Justine 1976

Amongst the more obscure films the BFI have funded was Tanya's cinematic debut. Playing the part of the servant girl Rosalie, she delivered a very long speech in the 1976 adaptation of 'Justine' directed by Stewart Mackinnon. This should not be confused with the 1977 version starring Koo Stark or anything by Jess Franco.

Barely seen since the premiere at the Notting Hill Gate Cinema, it's now on the BFI player. Many listings note that until now it was practically impossible to find.

It's a film seemingly intent on breaking every cinematic rule. However it is quite affecting. The static camera and careless framing forces your attention to listen to the dialogue which is delivered mostly by non-actors like Tanya, often with their back to the camera. The cinematic language employed by the filmmaker is so alien it challenges the viewer to pay attention and yet it cares not a jot for their indifference. But if they do; they may be appalled at the cruelty and erudition of the arguments in De Sade's text for his libertine behaviour and, put rather well, for his atheism. Tanya's scenes are followed by a long speech from the Marquis De Sade (but it's all quite confusing who is who) making quite a convincing (though immoral) argument for murdering and raping one's children.  It's a very odd film indeed. 

From Time Out Film Guide:

"Who nowadays reads de Sade? His precise, logical catalogues of moral and sexual behaviour belong to a vanished time with a vanished language. If de Sade lives, it's through his present-day interpreters: de Beauvoir, Barthes, Pasolini. And the Film Work Group, whose Justine is an isolated and very honourable attempt to bring an important strain in contemporary European thinking into British consciousness. The film comprises a series of non-dramatic tableaux, representing

incidents from the first third of the book: although the period trappings are all there, there's no attempt to 'involve' the audience by creating a 'plausible' historical reality. Instead, the visual tableaux and long speeches set out to present de Sade's book in a form that modern viewers can broach and try to come to terms with. No one could pretend that it's a complete success, but its challenge is real."

The film's director Stewart Mackinnon is a very interesting artist who started as an illustrator and got noticed for his work in 60's magazines such as Oz whilst still a student at the RCA. Here's a really in-depth profile  

https://designobserver.com/feature/stewart-mackinnon-ruptured-and-remade/26288

No one remembers how Tanya got connected with this but it may have been the filmmaker Sally Potter, whose father was a friend of her father. Tanya had little ambition to be a show-off for the camera but she looked the part. Her involvement in this production entailed being fitted in painful corsets by the costumer designer, Phoebe De Gaye who later did 'Killing Eve'.

We don't recall if any teachers asked Tanya "what did you do in your summer holidays?" but one can imagine the reaction if she had said "I made a movie about the Marquis de Sade..." Tanya worked hard at memorising her speech, but she admitted she cringed when she realised how precisely the microphone emphasised that she couldn't pronounce ‘r's; so she sounded weally, weally posh.

Stewart Mackinnon is still working in films as a highly respected producer. The title role in Justine was played by Alison Hughes who later pops up in Coronation Street but she was also in the cult classic The Wicker Man. She and the presence of the actor/director legend Ken Campbell must give Tanya a low 'Bacon Number' to practically any British actor.

Its obscurity is so great that you find any reviews of it except for Time Out. Even the BFI house organ Sight & Sound (Winter 1976) only mentions it in passing comment on a wave of avant-garde films; 

"...a feature like Justine suggests that pre-production discussions were probably a lot more interesting than anything which turns up on the screen, the ambitiousness of such an enterprise seems so admirable in the teeth of such indifference that the mere fact of its existence is somewhat awe-inspiring..."

An online reviewer called Ereck commended it on Letterboxed:

"A challenging film— interestingly so to my mind— in what it attends to (Sade’s philosophizing but also costumes and locations which are astonishing in their historical accuracy) and what it refuses (showing anything exciting or titillating and following any film grammar that facilitates an audience’s giving themselves up to the spectacle or narrative or both). Intellectually, aesthetically, historically, these choices make for a viewing experience at once constrained and dynamic, resonating intensely with the script’s discussions of libertinism, virtue, law, nature, and the (in)significance of human life."

It'll set you back £3.50 to watch it on the BFI player. It inexplicably ends a minute before the print actually did though. 

https://player.bfi.org.uk/rentals/film/watch-justine-1976-online

Alison Hughes - The Wicker Man

Other glimpses of Tanya, myself and other members of our family can be seen in the 1973 educational film Medieval Society directed by W. Hugh Baddley which explains the structure of society and the occupations of people in Medieval Europe about the year 1350. We also appear in another Gateway Production:  'Understanding Shakespeare: His sources' which was filmed 1971 in West Stow, Suffolk, at several National Trust properties, Laycock and a Globe Theatre recreated inside St. George's Church Tufnell Park long before Sam Wanamaker did it. This film was also directed by W. Hugh Baddley and George Murcell. Tanya recalled to me she didn't escape being recognised when these films were screened in her school.

Later on Tanya got behind the camera as a dogsbody/driver/craft service on the all-woman production The Gold Diggers.