over 70 hours of home footage... I'm in the process of working through that material for a documentary form music promo. Other than that I plan on working towards making a feature length documentary, and myself and Simon have a few more projects in the pipeline we'd like to get off the ground.

What is the most important thing you have learned so far?

SIMON OXLEY: Persist and surround yourself with talented and driven people.

GEEJ OWER: To get your camera out and actually start doing it, rather than talking about doing it. Also to never NEVER check to see how much card memory you have left on your 5D by going to the 'format' option. Never.