Future Tensed
Mitchell Miller
"We are not afraid of the future," declared Tomas Bata, the famous (and to some, infamous) Moravian entrepreneur. "The shoemaker to the world" and his synonymous descendants not only manufactured shoes, but societies, each a facsimile of Bata’s own town of Zlin, the heartland of his Empire. He built houses for families that would "free our women from physical labour" and amenities such as cinemas, film studios and museums to similarly liberate their minds. He thought up and promulgated a utopian world of his own and coined aphorisms the way more promiscuous men father children. Like a lesser Augustus, Bata (pronounced "Bah-tya") exported his slightly eccentric industrial and social model to every branch of his empire, not to mention his own physical image, graven in bronze statues and busts that decorated the futurist town squares of numerous "Bata-villes."
Proof, were it needed, of Valery’s assertion that all can indeed be flattened into an image. But even in two dimensions, Bata’s legacy has an enduring social and psychological effect on those touched by it. In their film Bata-Ville: We are not afraid of the future, socially-engaged artists Karen Guthrie and Nina Pope joined with ex-workers from two of Bata’s UK sites, East Tilsbury and Maryport, to challenge the truth of Bata’s words. Loaded onto a specially painted tour bus (emblazoned with the slogan) set off for Zlin and what represents, for many of them, a shared heritage.
It is not too judgemental to describe this as an "odd" film, the material not entirely at ease with the medium. It may look and at times feel like a documentary, but to call it such probably misses the point. Its artistry lies not so much in the shot or the edit, (although there are some beautiful set-pieces among the ruins of the East Tilsbury site) but in achieving critical mass of feeling and incident among the participants who travel on the bus.
Pope and Guthrie would themselves seem to prefer it described as a "document" rather than a documentary, with all the messy, palimpsestual possibilities that would suggest. Bata-Ville began as a two-year project commissioned by Thurrock council. Bata-Ville was a site-specific work Pope created in the now semi-derelict East Tilsbury, whereby a "Travel Agency" operated from the former Bata director’s office. The pseudo agency served as a place to share memories, recall experiences and collect Bata memorabilia.
The idea of a coach trip to Zlin was intended to unite the ex-Bata communities and subsequently gives the film its basic narrative shape. Pitched as these ex-workers are, between the decaying past and the hope (or threat!) of urban regeneration, the rites of memory and recall take a new sense of urgency. So it seems altogether appropriate that the film should open at the feet of a Bata memorial with a reading from one of his own speeches.
Shot in the flat, harsh light now familiar to the HD digital doc, the scene introduces us to this edgy, often painful process of eavesdropping on a shared reminiscence and its almost symbiotic relationship with the sense of foreboding an uncertain future brings.
The idea of the holiday, of a tour through well-trodden terrain textured with national, regional and local history has already been pioneered. It linked the three most remarkable avant-garde British documentaries of the early to mid 90s; Patrick Keiller’s Robinson (1992), Robinson in Space (1997), and Andrew Kotting’s Gallivant (1996). In the latter, Kotting completed a circuit of the British coasts, traversing regional, national and class boundaries (not least between he, his mother and his handicapped daughter) along the way. The Robinson films meanwhile confronted us with footage we know to be absolutely factual with a sentimentalized historical narrative on the meaning of said footage by a middle-class narrator and researcher we knew to be entirely fictional. These films essay the reliance of British documentary (arguably all documentary) on the power of the well-spoken educated middle classes to glide in and out of situations as the informed "observers" of "others." It is a tension Pope and Guthrie eagerly provoke and embrace and leave, necessarily, unresolved.
But for all the cozy connotations with that great British holiday, the Bata-bus is really a mobile sociological experiment, the film a "phantom ride" for its audience that involves it in onboard games of bingo and the unique Cumbrian diversion known as "egg dumps." As we gather, scrap by scrap, the unfolding story of these "tourists," a number of different agendas and identities hatch at the surface; there is the regional agenda between the Maryport workers from northwest England and the southerners from East Tilsbury. There is the small matter of Maryport’s earlier closure, perceived to be in favor of those in East Tilsbury. Finally, as if to prove no British film is complete without a class struggle of some sort, there were "the others"–a group of writers and artists with no connection to Bata who were invited along. By dint of their profession and education, "the others" are largely middle class, or perceived as such by the passengers (thus, a very neat role reversal on the usual "privileges" of the narrator or presenter). When one old gent magnanimously says, "If they don’t think themselves a bit better, we’ll mix, no problem," it is not entirely clear whether this is a reassurance or a threat.
Class divides also widen over views of Bata, whose darker side (consider the elevator-cum-office which the proprietor’s son-in-law used to spy on proceedings at every level of head office) clearly alarms the outsiders much more than the largely still-loyal ex-employees.
The final, somewhat loopy ingredient was the role the two artists themselves played as "tour guides." Dressed in the garb of 60s tour guides, their nostalgic appearance seems to physically represent the shared past of the passengers. But the get-up also seems to shift them fully into another alternate but interlocking plane of reality. Dressed as they are, they quickly assume the role of guides and leaders and control the action on camera with relative ease. Or indeed, they can gatecrash the current Tomas Bata’s birthday party for an impromptu interview. When one of the passengers actually comments on this, we are shocked at how seriously we have taken them, all for the sake of a costume and a well-turned heel (Bata, of course).
Which inevitably raises the question of whether they have the right to make art out of such material, a useful question that can be widely applied to documentaries in general. Guthrie and Pope were clearly deeply affected and sincere, and there is a powerful sense of emotional authenticity that holds it all together–its occasional naiveté, its loose structure and its occasional resemblance to the old actualities of early cinema.
For although we eventually meet the current Mr. Bata, we never penetrate his jolly exterior. But we might just have a hope of understanding what the point of journeying in the hope of finding him might have meant. A higgledy-piggledy sort of conclusion, but it seems true to the spirit of Kotting, Keillor or the Guthrie-Pope partnership (who have now moved onto explore the phenomenon of historical re-enactment societies). They do not so much the explore the physical world as the many psychic and social artefacts we layer onto it, creating precarious landscapes such as Maryport or Tilsbury, dreaming hopefully but hardly short of a nightmare or two–as one of "the others" so aptly puts it, "We’re shit-scared of the future."
Bata-ville premieres at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas (March 10-19, 2006). DVDs and further information available at www.bata-ville.com
