Clio Barnard on her Bradford love story Ali & Ava: ‘Joy is an act of resistance’
msn.comher house – she’s just renting it while working in London and Essex. It reminds me of Ali & Ava, her lovely new film. Every time Ali tells his friends that Ava is a teacher, she corrects him with “teaching assistant”.
Details are important to Barnard. “Right, would you like some breakfast?” She couldn’t be a warmer host. Then we sit down to talk, and suddenly she’s a bag of nerves.
She loses her words, apologises for going blank, and looks to her producer Tracy O’Riordan for support. She eyes my recorder enviously. “I’d much rather be the person with the tape machine on the table asking you questions. ” She pauses. “I’m quite a shy person, Simon. ”Barnard is also one of Britain’s most talented and original directors, largely responsible for putting Bradford on the movie map.
All four of her films have been set in Yorkshire, three in Bradford. On the surface, the Bradford films are very different. The Arbor is an experimental docudrama about the life of playwright Andrea Dunbar (best known for Rita, Sue and Bob Too), who grew up on a tough estate, mothered three children with three fathers by her early 20s, was undone by addiction, and died of a brain haemorrhage at 29.
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