www.seanmcallister.com
The Big Issue
HULLS ANGEL:
BIG ISSUE IN THE NORTH interviews SEAN MCALLISTER.
What sounds like an examination of hairy, gruff and denim and leather clad bikers,
Hull's Angel is in fact a documentary about asylum seekers. Actually, that's not quite right - the
focus of the film is, as the title implies, an angel who happens to come from Hull.
She's not a real angel because that would be... well, miraculous, divine not to mention big news
that you'd have heard about already. No, the angel of this piece is Tina Beech, a woman who happens to
work with and for those who are in the process of seeking asylum in Britain. In itself, there's nothing
too angelic about doing a job of work - even assisting the more disadvantaged quasi members of society - but with Tina,
we see how the nature of her work has a profound impact on her life. Tina's story is goes beyond taking work home;
in her case, she marries it.
Tina, now a former resident of Hull, has been working with asylum seekers since they first started arriving a couple of years ago.
For the film's maker, a young looking thirty seven year old Sean Mcallister, also of Hull, this could have been a shorter process:
'Well I started researching in November 2000. I met Tina in April 2001 and then filmed her for a whole year;
not a cost effective way of doing it.' Sean also took the long way round getting into documentaries.
After leaving school at sixteen, he worked as a welder for a couple of years, then spent considerable
time out before slowly but surely finding his vocation in life. In his twenties, Sean studied at the
National School of Film and Television, and has since managed to produce a number of documentaries including the
critically acclaimed Minders which followed two of Iraq's 'media minders'; men who'd been given the not
always easy task of escorting journalists around parts of Saddam Hussein's cities.
The minders at the centre of the piece were all the more fascinating because they were so damned quirky:
one considering himself to be a real Mister Lover-Lover, the other a mad fan of Kevin Keegan in his playing prime.
'That's the bit everyone remembers,' Sean tells me. Minders gave us a different view of Iraq by profiling people who,
perhaps insignificant in the greater scheme of things, were never ordinary. This strategy, of dealing with
wider social issues through exploring individual lives, is especially useful in Sean's latest piece.
Everyone's got an opinion about asylum seekers but in Hull's Angel, a sense of politics barely comes through.
Though some of the scenes are brutal, but not altogether shocking, we're left to make up our own minds:
'Tina was a vehicle to make a more interesting film that wasn't hitting the subject on the head.
The thing that obviously interested me about Tina was that she was a Socialist. I don't wanna go Socialism! Socialism! Socialism!
I tend to make a film about people who have that kind of message that they inherently bring into the material.'
And Tina does bring a lot. Tina left her husband of 25 years and by the time Sean met her,
she'd been fired from her job as a hostel manager. Later, she'd been beaten up by racists, moved city, found a new job,
and amongst a few other crises, fell in and out of love with Khaled then later his cousin Masoud who she ended up marrying.
For all of that, Sean paints a portrait of a staunch and inherently strong, driven individual whose life is turned on its
head essentially because she cares: 'She's a victim of her own weakness which is to help, but I think she'd willingly be a
martyr for the cause. She's always had a cause in life and this one's her latest, I suppose.' When it comes to men,
Tina seems to change, a point still playing on Sean's mind: 'I couldn't understand why she was with Khaled.
A strong woman could be so weak in the hands of a man. I think her traditional working class values conflict all
the time with her political beliefs. She has a new and exciting life now but is still fighting when forced to compromise
her politics for her man.'
Asylum seekers started arriving in Hull in September 2000. For Sean, the problems many asylum seekers have to deal with are primarily down
to the policy of dispersal: 'Statistically, it's not been any different. It's only noticeable since dispersal.
Until then they'd just assimilate into London and you wouldn't know any different. Once you start putting 1500
asylum seekers into a white town called Hull that's never seen any immigrant before, you've got a disaster zone.'
According to Sean, this is not a misfortunate mistake but a considered, perhaps immoral little strategy:
'The most effective way of stopping immigration is for asylum seekers to send the message back themselves;
that it's not a good place to come. How does it become not a good place to come? By being dispersed in to
white towns where they're gonna get brutally stabbed, beaten and ultimately murdered: England's no longer an
easy touch, go to Sweden!' I find myself agreeing but maybe that's the cynic in me. Dispersal fails at every
level and it's always going to fail but that's exactly why it was implemented: even if asylum isn't a problem,
it's got to be packaged and sold as one. As if I needed proof, Sean tells me that for a long time
'Hull was known in Kurdistan as Hell - every time asylum seekers were arriving, they were getting beaten up.'
The sad thing is that the Hells of Britain are still better than the Hells people are running from.
Hull's Angel does what a good documentary should do by providing an in-depth treatment of issues through focussing on what we can all relate to: people.
Although asylum remains topical, and will probably stay that way for some time to come,
Hull's Angel is essentially a story of one human being. As for when we'll get to see it on Channel 4,
who also commissioned the piece, Sean's not so sure and not too positive, either:
'In a way this film's a brave commission for a channel which is becoming a slave to celebrity and sex.'
Not the best move in the world, biting the hand that feeds him, I suggest, but it's difficult to see
Sean's views as unjustified: 'The pressure's so massive on advertising revenue to get one and a half million audience.
This is not going to get a million. They know it's not going to get a million when they talk to you over the table,
before they've even commissioned it.'
For the future, Sean's much more interested in developing dramatic ideas. Presently, he's working on a drama feature film,
the working script of which is a closely guarded secret due the sensitive nature of the subject.
Documentary makers don't usually dabble in fiction or dramatic works but it seems Sean's still keeping
close to his documentary roots as this work is to be based on undercover research and, once again, is of some social concern.
Although he sounded down about some aspects of working in television, he knows which side his bread's buttered on:
'I think back to when I was sixteen, in an oily factory: I know what I don't want.'
There's no doubt Sean's obviously got a huge talent for telling a story either through documentary or drama;
it's only a matter of time before we see which he sticks with.
the big issue in the north.
