Grangemouth DocuShort When the Fires Stop surveys town after oil refinery’s closure

Matthew Dunsmore is a documentary filmmaker from Grangemouth whose When the Fires Stop surveys his hometown after the oil refinery’s closure. It will receive its world premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival as part of the Scottish Documentary Institute’s Bridging the Gap scheme, which gives Scotland and Northern Ireland–based filmmakers the opportunity to pitch ideas for nonfiction shorts.

SNACK spoke to Matthew about the legacy of Grangemouth, the ethics of working with archival material, and institutional disregard for working–class people and culture.

You’ve made documentaries about Grangemouth’s closure, the UCS workers (The Clyde Gods are Dead, Long Live the Workers), Palestine (Idle Complicity), and the creation of the M8 (The Many Deaths of a City). Politics recur throughout your work but do you consider yourself a political filmmaker? What politicised you and when did that enter into your filmmaking?

If you asked me ten years ago if I wanted to be a political filmmaker, my answer would have been no. But I struggled with depression for a while and something off the back of that made me question the world, like there’s something fundamentally wrong with all this.

I think every piece of art is political. Films, whether you want them to or not, say something about you and what you think about the world. Even the mainstream Hollywood films are a reflection of a society – a heteronormative, centrist/right–wing political gaze. For my undergrad I studied digital media and a lot of it was about unpacking what you see. It really helped me understand why things are made and the codes, conventions, and semiotics behind everything. All that kind of bled into how I make films.

The bottom line is that I owe a lot of why I became invested in my political beliefs to my friends. Some of my best friends, and their art, are very political. It’s just being around the right people.

Which films and filmmakers are you influenced by?

Lots of political filmmakers inspired Clyde Gods, like Patrick Keiller who made the Robinson trilogy. John Akomfrah was absolutely a big influence – we studied him on my Master’s degree and went to see his GOMA exhibition. I’m just fascinated by visual language, by the power of the image, and the power of the edit. The singular juxtaposition between two images is the closest thing to human thought.

A lot of people say it’s the closest thing to dream or to memory – I don’t fully disagree with that, but I think it’s the closest thing to the way your synapses fire when you’re talking to someone or when you’re engaging with the world. It’s the world coming at you and you’re bringing something to it as well and it’s that meeting in between.

So I love montage – I love Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, and the Russian school of silent cinema. I don’t know if he’s ever mentioned Vertov but I’d say Akomfrah definitely plays in that pool as well. Even though there are no words in Clyde Gods there is an essayistic component to it and Jessica Bardsley, an amazing feminist filmmaker, is one of the great essayistic filmmakers. 

I’m a massive fan of Terrence Davies, he’s one of the greatest. He was always political, from the heart, earnest, and wonderfully vulnerable. He put so much of himself in his films and I think that’s so bold and unflinching. He has a great understanding of time and rhythm, especially in Of Time and the City which moves me to tears.

I love Kelly Reichardt and Mark Jenkin: two very different people from different countries with different philosophies, but it’s that idea of it not needing to be the biggest thing in the world. It can be small and personal and intimate but by going down into the absolute micro you then get the macro and everything becomes so universal and poignant. That’s the kind of films I want to make; they can be small and scrappy, they can be 15 minutes in Grangemouth, but the ideas are big.

What was the impetus behind When the Fires Stop?

For as long as I’ve wanted to make films I’ve wanted to make one about Grangemouth. The amount Grangemouth contributed to the black gold rush of oil and how it morphed the town is fascinating. They tell you in filmmaking to chase the story but I need to know why I’m doing it: Why is it a film? What’s the angle? What are the unique visual or sonic things that make it a piece of cinema? 

When the unions lost and the refinery shut it was like Oh shit, that’s the film. It’s a sad lament of a town that’ll never be the same and you’re forced to watch it and sit with the discomfort. A slow cinema or contemplative film about Grangemouth and how the town’s in complete and utter limbo? I can’t explain why but it sings. The refinery is awful and spits fire into the sky and turns the landscape into an industrial hellscape but there’s also something alluring and strange and uncanny about it.

How did being from Grangemouth influence your approach?

It’s brutally hard doing something so close to home. I thought it’d be straightforward but it was one of the most vulnerable experiences of my life. I’d stand in a public area with a tripod and camera and people would come up like ‘Excuse me sir, what are you doing?’ When I told them I’d get so many responses – melancholic, nostalgic, positive and hopeful – but people were so willing to talk.

My voice is in it because people approached me while I recorded, asking me who I am – it felt wrong to ignore that and cut myself out of it. It felt like I was making a film with every single member of the town.

Were you ever tempted to do an archival treatment for When the Fires Stop, like you did for Clyde Gods?

That was the original pitch, to collide slow cinema with archival, but it felt like a betrayal of the form. Within 15 minutes I felt like it would have to be one or the other.

Archival film is really potent. The connotations of a single still frame of an archival piece are an absolute nightmare, because you want to do the original material justice but you’ve also got to expand upon it. If you’re not fully invested in it you end up with very powerful images that become kind of unruly. It’s a heavy load to make an archival film because you’ve got so many people’s expectations. 

When I was doing the montage sequence in Clyde Gods I was scared people would think that the film was treating the men like they were disposable, because I was really fracturing and cutting up their bodies. For the Grangemouth film it felt too hard and that I wasn’t experienced enough; I’m still learning.

How did the town change during and after the closure?

I’d say there’s a bigger community spirit. The refinery is just there and it’s this dying wounded animal lurking in the background. The people are determined that the town will survive without it, and I agree, but there’s a naivete in thinking the town will be the same. There’s definitely a change. The chemical refinery’s still going, the power station’s still going, but everyone in the know that I’ve spoken to says the power station’s going to be the next to go. There’s this palpable uncertainty and that’s what I wanted to express with the film. It’s like we’re at the end of something.

Were there opportunities to learn from the other five Bridging the Gap participants?

In the workshops, absolutely. You’re chucked in a room with 11 other projects and people with different backgrounds, ages, and ideas of filmmaking. Everyone pitches in front of each other at the workshops which is a real trial by fire. You learn something by watching other people come to terms with their film or figuring out what it is. 

The film I started with in the workshops is not the film that’ll be onscreen, and I think everyone else would say the same. It was a real metamorphosis. I got a big kick out of those workshops and hearing other people’s approaches and thoughts.

How did the filmmaking process compare to that of your previous films?

I’d never worked with an editor, sound designer, or colourist before. [Editor] Becky Manson was an absolute godsend, [producer] Anne Milne was an amazing sounding board, and David McAuley who did the sound design, mix, and recording was a lovely bloke who I could chat to about anything. When you’re making films by yourself you have the final say but the project never ends because you never know when to stop; with other people and ideas involved you have to let go. I love that about cinema and for someone who preaches about collectivism and collaboration, I don’t know why I’ve not done it more. I’m eternally grateful to anyone that wanted to help out.

What’s next for the film after its EIFF premiere – a Grangemouth screening, perhaps?

I was literally just speaking to SDI about doing a Grangemouth screening, it would be silly not to. We need to work out where, but I’d love it to be as accessible as possible. 

I also want to show it at the Hippodrome in Bo’ness, which is really near and dear to my heart. After lockdown they put on a screening of Cinema Paradiso and I bawled my eyes out. I’m also in talks with SDI about giving it a festival run. Maybe it’ll go somewhere, maybe it won’t, but there’s a few festivals they have in mind. And I’d love to do more community screenings.

And what’s next for you?

One of my best friends is Max Breakenridge; we’ve made two films together, one of them being Idle Complicity. We’re talking about doing some kind of documentary on the AI data centre that’s proposed to be built in Larbert and what it means for the community. We’ve arranged a shoot day in two weeks’ time and that’ll be our big test.

I’d love to do feature versions of When the Fires Stop and Clyde Gods but we’ll see, those are big projects. I love short films but the best films are about lots of things and it’s hard to say a lot within six or 15 minutes. I just want more time to say more things and to feel I’ve done a subject justice. 

Short films leave you wanting more, which is great, but there’s something in me where I feel like local Portonians will watch When the Fires Stop and feel let down because I didn’t show this or I didn’t show that. And those people aren’t wrong if they think that because I can’t show everything in 15 minutes – dear lord did I try! But you can’t. So I’d love to make a feature version of that film where it’s universal but anyone from Grangemouth could watch and be like ‘Aw I see myself’ or ‘I see my dad’.

We’re meeting directly before and round the corner from the Save our CCA protest, which you’re heading to afterwards. Any final thoughts on that?

It was heartwrenching when I saw they were looking at selling the CCA off to become a rock and roll museum. That’s terrible and needs to be stopped. But something broke me inside when I found out they were selling off anything that was inside the building to liquidators. The cultural value of the items in that building are insurmountable. 

You’re talking about a working 35mm projector that comes with an editing desk for splicing film being sold off for £1. I’m by no means one of these film purists that believes Oh, celluloid! But celluloid is part of film history and to dismiss such a piece of kit… It’s not just a machine that shows films, it’s infinitely more valuable than that and it breaks my heart that seemingly Creative Scotland doesn’t care. 

Creative Scotland are involved with funding When the Fires Stop but there’s something wrong with the arts in Scotland and Britain as a whole. It’s like we’re sleepwalking into oblivion. There’s a total lack of artists involved within these bodies and institutions and it makes no sense.

Something that upset me with Clyde Gods was how the archival material I found was labelled and described as propaganda for the empire or the monarchy. ‘The Queen Elizabeth sails and it’s a rousing success’ – but nothing about the tens of thousands of Glaswegians that showed up to watch it sail. 

Where’s the mention of them? Where’s the mention of it being made in the UCS docks? It was just that it was made by and for the empire, this ghostly figure that looms over what we’ve done, and I wanted to take it back and recontextualise it.

The siren wailing out at the end is a warning: Look what’s happening! Look what they’re telling you about your culture! What do you want to say about that? Are you okay with this? Do you want this to continue? Do you want it to die? Do you want it to live on and do you want it to be remembered by the people who should be remembering it?

When The Fires Stop screens as part of Bridging the Gap Shorts at The Cameo on Tuesday 18th August and Cineworld on Wednesday 19th August