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 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Sally Potter and Joan Allen on poetry in motion. On September 12th, 2001, filmmaker Sally Potter sat down to write her response to the previous day’s cataclysmic events. She began with a dramatic scene, an argument between two lovers, a Western woman and a Middle Eastern man. “Instinctively I turned to love and to verse,” Potter explains. “Love, because it is ultimately a stronger force than hate; and verse, because its deep rhythms and its long tradition enable ideas to be expressed in lyrical ways that might otherwise be indigestible.” Potter shot a five-minute short of this scene. Convinced it could work, she set about writing a mosaic-like feature that explored the challenges and contradictions of contemporary life; a love story both political and personal, where cultural beliefs jostle with emotional passions. Her own enthusiasm helped attract a distinguished cast including renowned Lebanese actor Simon Abkarian, Sam Neill, Shirley Henderson, and, as the female lead, mighty American actor Joan Allen.  “I responded to it as something I felt if I could be a part of it, it would offer some kind of contribution,” Allen confirms, mindful of her own feelings over the US response to 9/11. “It seemed to reflect a lot of thoughts and feelings I had in a very human way, in addition to being political. It’s very accessible, but it’s very layered and very rich.” Not to mention very funny, too. Henderson’s cheeky maid makes playful asides to the camera and a trio of restaurant kitchen workers debate their convictions and prejudices with gusto. All in iambic pentameter. “I was a little intimidated when I first got the script – ‘oh my God, this is all in poetry…’” winces Allen in retrospect. “I’ve never even done Shakespeare on stage. I was wondering if the whole thing could be pulled off, and certainly if I could. But after I met Sally, she kept saying, ‘think Eminem, don’t think Shakespeare.’”  “I had learnt from the five-minute film that the actors delivered the verse best, paradoxically, when they ignored it,” confirms Potter. “As if the text was just a heightened form of ordinary speech.” Rehearsals took place as the Iraq War began, lending the film even more topicality. “We talked passionately about the deeper themes of the film,” Potter adds. “The struggle to understand each other – East and West, Christian and Muslim; the desire to respect each other’s differences and to find a way of living side by side.”
Leigh Singer
Yes is on selected release now.
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