Tilda Swinton Talks Finding Magic & Experimentation In Big Studio Pictures – Marrakech In Conversation

Tilda Swinton famously cut her acting teeth on the experimental films of late director Derek Jarman such as Caravaggio and The Garden as well as life-long friend Joanna Hogg’s debut short Caprice and Sally Potter’s Orlando.

Nearly 50 years later, she has continued to work with Hogg as well as in the experimental cinema arena, finding a new Jarman-esque kindred spirit in Thai artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

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Speaking in an in-conversation event at the Marrakech Film Festival on Monday, the actress revealed how some of the big commercial studio pictures she has worked on across her career have felt personally more experimental to her than her avant-garde work.

“I’ve been really fortunate to have some adventures in worlds of filmmaking that I never thought I would be able to go into,” she said.

“When Derek died [in 1994], I was a bit high and dry… slowly… invitations came and there were a few that I was able to pick up very happily with people I really wanted to be around.”

She suggested that her first studio film, the superhero horror Constantine by Francis Lawrence, as well as David Fincher’s The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button were experimental in their different ways.

“He was completely throwing himself out of the window with all this tech, which I’m always really interested in,” Swinton said of Fincher on the latter film.

The actress suggested there had been a experimental vibe when she embarked on The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian with Shrek director Andrew Adamson.

She recounted: “Andrew Adamson said to me, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve never made a live action film. I’ve only been an animator before. Will you come with me on this mad adventure’, which is truly what it felt like.”

The actress revealed how she regarded her studio gigs as her “away games” in which she packed “a small bag” and set off to explore.

“As a film geek, to go into the studio system, even for a moment, has always been interesting for me. You know, to go into those big, old, hallowed halls and see why they may or may not still be hallowed… But coming back home and working with Joanna or Joe ( Weerasethakul’s nickname among fans and friends) in a much more kind of self-determined ways, that’s peace.”

Swinton said that ultimately there was “magic” in both the independent cinema and studio worlds, and that the latter could still support radical work.

“It’s all about the people… It’s not the houses, the houses don’t hold the spirit. It’s the people. There are always ways of making truly radical studio work. There are obstacles that need to be negotiated. But as long as there’s people and fellowship and they’re not isolated and don’t get beaten down, then there’s always going to be something to look forward to.”

Swinton is among 10 cinema figures participating in the Marrakech’s In Conversation program this year alongside Australian actor Simon Baker, French director Bertrand Bonello, U.S. actor Willem Dafoe, Indian filmmaker and producer Anurag Kashyap; Japanese director Naomi Kawase; Danish-U.S. actor and director Viggo Mortensen, Russian director and screenwriter Andrey Zvyagintsev and Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen and Moroccan director Faouzi Bensaïdi.

The festival runs from November 30 to December 4.

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