The name Audrey Amiss will be unknown to most of us. This is because until filmmaker Carol Morley, director of acclaimed films Dreams of a Life and The Falling, discovered eighty-four boxes of Amiss’ uncatalogued work when she was awarded the Wellcome Screenwriting Fellowship, Amiss had gone completely unnoticed by the British art world. Typist Artist Pirate King, Morley’s recent feature, remedies this. Based on Amiss’ life, the film is a fictional imagining of a trip Amiss takes with her psychiatric nurse, Sandra, to present her work to a gallery in Sunderland, Amiss’ birthplace and the sight of an incident that left her with severe mental health issues for the duration of her life.
While being introduced to the collections at Wellcome, Morley remembers one of the archivists telling her that they had a collection belonging to a woman who kept all of the wrappers from everything she ate. ‘I went ‘who is that person?’’ the filmmaker laughs. Eighty-four boxes and multiple meetings with Amiss’ family later, Morley knew that she had to make a feature about this forgotten artist.
With such a broad archive adapting Amiss’ life was easy, Morley says. From annotations in notebooks, to descriptions of labels (Amiss described the design on a box of Frosties as akin ‘a storm in a teacup’ ) Amiss left behind the remnants of a very textured and vivid life. ‘She just spoke to me from the other side,’ Morley says, ‘but she was completely unknown. I wanted to bring her into the world in a way that people would get to know her.’ Even Amiss’ family were unaware of the breadth of her artistic work. After her death, Morley tells me, Amiss’ niece and nephew went to clear her house, where they found roughly fifty-thousand sketches and paintings. Unsure of what to do with their aunt’s work, they at one point considered putting it all in a skip. Luckily for Morley, and now the wider public, a chance encounter led Amiss’ family to donate her archive to the Wellcome Trust, a foundation that funds and leads research in mental health care.
Brilliant character
‘I had such a brilliant character in Audrey to see me through’ the scriptwriting process, Morley says. Inspired by Amiss’ journals, which gave details of her art practice, her experience with schizophrenia and manic depression, her psychiatric nurses and her lifelong connection to her homeplace, Morley decided to bring Amiss, played with a subtle triumph by Monica Dolan, back to Sunderland in the form of a road-trip film. Sandra, Amiss’ psychiatric nurse, portrayed superbly by Kelly Macdonald, is an amalgamation, Morley says, of Amiss’ descriptions of her nurses. The film is completed by Gina McKee, whose understated yet powerful performance was inspired by a real life meeting with her character, Amiss’ younger sister Dorothy. The care with which Morley approached the adaptation of Amiss’ story extends through the sensitive performances offered by these women.
Initially, Morley tells me, she was unsure of what form the film should take. ‘At one point I thought it would be a documentary, but because Audrey had left so much behind, it felt appropriate to use her position and view of the world to tell the story.’ And so Typist Artist Pirate King, which takes its name from the job title in Amiss’ passport, was born. Blending realism with magic realism, the film gives us a stereographic insight into the mind and creativity of Amiss, the film’s tonal shifts taking their cue from her changing mental state. There is an alchemy to the film, a balance that is rare to see, especially in the case of films that deal with mental illness.
‘I do think mental illness is often misunderstood,’ Morley says, leading to misrepresentation and negative assumptions about mental health sufferers. Morley herself has close connections to the film’s themes; her father died by suicide when he was forty and her grandmother was placed in a mental hospital when Morley was about nine. ‘I grew up with an awareness of (mental illness ),’ she says, ‘but I don’t think I know anyone who hasn’t been affected by it, either personally or through a family member.’
Nuanced view
This connection has given Morley a nuanced view of the world surrounding mental disorders. Never overly critical or stereotypical, Morley’s film presents a nuanced portrait of mental health. ‘I was very conscious of representation and how you do that,’ Morley says, ‘I didn’t want to demonise one or the other, either the mental health care user or the mental health worker - it’s complicated.’ I agree; there is so much we still don’t understand about mental health. Despite its challenging subject, comedy abounds in the film. ‘Audrey herself was very funny,’ Morley says, ‘so I thought I’m not going to make something serious and kind of grim, because that wasn’t her and although she suffered with the diagnosis she had, she really did love and embrace life. Audrey was somebody who neighbours might cross the road to avoid. I wanted to make a film where it began like that but by the end you maybe wanted to be Audrey.’
The film was executive-produced by Jane Campion, a pioneer of women in film. ‘I’ve worked with (producer ) Cairo Cannon for years,’ Morley comments, when I draw attention to the fact that many of the head of department roles on the production were women. ‘When we start to look at heads of department, we’re not thinking of who, we’re thinking of the qualities. I think with most of our films, it ended up with women in really key roles and traineeships. It wasn’t like a box-ticking exercise. It was just a very organic process.’
Since its inception key roles in the film industry have been male dominated. Jane Campion herself is only the third woman to win Best Director at the Oscars. Typist, Artist, Pirate, King is in direct dialogue with this theme of women’s recognition in the arts. ‘I think it’s great to celebrate an unknown artist, but also an unknown woman artist, because women artists get so little coverage,’ Morley says. Thankfully, she adds, in the case of film, the conversation is changing with more female directors releasing debut features. ‘But you then want those women to sustain a career. That’s where the difficulty lies because making a second feature is difficult. So we want to make sure we support the debut filmmakers to go on to make more.’
Morley will host this year’s Screenwriters Masterclass at the Film Fleadh and has two pieces of advice for filmmaker’s embarking on their career: ‘Never give up on what’s true to you, because fashion shifts and changes. I think if you really go inside yourself and ask what it is you want to say, eventually it will have an outcome that is positive.’ There will be ‘no’s’ but keep going, she encourages. The other piece of advice? Find community; go to film events, meet other filmmakers in your local area. The Film Fleadh and Morley’s much anticipated masterclass are the perfect opportunity to do this. And go see Typist, Artist, Pirate, King - you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and like Audrey, you may be inspired to use your voice, no matter what the trends.
The Screenwriters masterclass takes place at The Galmont Hotel at 10am-1pm on Saturday 15 July. Morley’s latest feature film, Typist Artist Pirate King (2022 ), will have its Irish Premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh on Saturday 15th July at 5:30pm in Pálás Cinema. Tickets available via galwayfilmfleadh.com or directly at Town Hall Theatre.
