The Golden Spurtle is one of the hottest documentaries at Sydney Film Festival this year, set in the Scottish Highlands community of Carrbridge director Constantine Costi crafts a rich portrait of the village through their signature annual tradition, a world porridge making championship.
Flynn Boffo: What initially grabbed you about porridge?
Constantine Costi: It started with my trip to Carrbridge where the film is set, which is a population of no more than 700 people. I know the Australian competitor, Toby Wilson, and we have a mutual friend who told me about the whole thing. I was in Berlin because I work in the opera and in the performing arts mainly. The documentary is a complete departure for me and I kind of just rocked up this village most, mostly unannounced and was knocking on doors and fell in love with all of these quirky, eccentric, funny characters that I was meeting.
It all ballooned from there. The porridge is almost a Trojan horse to explore village life in a way. When you go into these small villages, everyone knows everyone. Gossip is like the main currency. We just get these tip-offs like, oh, you’ve gotta go and speak to so and so. They’re so fun and it just sort of spirals from there and so I sort of feel like in a way we co made it with the village.
I really did feel a sense of pride and ownership of their story within that film and particularly the excitement they have around the production. I feel that’s captured very well in this documentary. I wanted to Convey a sense they were in on all the jokes and kind of aware of being filmed in a way as well.
FB: How long did you spend building this connection with the village?
CC:The first trip I went completely on my own and just got to know everybody and built up a genuine rapport, where in the worst case scenario was that I had a fantastic trip to the Scottish Highlands.
The second trip I went with the DOP Dimitri Zaunders, we shot some test footage and it just slowly evolved out of that. Half the time was spent with people in front of the camera, and half the time was at the pub and at people’s houses, having cups of tea. And developing quite a genuine rapport, which I really, I think really shows through in the film. I’m really proud of that element that they all seem quite comfortable, more or less.
FB: I was really struck with how the culture of the village connects with an Australian sense of not taking yourself too seriously. I felt that it was really interesting seeing the best contestants keep their ego in check.
CC: Oh my God. Like there’s nothing more leveling and acerbic than Scottish wit, everyone there is so witty and sharp and having a sort of a stoic sense of humor is a huge part of it.
I just think that’s sort of part of the Anglo file tradition, never taking yourself too seriously. And, there’s always a bit of a glint in your eye, particularly when you’re dealing with something as absurd as a porridge competition. Like everyone there knows that it’s equal parts serious and equal parts absurd.
It’s just such a whimsical world to exist in. I felt transported. it Just feels too wholesome and too beautiful to be real.
That’s not really fabricated, it is a pocket of optimism and whimsy, as you say. I was really just trying to recreate how I felt when I first went there on my own.
FB: I felt connections with the work of Wes Anderson or even the Paddington Bear films. How did you craft this style with Dimitri, was the style discovered along the way, or was there a game plan that you had devised after experiencing the town?
CC: I mean, the answer is a bit of both really. After that trip, Dimitri and the producer Rebecca Lamond were staying at their grandmother’s place while she was away and we took over a wall of the living room and basically storyboarded the whole thing with cue cards.
We knew what we wanted to go for in terms of a macro structure, who we wanted to talk to, it was mapped out in that way and there are certain very obviously constructed centerpiece scenes, which were all mapped out. Like Charlie with a model of the village that’s not a spontaneous event.
We were just really open to spontaneity along the way and that came, and I think we were able to capture those moments because we knew most of the people we were working with and everyone was very open.
I think it’s interesting that you bring up Anderson and Paddington Bear references because I think what those worlds kind of have in common is a sense of nostalgia and analogous to the whole thing.
One of the big references that Dimitri and I listened to, and again was the old BBC radio dramas particularly, Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, which tells like the story of 1950’s seaside Village in Wales, and you can hear the dreams of the villagers. We felt there’s something in this which evokes a nostalgic tapestry of a town that could be a dream.
Like we wanted to create something that was nostalgic and painterly and deeply analog. I didn’t even want a digital score, I wanted to have a small ensemble of live performances. Instrumentalists for the whole thing to feel like it almost could have been recorded in a village hall or a town hall or something like that.
These elements were really important to me to cultivate a sensory feeling because it’s not a narrative where there’s twists and turns along the way you’re hardly gripped by plot twists. But a lot of it is evoking a feeling which is something I’m intensely interested in.
Interview by Flynn Boffo
The Golden Spurtle has two encore screenings on Thursday the 19th after a sold out run at the Sydney Film Festival.
Tickets are available here: https://www.sff.org.au/program/event/the-golden-spurtle/
Constantine Costi is an award-winning director and writer. His acclaimed film A Delicate Fire was awarded Best Australian Feature Film at the Sydney Women’s Film Festival, and the ATOM Award’s Best Experimental Film. Recent theatrical highlights include Siegfried & Roy: The Unauthorised Opera, Pierrot Lunaire, and Il Tabarro, among others. He is a graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in Sydney.