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Talking to Asif Kapadia can feel like talking to an obsessive; someone so fascinated by one thing that they have not only consumed all they could about their subject, but sworn to preserve the truth about them, too. That subject is Amy Winehouse. That truth is the complicated conjunction of circumstance and agency that led the singer to die from alcohol intoxication at the age of 27.

"There's a point in the process where you can start correcting your interviewees because you know the story now. I know it," he says. "I know when someone's telling me something true and when they're making it up. I know when they're putting themselves in her life. Or, I'll start saying to people who say they met Amy: 'I don't think you really met Amy. The person you describe, that's not Amy, by that point she'd changed and I don't know what you're talking about.'"

A 43-year-old Londoner, Kapadia is the man behind Amy, a documentary that chronicles Winehouse's tragic decline from bright-eyed prodigy to doomed tabloid obsession. Assembled from 100 interviews and incorporating 20 months of editing in a process that took three years in total, the film presents what feels like a true version of events. It is also incredibly moving.

The film has already been the subject of controversy, particularly with Winehouse's father, Mitch, who told the film-makers they were "a disgrace" and believes the film is "trying to portray me in the worst possible light". He also claims that interviews he gave for the film were edited, specifically those regarding what is now perceived as a turning point in Amy's life - an attempt to send her to rehab in 2005 to deal with her drinking. The attempt failed and became the material for Amy's biggest song. The film claims, like the song, that Amy didn't go to rehab only on the say-so of her father. Mitch says he only thought Amy shouldn't go to rehab "at that time". He claims that those three words were edited from his interview.

"He says that quite a lot, I think," sighs Kapadia, who doesn't use Mitch's name once during our interview. "I interviewed him twice. The first time he didn't say 'at the time'. But the story is in the present. The lyrics of her song don't say 'at the time': 'Daddy says I'm fine, at the time,' it doesn't say that. When Amy writes something down [in song] it's based on a real experience. That whole incident happened exactly the way [it's described in the song]. Everyone involved admits that's exactly how it happened."

Kapadia came to fame as the director of Senna, another study of a talented but tragic figure, the racing driver Ayrton Senna. The film used an innovative style Kapadia sometimes likes to call "true fiction". Constructed almost entirely from archive footage, the story was told without any guiding voiceover, a weirdly unheard-of break with convention in the documentary format. Senna was also edited to feel like a drama, every moment put in service to the story. As it unfolded, the film grew from a chronicle of a sporting life into a study in ambition, bravery and - again - obsession. It went on to become a touchstone for other film-makers and a driver of the boom in cinematic documentary. For a while, conversations across the country began: 'I'm not into motor racing but..."

The success of Senna led directly into Amy, thanks in part to Nick Shymansky, who had been having just that conversation with his girlfriend. It was the summer of 2011, it was raining, so the couple had ducked into a west London cinema. They loved the film they saw, despite not loving motor racing, and the format also inspired an idea in Shymansky. He had been Amy Winehouse's first manager and was very much of the mind that someone should tell her story. Then, a few weeks later, Amy died.

By 2012, Kapadia had been approached by Universal, Winehouse's label, and invited to make a "warts and all" documentary, with full access to her back catalogue. Getting people to open up about her life, however, was to prove a different challenge. "There was no go-to person who knew Amy's story, that's what I found very early on," he says. "There's no definitive book. She just seemed to have a lot of people in different compartments. That's what I started to find with the people I spoke to. And no one liked each other, they were all arguing, there was a lot of tension around her, always." The first door that opened was with Nick. "When I called him, he said it was too soon, to leave her alone, let her rest in peace. But he told me the story [about Senna]. He said: 'I'll meet you, but I'm not interested.'"

The pair eventually met in a Soho editing suite. On the wall, Kapadia and his editor Chris King had assembled a collage that resembled something from CSI or Homeland; a massive, interlocking mural telling the story of Amy's life as they knew it. It struck Nick as being more effort than anyone had previously made in understanding what had happened to her. And so he began to talk.

"I had no idea what this film was..." says Kapadia. "I had no thesis, I had no plan. I had the idea of doing a documentary but it's all controlled, because I know what the beginning and the middle and the end is but if it changes I'm going to go with it and find a way to rewrite it. This was my research. But Nick just started to talk and talk. He spoke for five hours without thinking about it. He then said that wasn't the half of it and we talked again. I probably recorded 15 hours but we would speak non-stop off the record and on email. No one had ever heard of this guy, but he had this huge story. Then he opened his laptop and said, 'I've got these videos that I shot,' and there's all of the opening of the film."

The first section of Amy shows her as a teenager. Someone at once both precocious and diffident, she is eager to please but also to subvert. Shymansky's footage was shot on a Mini DV camera and usually involves him cajoling Amy into playing up. She doesn't want to perform, she hides her face behind a pillow, she's trying to sleep. But when she's eventually persuaded to play, she looks down the camera and you feel the charisma burn its way right through you.

As Amy's story develops, so the audience watching her grows larger. From Shymansky talking one-to-one to the global audience that pored over YouTube footage of Amy's final, chaotic concert in Belgrade, Serbia. Amy, says Kapadia, was born at the wrong time, caught on the cusp of an analogue and a digital world where notions of privacy were changing rapidly. "So there's Nick talking to her and she's looking straight into the camera. She's talking to us, obviously, we become Nick. Then it goes on to TV cameras and we're the audience. Then it gets darker and darker and it's the paparazzi footage, and then there's a point in St Lucia [in 2011] where she literally points at the camera and we're caught out, we look away. I thought that was the most interesting thing, how the audience changed from Nick saying, 'Go on give us a little flash it's only us' in the car to the paps going, 'Come on, cheer up...'"

The idea of Amy as the object of our attention is central to the film. It's difficult to watch without feeling in some way guilty, responsible in however small a way, for helping to push a vulnerable person into a spiral that ultimately claimed her life. Kapadia says many Londoners drifted in and out of Amy's world, drinking in the boozy culture of Camden Town, assuming a vicarious glamour, then going home (this includes Kapadia himself: "I keep on expecting to pop up in the background", he says).

Then there's the journalists, like me, who spent the years of 2007-9 writing up every drunken fight she got involved in, every bizarre late-night trip to the newsagents. After watching Amy, the first thing I did was to Google my name and hers looking to see if I'd indulged in the mockery that is caught in the film; Graham Norton explaining to Jackie Chan in 2008, "Amy Winehouse, now she's a mad person." I found that I had not, that I was mocking the mockery. "A number of journalists have said that," Kapadia smiles. "They say: 'It's fine, I was just commenting on everyone else.' No one's sure, and not just journalists. It's interesting, isn't it, because everyone did it. Everyone's seen [the concert in] Serbia. How did we see Serbia? We looked it up, we shared it."

Amy is a film that makes you feel culpable, but it also stirs up waves of sympathy, of a desire to protect her and, also, an anger at those in her life who - you feel - could have done so much more to save her. This extends to pretty much everyone with whom she had a professional relationship (oh yes, and Blake Fielder-Civil). "It brought out the worst of a lot of people in her life," says Kapadia. "If one looks carefully, there are lots of people who make lots of decisions or who were aware of one thing - whether it was the drinking, the bulimia, or the drugs - and nobody stopped it. That's what the film is really about. It's pretty heavy. You can't quite imagine what it's like when they're in the film. To go through it all again, it's really tough. There's certain people who just can't watch the second half.

"But the second half is where most of the audience come on board," he continues. "It's not just about her any more, it's about us. It's about the city, it's about the media, it's about everything, people who have taken this in, enjoying, laughing at her. There's a line I get a lot now when a certain person keeps saying stuff about me: 'Well, it's all right, isn't it? All publicity is good publicity.' Well, I'm not sure it is..."

This article was amended on 27 June and 29 June 2015. An earlier version said Amy Winehouse's final concert was in Sarajevo, Serbia; the location was Belgrade, Serbia. The article was also amended to correct a reference to Nick Shymansky's "new wife"; the marriage took place after Amy Winehouse died.

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Asif Kapadia on Amy: 'The drinking, the bulimia, the drugs - nobody stopped it'

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Talking to Asif Kapadia can feel like talking to an obsessive; someone so fascinated by one thing that they have not only consumed all they could about their subject, but sworn to preserve the truth about them, too. That subject is Amy Winehouse.

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Damien Chazelle likes jazz music. But more than blaming his musical obsession for La La Land, I suppose I can blame Carl Van Vechten. It is, after all, Van Vechten's 1926 novel Nigger Heaven that fueled white interest in the Harlem Renaissance and led to the gentrification of the neighborhood's nightclubs and brownstones. White interest in Harlem and jazz music became widespread and likely indirectly led to Chazelle's father's interest in jazz. After a November screening of La La Land, Chazelle regaled a crowd at the Chateau Marmont with a story about how his father influenced his love for the genre: "He was a jazz obsessive and made sure that I listened to it. ... I love jazz and I grew up playing jazz drums, so it's always been the music I've felt most connected to."

Chazelle's first film, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, stars a jazz trumpeter. His second film, Whiplash, stars Miles Teller as an ambitious drummer who's obsessed with jazz. His third, La La Land, stars Ryan Gosling as a man who wants to resuscitate jazz music in Los Angeles like it's Bessie Smith slowly gasping her last breaths outside a Mississippi "whites only" hospital. Gosling isn't just obsessed with jazz, he's convinced that the genre is on its last legs and it's his sole purpose in life to restore it to glory.

The wayward side effect of casting Gosling as this jazz whisperer is that La La Land becomes a Trojan horse white-savior film. Much like Matt Damon with ancient China in The Great Wall or Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, in La La Land, the fate of a minority group depends on the efforts of a well-intentioned white man: Gosling's character wants to play freestyle jazz instead of the Christmas jingles he's been hired to perform because, damn it, if the people can't hear real jazz, then it's going to cease to exist.

Gosling and Emma Stone's love story begins with her admiration of his piano skills, which leads to Gosling introducing her to real jazz music, not that Muzak that she hears in elevators on the way to her auditions in Hollywood. This courtship takes them to a jazz club where Stone and Gosling dance to the inviting strumming of neo-noir jazz strings. Inexplicably, the black people in the nightclub are absolutely mesmerized by Gosling and Stone's jitterbugging. Gosling is even approached by John Legend, portraying a jazz musician with a very successful band who begs him to join because no one is as gifted at tickling the ivories as Gosling and his pearly white hands.

If this sounds exceptionally nitpicky, my gripe certainly isn't eating me alive in a season populated by such great films as Moonlight, Hidden Figures, and Fences. But you should also know that La La Land opens with a stunning and visually masterful dance sequence sung by an incredibly diverse group of Los Angeles denizens - but after the song concludes, we immediately cut to Stone in her car on the way to an audition and her love story with Gosling begins when he honks his horn at her on the freeway. Those people of color who gave it their all in the opening sequence, perhaps to remind Oscar voters of that Hamilton musical they love so much, are quickly whisked away so the Caucasian sing-along can begin. It's hard to be upset when the whiplash (yeah, whiplash) is so immediate. Frankly, it's fucking hilarious.

At one point in the film, Gosling grouses over the fact that no one understands what real jazz music is and that he'd feel like a sellout playing in Legend's band. He understands so much that he doesn't bother to pay his bills; he'd rather play vinyl in his apartment and throw away the increasing stack of mail. Legend tells Gosling that jazz was innovative in its time, so if he refuses to reinvent jazz in the present, then he's really not living up to the spirit of the genre. Gosling agrees, until he doesn't, and eventually opens up his own jazz club that's wildly successful and gains him a black apprentice who's pretty good on the piano himself, but not too good, otherwise he'd own Gosling's club himself! The nightclub audience laughs at this joke, but in the film audience, it lands with a thud, because you know what? If you're gonna make a film about an artist staying true to the roots of jazz against the odds and against modern reinventions of the genre (from white musicians like, say, Mayer Hawthorne), you'd think that artist would be black.

Chazelle's aforementioned first film, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, actually stars a black man (Jason Palmer) and a Latina woman (Desiree Garcia). But that was the debut indie film of a Harvard graduate, not a studio film with a $30 million budget. Why tell the story more authentically when you can just try to recreate Gosling and Stone's film chemistry (presumably from Crazy, Stupid, Love and not the flop Gangster Squad)? According to Variety, Chazelle spoke to Michael B. Jordan about portraying Gosling's role at one point, but that possibility imagines Lionsgate either producing an Oscar-contending film about two black people struggling through the world of jazz music rather than slavery or Jordan courting a white actress for a modern update of Save the Last Dance. Both scenarios seem implausible. An advertisement for Van Vechten's 1926 novel in The New Yorker once asked, "Why go to Harlem cabarets when you can read Nigger Heaven?" Perhaps now you could just watch La La Land.

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Damien Chazelle likes jazz music. But more than blaming his musical obsession for La La Land, I suppose I can blame Carl Van Vechten. It is, after all, Van Vechten's 1926 novel Nigger Heaven that fueled white interest in the Harlem Renaissance and led to the gentrification of the neighborhood's nightclubs and brownstones.

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Given that the general marginalization of my work has continued in the UK in various quarters over the years, I am very pleased that Tate Modern is now showing a selection of my films, linked to its exhibition of works by the Norwegian expressionist painter Edvard Munch.

A CD-Rom in the form of a lexicon that I hope to make available next year will detail aspects of the media crisis that I can only introduce briefly here.

When I use the word 'media' here, I am referring to the mass audiovisual media (MAVM), and 'crisis' - the vast and complex problem that has been growing ever since the nascent Hollywood cinema first turned to entertainment and commerce, rather than genuine communication, as its guiding principles. This decision necessitated the rapid development of a highly structured audiovisual language form - which I refer to as the 'Monoform' - to lock mass audiences into their seats.

The Monoform combines the traditional tools of the filmmaker (script and storyboard, camera framing, lighting, editing, music, sound effects, narration, etc.) into a particular process of fast-paced, monolinear narrative. It uses these filmic devices to maintain a power over the audience via a series of constantly changing impacts.

Given that it has been taught as standard practice to many generations of neophyte filmmakers, TV journalists, and students in thousands of institutions around the planet - and given the enforced lack of critical debate within the MAVM on the subject - it is little wonder that the ideology of the Monoform has now become a universal doxa (including for the public), and the only accepted way to produce and receive films and TV programmes.

It is ironic that what we call 'the magic of the cinema' usually refers to this standardised form, rather than to the true magic and democratic potential of the cinema (and even, I would venture to say, of television). We ignore the fact that the Monoform is but one of many different forms and processes that could be used in the cinema and on television. We ignore, refuse to develop, or marginalize onto the shelves of specialist film festivals and distributors alternative audiovisual forms that could allow the public to interact in a more open and pluralistic manner with the MAVM.

The subterranean process of the Monoform, its reliance on speed, fragmentation and hierarchical structures, the deceptive illusion of 'reality' it imparts - whether on TV or in so-called 'documentary' or 'fiction' films' - has created over the years an increasingly powerful tool of global mass manipulation, with long-ranging social and political consequences.

The many complex psychological effects of the Monoform, aligned with the direct consequences of the MAVM's promulgation of growth and the consumer society, could also explain our continuing inertia in the face of environmental disaster. I began to make amateur films in 1956, and joined the BBC in 1963. As an apprentice filmmaker I was taught that one must use the standard cinematic form in order to have an impact on the audience. And at the BBC we were also constantly subject to the notions of 'objectivity' and 'impartiality'. It was not until the mid-1970s, when I worked with students at Columbia University (NY), deconstructing TV news broadcasts and historical 'docudramas', that the repetitious and decidedly non-objective aspect of the Monoform became evident.

Does this standardised language form exist in my own work?

In the films that I made prior to Columbia University - Culloden, The War Game, , The Gladiators, Punishment Park, Edvard Munch - I tried to challenge the concept of 'media objectivity', for it always seemed suspect to me, even before I became aware of the existence of the Monoform.

My aim in making films that appear to be 'real' has been to confront the carefully cultivated myth of 'documentary reality', in an effort to assist the public to re-examine many of the central premises behind the cinema and television. Premises that of course extend to works of 'fiction', which often hide their hierarchical (and commercial) ideologies behind the mantle of entertainment and 'a good tale'.

However, and in reply to my own question, I do not wish to imply that there is nothing authoritarian or manipulative in my own work, especially in the films I made prior to the mid-1970s, which include many of the trappings of the Monoform - rapid editing that does not leave time for reflection, shock-cuts to impact on the audience, etc. It has to be said that these and other elements of the Monoform exist in my films alongside my attempts to subvert the notion of 'objective reality'.

Most filmmakers today regularly use the Monoform, either from force of habit, or because they have been pressured, or because they enjoy doing so. Certainly, the history of the cinema shows us important examples of films using the Monoform, which have also developed internal elements (acting, photography, a slower rhythm, the scenario itself) to overcome the strictures of its standardisation. I would like to emphasise again that the Monoform is one audiovisual language among many others. The problem remains our refusal to debate the global issues resulting from the enforced imposition of the Monoform at the cost of nearly all alternative forms.

My last three films, The Journey, The Freethinker, , while hardly free of problems, have all attempted - in their use of time, space and alternative structures - to counter the Monoform. In the UK, two of these films have been screened only once in the past 20 years, and none of them are distributed there.

In reference to Edvard Munch and the various issues raised in this statement - I have very special feelings for this film, which is certainly the most intimate I have ever made. It was after my first encounter with the art and the anguish of this great Norwegian painter that I attempted to formulate a personal audiovisual expression that might somehow challenge the hierarchy of the contemporary media.

Including in Edvard Munch, I have always worked directly with the public in my films, incorporating their presence, feelings and opinions into the fabric of the period of history (or particular subject) that I was dealing with. I regard this interaction with the public as one of the most important threads in my work. The MAVM, on the other hand, seem to share a fear of the public, and hence need hierarcharical language forms to keep audiences subservient to 'the story'.

It is often said that I am a 'political' filmmaker - a notion that is sometimes used to deny the existence of any filmic creativity in my work. But I believe that all audiovisual creativity is political - and vice-versa.

It is also said that I am 'vague' as to alternatives to the Monoform. But this presumes that I must define a specific response to this problem, rather than encourage a multiplicity of audiovisual processes and forms to grow from the alchemy of a pluralistic exchange between filmmakers and the public.

With all respect, I did not create the 'Brave New World' that we are plunging into. I happen to believe, more so than ever, that the fractured, standardised, hyper-speedy audiovisual overload of the MAVM (now also via the Internet) is a problem impacting every level of global society. I believe that I have a right to express this opinion, and I sincerely regret that it is still considered 'paranoid', 'harsh' or 'one-sided' of me to use my work to encourage a critical public debate on these issues.

There were many reasons for my feelings of affinity with Edvard Munch: the complex interweaving of past and present in his work, his boundary-breaking painterly form, the manner in which his protagonists stare directly at the viewer, the marginalization of his work, and the intensity of his feelings regarding relationships between men and women, children and family. One of Munch's icon paintings, first painted in 1893, relates the anguish that he felt at seeing a blood-red sunset over the Oslo fjord, which he called a 'great shriek in nature'. We hear this cry today, and we ignore it at our peril.

Peter Watkins
Felletin, France
September 2012

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the media crisis: a perspective by peter watkins

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The Media Crisis: A Perspective by Peter Watkins | Tate

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Given that the general marginalization of my work has continued in the UK in various quarters over the years, I am very pleased that Tate Modern is now showing a selection of my films, linked to its exhibition of works by the Norwegian expressionist painter Edvard Munch.

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Why this might not seem so easy

Kim Longinotto 's subtle observational style and potent subject matter - often focusing on women facing very challenging circumstances - have won her many admirers, but she lacks the widespread recognition of some of her better known peers including fellow documentarist and friend, Nick Broomfield.

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This may be partly down to her unobtrusive style of filmmaking: scenes unfold apparently at their own pace, and she does not appear in front of the camera as does Broomfield, though occasionally her voice can be heard off screen. The gentle pacing of her films is in contrast with the often tough subject matter - including child abuse and female genital mutilation - and Longinotto skilfully draws the viewer into unfamiliar communities around the world. As she put it herself:

"I want to make films which create a situation where the audience gets close to another individual, often from a completely different background, and feel a shock of understanding. I want the whole experience to be a strong and emotional one."

In her films powerful stories are revealed amid often complex events, which require a little patience on the part of the viewer to adapt to the lack of easy explanation and difficult questions that her films raise - but inevitably the audience becomes immersed in the stories she depicts.

Longinotto's films cover an eclectic range of people from different countries - including Iran, USA, Japan and UK - and her sympathetic curiosity about diverse communities is reminiscent of the globetrotting programmes of Louis Theroux (who, like Broomfield, also features very visibly in his films). Her work, though, has been trickier to view - seen on the festival circuit and then often tucked away in late night slots on television.

The best place to start - Divorce Iranian Style

Divorce Iranian Style (1998) characteristically focuses on determined women facing nigh on impossible circumstances. It's based in a family court in Tehran dealing with marital disputes. The title of the film neatly illustrates Longinotto's talent for getting behind the stereotypes of different societies around the world - in this case confounding the expectations of audiences in English-speaking countries about the lack of recourse for women in Iran to seek divorce.

Four women, Jamileh, Massy, Siba and Maryam, vigorously pursue their cases in front of Judge Deldar - who disapproves of divorce and assumes that women want to stay in their marriage. Longinotto is her own camerawoman and films the vocal and engaging women, whose vivid personalities are quickly conveyed, together with brief explanation of their circumstances, and the audience is soon caught up in their struggles.

There are splashes of warm humour across all Longinotto's films. In a remarkable star turn in Divorce Iranian Style the court secretary's charismatic young daughter, Paniz, who looks all of about seven years old - delivers a pitch perfect performance in the judge's chair when he is absent - addressing an imaginary bullying husband - and pronouncing on his uselessness with panache and pointed one liners. She later declares her intention not to marry herself.

What to watch next

Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go (2008) was filmed in a world almost as unfamiliar to most UK audiences as Iranian divorce courts - though much closer to home - in the Mulberry Bush School in Oxfordshire, a residential school for children with behavioural difficulties who have been excluded from mainstream schools.

Longinotto plunges us into the stories of four boys aged eight and nine. In sometimes uncomfortably long scenes we see each boy's disruptive and sometimes violent behaviour, and the patient skill of the teachers who restrain and calm them. Longinotto allows the audience to tease out the stories themselves as the boys gradually share details of their harrowing childhoods, with contributions from their carers and families. It's moving and powerful to see the effect of the teachers' encouragement in enabling the boys to understand the causes and effects of their behaviour - and indirectly allow the viewer to share this growing awareness.

Rough Aunties (2009) also looks at how society supports - or not - vulnerable children, this time in South Africa, where a group of women fight to bring child abusers to justice. Two of them speak, during the course of one raucous conversation between themselves, of how they "used to be very quiet" but after joining the group, they became loud and sweary (though not in front of the children...), or "rough aunties" as they put it.

The women support each other through traumas of their own, as well as being untiringly supportive of the children. It's a tribute to Longinotto's sympathetic presence that the women are so open in front of the camera. Her trademark unobtrusive style gently draws the viewer into the complex, horrifying stories of the children and women alike.

Love, or its absence, is at the heart of most of Longinotto's films - and she often speaks of her love for the people she chooses to film. It is apt that she made Love Is All (2015), drawing on footage from the collections of the BFI National Archive and the Yorkshire Film Archive. In marked contrast with her usual filmmaking style, it's entirely composed of snappily edited extracts of archive footage, encompassing a century of love and desire, all accompanied by a huskily melodious soundtrack from Richard Hawley.

Where not to start

One of Longinotto's bravest films is The Day I Will Never Forget (2002) about female genital mutilation in Kenya - and it follows some courageous young girls who challenge this tradition (also known as female circumcision) and take their parents to court. The film features a brutally graphic scene that's extremely hard to watch, showing two young girls in succession, being pinned down and circumcised. It's been described as "one of the most visceral scenes ever committed to the screen". Longinotto has spoken about "when I was filming it, I felt really nasty, really low. But we were there to film it. That's our job."

This approach proved effective as a campaigning tool - Longinotto has also spoken about "delegations coming to film screenings to defend the practice, and, having watched that scene, they would walk away like lambs at the end. There's no way you could watch it and defend female circumcision".

Longinotto's approach is always to extend tenderness to her subjects and invite audiences to do the same, but at the same time she does not shy away from showing the brutality of the worlds she depicts.

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Kim Longinotto 's subtle observational style and potent subject matter - often focusing on women facing very challenging circumstances - have won her many admirers, but she lacks the widespread recognition of some of her better known peers including fellow documentarist and friend, Nick Broomfield.

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A recent Saturday Night Live skit depicts two street-tough cops yelling at a handcuffed man they just arrested because he didn't think was great. "It dragged in the middle," he complains. "You sick son of a bitch!" one cop barks. "You disgust me!" This pretty much distills the rift in American pop culture that is nearly as contentious as the rift in American politics. As someone who finds La La Land bold, daring and deserving of all its critical and financial success, I can also admit that there are a few elements that warrant closer examination, particularly regarding its portrayal of jazz, romance and people of color. In fact, the better a work of art is, the more we must dissect it, because now we're not just measuring Rotten Tomatoes popularity or boffo box office, we're assessing its proper place in our cultural canon.

No, I don't think the film needs more black people. Writer-director Damien Chazelle should tell the story as he sees fits with whatever ethnic arrangement he desires. However, it is fair to question his color wheel when it involves certain historical elements - such as jazz. As an aficionado with over 5,000 jazz albums and having had my own jazz label, Cranberry Records, I'm happy whenever jazz takes center stage in a story, as it did in Miles Ahead, Bird, Round Midnight and Mo' Better Blues. Jazz is a uniquely African-American music form born in New Orleans and raised in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. Sure, I would have loved to see a film like La La Land years ago starring singer-dancer Gregory Hines, the master of improvisational tap dance whose tapping could sound like a jazz drummer. Having said that, I'm still delighted to see Ryan Gosling play a man (Sebastian) devoted to the artistry of traditional jazz. But I'm also disturbed to see the one major black character, Keith (John Legend), portrayed as the musical sellout who, as Sebastian sees it, has corrupted jazz into a diluted pop pablum.

Wait just a minute!

The white guy wants to preserve the black roots of jazz while the black guy is the sellout? This could be a deliberate ironic twist, but if it is, it's a distasteful one for African-Americans. One legitimate complaint that marginalized people (women, people of color, Muslims, the LGBT community, etc.) have had about Hollywood in the past is that when they were portrayed, it was done in a negative way. The ditzy blonde, the Muslim terrorist, the gay predator are all familiar stereotypes from years of TV and movies. So much has been done in recent years to overcome those debasing images, but we still have to be careful. It's not that a black man can't be the sellout or the drug dealer, it's just that they shouldn't be if they're the only prominent black character in the story. Whether it's intentional or unintentional, that sends a bigoted message rippling through our society.

I'm equally interested in how the film portrays romance, because pop culture (movies, TV, books, music) is the major source of information about romantic relationships for our youth. That's where they learn about what to look for in a mate, what a relationship should look like, how to treat each other. So when we throw a beloved film like La La Land on the self-help shelf of love, we need to understand just what the film is saying and whether that's accurate or even healthy. At first, the story follows the traditional heterosexual romantic-comedy formula of boy-meets-girl, and they fall in love. This is followed by boy-loses-girl, due to either ego (self-absorption) or a corrupt relative or official (meddling parent, jealous friend, hostile boss). The third part is that the lovers prove they are worthy of love by overcoming their ego and relative issues to come together in the end. But La La Land ends with the self-absorbed egos having irrevocably wedged the lovers apart, and neither is mature enough to overcome it. That's pretty realistic, since so many relationships crash and burn there.

The problem comes when we romanticize the crash and burn. Then the drama of the breakup seems more fulfilling than the prospect of actual romance, which can then seem mundane in the long run. Now a continual series of melodramatic breakups makes a person seem more tragically edgy and becomes justification for why they can't find real love.

Why do Sebastian and Mia break up? Because they are both obsessed with their careers and prefer pursuing those to pursuing each other. This is a similar theme to that in Chazelle's brilliant previous film, Whiplash, in which Andrew (Miles Teller) dumps his supportive girlfriend in order to fully immerse himself in his jazz drumming. Clearly, the only love interest he has is his abusive but equally obsessive teacher (J.K. Simmons). By the end, we realize Andrew is on the path to being a great drummer, but a life that is just as alienated - and alienating - as his teacher's. Onscreen, their final scene in which they perform to the upper heights of their art seems heroically cool, but after the show, all they have is a hot plate and cable TV.

Both films might be cautionary tales to warn against the single-minded pursuit of self-aggrandizing dreams. After all, Mia gets her movie star career, but seems locked in a perfectly pleasant but passionless marriage. Sebastian gets his jazz club, but is alone and regretful about what might have been with Mia. At the end, they smile wistfully at each other and the lives they might have had. Is the film encouraging us to weigh the value of our dreams against the reality of love? Is it saying that, although the sacrifice of a relationship or two is sad, it's a small price to pay to follow our dreams? Seems to be. In the song "The Audition (The Fools Who Dream)," Mia sings of her artist aunt who inspires her: "A bit of madness is key / To give us to color to see / Who knows where it will lead us? / And that's why they need us." The problem with that is it implies we can't have both: We can't follow our dreams and have a decent relationship. The fire of one consumes the other.

As Sportin' Life from Porgy and Bess would say, "It ain't necessarily so."

That's where the romanticizing comes in. The whole childish doomed-romance genre celebrates personal achievement with only an obligatory sad nod toward the consequences. Mia also sings this about her aunt: "She lives in her liquor / And died with a flicker / I'll always remember the flame." Sure, you'll remember the flame because you're too blinded by your own ambition to see the real moral: She died with a flicker because she was an alcoholic burnout! Even Sebastian wonders about how accurately he sees things in "City of Stars": "City of stars / There's so much that I can't see." Starlight romanticizes whatever it illuminates.

A few weeks ago at the SAG Awards while receiving the Life Achievement Award, Lily Tomlin shared a regret, saying that when she was younger she had been "ambitious about the wrong things." In other words, just because you have a dream, it doesn't make that a sacred calling. The artist as Christ-like figure sacrificing herself to give her art to the people is a childish notion that is just bedazzling one's self-promotion. As Mr. Antolini says in The Catcher in the Rye: "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." Had Mia and Sebastian chosen to live humbly, they might have had their success - or not - and been happy together.

I'm glad we have a shining star like La La Land to add to our movie firmament. The characters are delightful and charming, the musical numbers are imaginative, the soundtrack is addicting. I know I'll be watching it again and again over the years, just as I'll be listening to the wonderful soundtrack. But every time I do, along with the immense joy, I'll have a tiny nagging feeling of, "What if?"
A version of this story first appeared in the Feb. 24 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

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onday morning in the small Essex town of Coggeshall, and in an unassuming building that used to be a laundry, a man named Barnaby is trying to sound like a horse. Trying and succeeding, uncannily. Not neighing or whinnying, just making the sound of the hooves on the ground.

In a big screen on the wall of a windowless room is an armoured knight astride a white warhorse. It's Richard III, as it happens, accompanied by a gaggle of guards, also armoured and mounted. It's a scene from The Lost King, Stephen Frears's upcoming film about the woman who, after 30 years of looking, discovered Richard's remains under a Leicester car park.

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Barnaby - Barnaby Smyth - squats in front of the screen, staring intently at it. In front of him on the floor is a square of compacted earth with a microphone pointed at it, like a heron waiting to strike. Smyth has got some vegetation handy, a few vines and autumnal leaves, but he has pushed it to the side; he doesn't need it for this scene, just the hard ground. In each hand he has spindles from the centre of rolls of old 35mm movie film, wrapped in gaffer tape.

Stepping out ... recreating the sounds of high heels on a paved street. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer

When, on the screen, King Richard turns his white courser and moves off, Barnaby hits the earth with his spindles exactly in sync with the hooves, first at an accelerating walk, then a little stumble into a canter before settling into a rhythmic gallop. Ignoring Barnaby and watching the screen, you would swear you were hearing a heavy horse galloping off across Bosworth Field, in 1485. It's perfect; the only disappointment is that Smyth is not using coconuts to make it. "Coconuts can be a bit hollow-sounding," he says. "These are just more ..." and he hits the ground with them again. More like the sound of a galloping horse, clearly.

Welcome to the weird and rather wonderful world of foley. Named after Jack Donovan Foley, who pioneered many of the techniques in the 1920s, foley is the addition of everyday sound effects to film or television in post-production - incidental sounds such as the squeak of a chair, the chink of bottles in a fridge door, the swish of clothes or a swinging handbag. And footsteps, lots of footsteps, both human and non-human. "It steers the narrative, where to look, how to feel," Smyth says. "Foley adds that focus to draw the attention of the audience."

Feet First Sound is a foley studio, and Barnaby Smyth is a foley artist and supervisor. Keith Partridge - headphoned and sitting at a big mixing desk at the back of the room - is a foley engineer. Basically, Smyth makes noises and Partridge records them and fiddles with them to make them better.

The room is an odd mix: part hi-tech modern recording studio, part junk shop. There are trays and trolleys of bottles and glasses for chinking and rattling, books and pens (although if Smyth wants to make the noise of a really nice fountain pen, he'll often use a bicycle tyre pressure gauge, which sounds heavier and classier and actually more pen-like).

These boots were made to walk in ... Smith's collections of prop shoes. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer

And there are shoes, shelf upon shelf, hundreds of them. This smart pair of brogues Smyth wore to add to Gary Oldman's steps as Churchill in Darkest Hour. They recorded in Churchill's War Rooms in Westminster, for added authenticity, as well as here in the studio. And these dowdy, black, size 10 heels are the ones he wore to dub the hurrying typists in the same film, as well as scurrying servants in Downton Abbey. A big pair of army boots? Nazis, naturally - in the BBC drama World on Fire, also the movies Suite Française and The Aftermath; they do a lot of Nazis.

The studio is Marie Kondo's worst nightmare: nothing is thrown away

If this room is a junk shop, then the one next door is full-on car boot sale - a huge space, jam-packed full of pretty much everything. There are banks of drawers labelled "medical", "belts", "sports", "police", "bones", "makeup", "gloves". He shows me how he makes the sound of a pigeons flying away by flapping a pair of leather gloves together. He did it for a recent episode of Baptiste. There are crates filled with different kinds of ground to walk on: leaves, bark, forest soil, mossy soil. Smyth shows me how to make the noise of boot on snow by twisting a pillowcase full of cornflour. You want scrunchier, more compact snow? Add dishwasher salt.

On the wall are real weapons: decommissioned rifles and machine guns, swords, axes ("We're all set for the zombie apocalypse," he says, cheerfully). On the floor are piles of old tech: telephones, keyboards, the ZX Spectrum used in Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. It's Marie Kondo's worst nightmare: nothing gets thrown away. Even the cardboard packaging that the mixing desk came in was kept. With a rubber mat on top, it made the sound of the gym floor in the boxing film Journeyman. For the punches, Smyth held a microphone in his mouth and hit himself in the stomach.

In the mix ... engineer Keith Partridge at the controls. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer

Period drama is peak foley. "It's great in terms of sound: there's so much to get our teeth into in those creaky environments." They do sometimes get to come out of the studio, to record in real stately homes. Fantasy is fun, too. They've just finished doing a series called The Wheel of Time, an adaptation of Robert Jordan's epic novels, which Amazon is hoping will be the next Game of Thrones. Lots of armour, blood and guts.

Do they do much with watermelons? "There is this presumption that we spend all day smashing up watermelons," Smyth says. But yes, they have been known to. There was a film called The Upside of Anger that had a shocking exploding-head scene and they smashed up a watermelon for that. "All the gloopy bits are brilliant for the sound of bits of brain hitting the floor and the wall. If you really need to up the ante you can get a pomegranate, slice it in half and gorge out the innards; it sounds like flesh, gooey with a bit of sinew in there. And celery is like bone crunching."

'It's just a job, I'm doing a sex scene,' says Smyth, slapping his own upper arms rhythmically

They make happier noises of the flesh, too. Smyth kisses the back of his own hand. "You get into the mood, I'm kissing whoever is on screen, I've got to think about the angle and whether I'm kissing the neck or whatever."

And it sometimes goes beyond kissing. They did a series called The Great, with Elle Fanning as Empress Catherine II and Nicholas Hoult as the Emperor Peter III, who were at it a lot. Smyth slaps his own upper arms rhythmically to give a flavour. "It's just a job, I'm doing a sex scene. You break it down - I'm going to do the skin, I'm going to do the sheets - it's an unremarkable thing."

Coconut shy ... Samuses Smyth's contraptions to show off his 'drunk horse'. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer

Right, quite enough of that. Time to get back to work, and to Bosworth in 1485. There's still plenty of foley to add to the scene. After doing Richard's horse, Smyth and Partridge need to go back through the scene several times to add the sounds of armour and reins, plus those of the other knights on the screen, their horses and standards. For the armour, Smyth wears a gauntlet (eBay, £18) which he rubs against his chain mail (an old butcher's apron), while his other hand shakes Partridge's favourite prop of all, a folding metal steamer basket. Again, he does this perfectly in time with Richard's riding movements.

Now there are more hooves to add. It can't be that hard; I need to have a go. I'll do the hooves of one of the other horses, while Smyth does some armour jangling. I'm hitting the earth with the gaffer-taped discs, trying to keep in time with the horse on the screen. I'm thinking it sounds pretty good, perhaps a tiny bit uneven, but maybe I'll get to go to the premiere, or get a credit at least ... "Not for that horse you don't," Partridge says from his desk, "that drunk horse." Smyth jumps aboard the mockery wagon. "A crazed horse, with BSE, just before it's shot ..."

Yeah, all right, I was only trying to help. I'm not sure horses even get BSE. But it's possible my horse won't make the final cut. Smyth and Partridge don't get to go to a lot of premieres, anyway. They just send off what they've done and the director and the sound director pick and choose what they want of it.

As for the viewing public, they are mostly unaware that foley even exists; that there are people like Barnaby Smyth and Keith Partridge out there, smashing up watermelons. That's OK with Smyth. "Not to be noticed is really the biggest compliment we can have."

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Inside the world of foley artists: 'Watermelons are brilliant for the sound of brains hitting the floor'

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onday morning in the small Essex town of Coggeshall, and in an unassuming building that used to be a laundry, a man named Barnaby is trying to sound like a horse. Trying and succeeding, uncannily. Not neighing or whinnying, just making the sound of the hooves on the ground.

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It's easy to laugh at the 1980s. Many people base their memories on the stuff they see in those I Love The 80s TV shows: massive VHS recorders, Atari consoles and rubbish digital watches, all shown against a backing of Now That's What I Call Music Vol 2. Then there was the way that people dressed: your mum with a deranged perm, your dad in a pair of grey leather slip-ons and your sister with a "Frankie Says Relax" T-shirt and a stack of love bites round her neck.

But my memories have more meaning than that. As a kid growing up in Uttoxeter, Staffs, it was a time of great music, brilliant fashion and a vibrant youth culture that makes today's kids look dull and unimaginative by comparison. It was also a time of massive unrest when British people were still prepared to fight for the stuff they believed in. My new film, This Is England, is about all of these things.

Set in 1983, this is the first period film I have made. A great deal of it is based on my own childhood and I tried to recreate my memoirs of being an 11-year-old kid trying to fit in. It was a time when Uttoxeter, like the rest of the country, was awash with endless different youth tribes. There were new romantics, heavy rockers, smoothies, punks, goths, skins and mod revivalists who were into the Specials and 2 Tone. Then there were those pop culture kids who came into school wearing one green sock, one pink sock and some deely boppers on their head. People often looked daft, but were genuinely committed to their chosen denomination and would wear their identities on their sleeves with immense pride. In a town as small as Uttoxeter, though, there weren't enough people for each sub culture to fill their own parties or clubs, so most weekends everyone would turn up at the same village hall disco and end up fighting.

Like most 11-year-old kids who wore jumpers with animals on, I got bullied by the older kids at school. So I looked for my own tribe to join. It was the skinhead movement that enamoured me the most. I remember seeing 10 or 15 of them at the bus shelter on my way home from school one summer night and thinking they were the most fearsome thing I had ever seen. Even though I was terrified of them, I was instantly attracted to them. To be a part of most of the other factions you had to be a little rich kid. But to be a skinhead, all you needed was a pair of jeans, some work boots, a white shirt and a shaved head. You could be transformed from a twerp into a fearsome warrior in 15 minutes. Skins appealed to me because they were like soldiers: they wore their outfits like suits of armour and demanded respect. There were playground myths that surrounded them and especially their Dr Martens boots. It was feared that a single kick from a DM boot would kill you or at the very least give you brain damage. I can remember kids refusing to fight unless the skinhead agreed to remove his fearsome boots first.

My older sister was going out with a skinhead who took me under his wing and taught me about the roots of the whole culture. He was a nice bloke who bore no relation to the stereotypical racist yob that people now associate with that time. It was him that I based the character of Woody on in the film. I learned from him that skinheads had grown out of working class English lads working side by side with west Indians in factories and shipyards in the late-60s. The black lads would take the whites to blues parties where they were exposed to ska music for the first time. Soon, Jamaican artists like Desmond Dekker, the Upsetters and Toots And The Maytals were making a living out of songs aimed directly at English white kids. This was where the whole skinhead thing came from - it was inherently multicultural. But nowadays when I tell people that I used to be a skinhead, they think I'm saying I used to be racist. My film shows how rightwing politics started to creep into skinhead culture in the 1980s and change people's perception of it. This was a time when there were three and a half million people unemployed and we were involved in a pointless war in the Falklands. When people are frustrated and disillusioned that's when you get extremist groups moving in and trying to exploit the situation. That's what the National Front did in the early-80s. Skinheads had always taken pride in being working class and English so they were easy targets for the NF who said that their identities were under threat. They cultivated a real hatred of the Asian community. In the film, Combo represents the sort of charismatic leader the NF used to turn skinheads into violent street enforcers. Suddenly, all skinheads were branded the same way. But most of the real old skins who were into the music and the clothes went on to be scooter boys to separate themselves from the racism. I always wanted This Is England to tell the truth about skinheads.

As I started to make the film, other themes started to interest me. We had a relatively small budget so we couldn't afford to recreate every last detail of the Uttoxeter of 1983. Instead, I set the scene by using archive news footage at the start and end of the film. Going though footage of the Falklands war really made me think again about the whole thing. As kids, we thought it was like going into a World Cup campaign. It was exciting and we were cheering on our lads to go and do the Argies. But the scenes of soldiers' coffins shocked and appalled me.

In many ways the country was a mess. The miners' strike was massive - they were killing scabs by throwing paving slabs from bridges onto cars. You had all the protesters and unrest at Greenham Common. But remembering all of these things made me nostalgic for a time when people were ready to stand up and say something. People cared about where the country was going. As the 1980s ended we had the poll tax riots which turned out to be the end of an era. Afterwards, it was like the nation lost its backbone. People were bought off. They were given a little bit of land, the right to buy their council house and put a little satellite dish on the front of it. They became content and lost their will to rock the boat.

The big difference between now and the period in which my film is set is our level of isolation. In 1983, people still cared about society as a whole but now they'll keep their mouth shut as long as they've got the house, the job and the car they want. If you were a kid in 1983, you wouldn't have a PlayStation to sit indoors alone with. You got your entertainment from mixing with a variety of different people. While making the film, I realised that all of my fondest childhood memories surrounded human contact: mucking about with mates or going camping. In 2007, people put less emphasis on that sort of thing and more on planning their careers and their TV viewing. As far as I'm concerned, if you're working from nine to five then coming home to watch shows that your Sky box has recorded for you while you were out, you might as well be on a fucking drip.

This Is England is a snapshot of an era and a life that seems very dated now. It's about sticking up for mates and beliefs.
The gang
This Is England's tight group of mates are stranded in a drab, east Midlands town in 1983. Devoted to sharp dressing, ska music and each other, the warmth and harmony of their gang is threatened by the arrival of Combo - an older skinhead with an angry, racist agenda.
Smell
The gang's token Boy George-alike becomes the object of young Shaun's affections. Kindly, she gives him his first kiss.
Lol
Firm but fair leader of the girl-skins and girlfriend of Woody. Also the subject of unwanted advances from the sociopathic Combo.
Shaun
An isolated 12-year-old whose dad has been killed in the Falklands War. His transformation into a skinhead offers him a whole new life of friendship, DMs and braces.
Milky
The gang's only black member becomes a target of abuse as certain members start to embrace the National Front.
Woody
A warm hearted leader who nurtures Shaun into a fully-fledged skin. He splits from the gang when Combo shows.

· This Is England is out Friday
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Few South American movies have been able to break the barrier of western popularity, with the likes of Alejandro González-Iñárritu, Pablo Larraín and Alfonso Cuarón having to take their careers to Hollywood to find considerable success. Fernando Meirelles was another such filmmaker to make this decision, though, despite taking to America and making an Oscar-winning film in the process, no film has ever reached similar levels of commercial success as his 2002 classic, City of God.

Deviating from traditional Brazilian filmmaking and the 'third cinema' movement that emerged throughout the 1960s, which pushed away the commercial ideals of Hollywood filmmaking, City of God abandoned its roots to seize a market beyond the continent. Delving into the ramshackle world of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Meirelles' thrilling drama tells the story of several characters trying to escape from the cycle of poverty and violence that plagues the land.

Its Hollywood influences come flying in the film's opening sequence as Meirelles contradicts the traditional Brazilian setting with a flashy aesthetic of stylistic camera angles and profound golden lighting. Creating an idealistic view of the Brazilian favelas that glamorises its fast pace and gun-wielding crime, the film was denounced by many across the country who disliked the film for abandoning national cinematic ideals.

Described as Latin-Americas' answer to Martin Scorsese upon its release, the film indeed shares a resemblance with the director's 1990 crime classic, Goodfellas, using similar sweeping panning shots and snappy editing in a way in which to appeal to American audiences. Such was also present in the film's accessible storytelling features, aiming toward sensationalism and romanticism as it embraced American filmmaking methods.

Presenting its narrative like a storybook made up of multiple chapters, Meirelles separates the film into manageable chunks, making it easy for mainstream audiences to keep up with the fast pace and subtitled dialogue. Though whilst it was criticised for its flashy aesthetics, the film remains a questioning analysis of the structures of power, race and class across the country, inviting the world to see the state of Brazilian poverty.

To convey the message of his sharp classic to a worldwide audience, Fernando Meirelles employs a Hollywood aesthetic to broaden the scope of City of God, without sacrificing the story or subtext. Truly, this is the film's greatest strength, as, whilst Meirelles feels like one of the fieriest dramas of the 21st century filled with authentic characters and set-pieces, it is also one layered with real-life debate and cinematic conversation.

Fueled with the very same cinematic vigour that propelled the likes of Scorsese's Goodfellas and Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction into the western zeitgeist, City of God remains a creative and astute piece of South American filmmaking 20 years on. Refusing to wilt under the volatile industry style that was rapidly changing the industry in the early 2000s, Meirelles' 2002 classic may remain his greatest movie to date.

City of God infused Brazilian ideals with a flourishing Hollywood aesthetic, demonstrating the frenetic possibilities of independent foreign cinema with a hyperactive low-budget masterpiece that radiates passionate intensity.

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