Rebellion and serendipity
A directorial pathway carved as much by mutiny as by chance - this is the story of Marc J. Francis and his career so far.
When you set out to achieve something, the universe will help you to make it happen. I’ve been learning that ever since I decided to become a filmmaker and a storyteller. I mean there’s as many setbacks, it’s not like you go for a sandwich, meet a millionaire and they say “Do you want five million quid?”, but there are these key moments of serendipity, or synchronicity, that land at optimum moments.
I grew up in a community where I was the minority. As a young Jewish kid I knew that I was different. And if I didn’t know it – other kids let me understand. But I’m a black sheep in my own Jewish community too, because I also don’t feel a sense of belonging there. The value system that I was brought up with wasn’t really the value system that rang true to me.
I was told to be as financially successful as possible, to become hugely wealthy and that was the beginning and end of the conversation about the meaning of life. There was a tremendous pressure to live up to that expectation. So, becoming an artist and not pandering to that narrative was seen as a ‘Fuck you Son’. Filmmaking was my rebellion.
‘I have my truth and you have your truth’
It began with a flick through the back of a UCAS brochure. I had been presented with three options: banking, law or becoming a doctor and I didn’t want to do any of those things. With a week to go before I had to hand in this application, I surveyed my options. I went down the As and the Bs and the Cs and I saw this word ‘Chinese’ and it piqued my curiosity. I thought “You can’t study Chinese, can you?” but the brochure said yes, you go to Leeds University you learn Chinese and for your second year you get to live in China… and we organise the whole thing for you. I just thought, “This is my exit to the other side of the world”. I was somehow interested in trying to see the world from a different point of view and I hoped that through learning Chinese I would switch the belief of ‘I have THE truth’ into ‘I have my truth and you have your truth’.
So I did the course, I moved to China and I immersed myself in that language and culture for five years. I was awakened to a completely new perspective on the world. I experienced 1990’s Chinese culture through the lens. It was in China that I took up photography, my first step into creativity, shooting 1000 images on film. An intimate record of real China.
When I came back to the UK I studied Chinese cinema as a specialist subject and this got me thinking about film. Chinese filmmakers and artists inspired me to think about myself becoming an artist.
My experiences in and of China, so different to what we had been led to believe in the West, gave rise to an insatiable urge in me to express messages that are not part of the mainstream narrative. At a human level, this extends to my desire to empower the marginalised, disenfranchised, the voiceless. This has been the guiding beacon throughout my career.
A few years later I would come to make a film that would help to change the Western perception of China by telling the story of China’s mass migration to Africa.
Disapproval and dissent
While I had begun to formulate my path of ambition, it was at the great disapproval of my father, who after I graduated, told me not to pursue art. Soon after, I was rooting around in the family loft and I found my Grandfather’s artwork buried under some boxes. I had no idea he had been an artist – his story had been hidden from me. It turns out he was connected to the Whitechapel Boys - an art movement of the 1920s.
Now this rebel had a hook. Art was in my family. I could be an artist, and there was no-one who could tell me otherwise.
Coffee and the unlikely campaigners
My first major venture into filmmaking was with my brother, who had been living in Ethiopia during a gap year. He realised that they were really rich in coffee and the country is green like England and that was very contrary to the perception that we had of Ethiopia growing up with Live Aid campaigns and images of starving Africans on billboards getting us to try to give money to Oxfam.
When he reached into it even further what he really saw was that one of the fundamental reasons why Ethiopia was in a state of poverty was because of the unfair trade that exists between developing countries like Ethiopia and the rest of the world. That for every $3 cup of coffee sold in the West, Ethiopian coffee farmers were getting less than a cent. We knew there was a story to tell and we spent the next four years deep in research and pulling the story together.
Black Gold became our first internationally-recognised film. We went to Sundance Festival and when the press picked up on it, that’s when Starbucks piped up and mounted a global PR offensive against us in order to discredit the film. And then Proctor and Gamble got involved. We were all over the news. Overnight we became these campaigners of the trade justice movement and the film not only called the coffee companies to account, we took the Fairtrade movement into the mainstream and raised the brand value of Ethiopian coffee on the international market.
But we didn’t want to be these talking head campaigners for too long, otherwise we weren’t going to be able to make films. So, we got off that and we started the second film, When China Met Africa. It became another hit and felt like a kind of homecoming for my directorial career – changing the narrative on China. The confirmation of a successful rebellion.
Max, the monk and me
Then about ten years ago, I got a call from a very dear close friend of mine, Max, and he said “Are you interested in helping me make a film about Thich Nhat Hanh?”
Max’s blood brother had, seven years earlier, committed to becoming a Zen monk and he was reaching out to his brother to bring cameras into the monastery for the first time in order to try to find a way to capture the legacy of Thich Nhat Hanh before he passed. So, Max called me up and said “Do you want to come with me?”
At that point in my life, I felt like I had arrived at where I wanted to go against all odds, but there was something inside me that was making me feel unhappy. And that worried me. So, when I got this telephone call it was really perfect timing.
There was an opportunity to hang out with one of the greatest Zen masters of all time and I thought I could do with a little bit of that.
Walk with Me is the most personal film I have ever made, because it was also the beginning of an awakening for me. The monastics taught me how to cultivate the energy of mindfulness and arrive in the present moment. I practiced mindful walking, and I learned how to sit, meditate and breathe mindfully.
But the exercise that moved me the most was the practice of deep listening, otherwise known as compassionate listening - to listen in a way that helps others share their feelings without fear of being judged, interrupted, disagreed with, or even corrected.
By the end of my first two-week stay I felt like I was landing in my body in a way that I had not known before. When I came back home I was changed. Ultimately it led to an unravelling where I questioned who I was, what kind of life I was living, everything. I went through great suffering but I came out the other end better for it, knowing myself and more fulfilled. And the project pulled me in. I thought Walk With Me would take about 18 months. It ended up taking about 4 or 5 years.
Although filming is complete, the project carries on as I come to the final stages of recording for its sister project, Walk With Me in Sound, narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch and soon to be released on Audible.
We approached Benedict through an associate who works closely with Benedict after we learned that he had been following and benefiting from Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings of mindfulness. We needed someone who was already deeply familiar with the practice and Benedict was perfect. He didn’t need convincing to be involved.
A random spa on the edge of a cliff
While Walk with Me has been such a personal journey for me, my role in filmmaking has afforded me the privilege of being a part of other people’s deeply personal journeys. While filming ‘Here I Am’ (working title) I was invited to capture one of the most intimate times of life - the final months before death.
I was on the promotional circuit for Walk With Me at an event in the States when I met Elizabeth Gilbert backstage, who was also doing a tour. She at that point had just started a new romantic relationship with her partner Rayya Elias – a woman who was suffering from terminal cancer and had 12 months to live. We got talking and then went our separate ways, as you do.
A few days later, I bumped into them south of San Francisco, 100 miles south of San Francisco at this random spa on the edge of a cliff. We had lunch and that’s when I pitched it to them and Rayya said she was interested.
I spent 12 months with her on and off and I was with her until she died.
Here I Am is set to be released in 2021. Subscribe to follow me on my journey as I explore truth, beauty and wisdom in these and other ongoing projects.