At the 72 Venice Film Festival, Lord Puttnam talked to Connect4Climate and Green Cross Italy to advance the Film4Climate initiative. He spoke about the film industry's responsibilities in tackling climate change.
He praised the 'green' initiatives across the entire industry and the fantastic range of doccumentaries which also seek to address the issue.
Finally, he spoke about his own upcoming movie, 'Arctic 30', which he hopes will engage with young people and encourage them to take action against climate change.
On the 11th September, Viet Nam News reported on David's meeting with Vietnam's Deputy Prime Minister
"Deputy Prime Minister Vu Van Ninh met with the Prime Ministerial Trade Envoy of the United Kingdom, Lord David Terence Puttnam, to discuss UK-Viet Nam relations in London on Wednesday.
Deputy PM Ninh, who is on a working trip to Europe, said the establishment of their strategic partnership is the result of effective cooperation and demonstrates their mutual trust.
He said Viet Nam would pledge to create preferential policies for British investors in hopes to boost ties with the UK in trade, investment, finance, tourism, and education.
Ninh particularly praised the UK's education sector and asked that their government work closely with Viet Nam on this.
He also expressed his hope that the Viet Nam Discovery Festival, running this weekend in London, would raise Viet Nam's visibility among the British people.
Puttnam spoke of UK Prime Minister David Cameron's visit to Viet Nam in July. He said it was very successful, but much work needs to be done to translate the visit's outcomes into action.
The UK will work hard to become one of the top 10 foreign investors in Viet Nam in the next two years, he stressed."
Following his meeting with Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Vu Van Ninh yesterday, this morning Lord Puttnam gave the keynote speech at the 2015 Vietnam Economic Forum, as the UK’s trade envoy for Vietnam.
He spoke about the important role of trust and friendship in continuing to build and strengthen the relationship between the UK and Vietnam.
The event was part of the Vietnam Discovery Week to celebrate the fifth year of Vietnam and the UK’s strategic partnership and aimed to raise Vietnam’s profile in the UK, enhancing cooperation in education, trade and investment.
On Tuesday 8th September, Lord Puttnam delivered the opening keynote speech for the Milan Expo 2015 conference on education in light of today’s rapidly changing digital landscape, ‘Youth of Today, Future of Tomorrow’.
Lord Puttnam described learning as ‘the cause and consequence of social renewal’ and spoke of his support for the digital innovation in education and the urgency for the older generation to use technology through the eyes of the younger generation.
His speech preceded the conference with educators, brands and policy makers outlining digital innovation projects in education for young people.
“The first step in solving a problem is recognizing that there is one.”- Will McAvoy, ‘The Newsroom’, 2012.
This should be extremely obvious, yet within our education system, we face a huge problem:
96% of college principals believe their institutions are preparing young people for the world of work yet only 14 % of recent college graduates agree. Less than 12% of business leaders believe that the graduates they employ have the skills they need to build their businesses.
If the gap between those who believe themselves to be doing the educating and those who believe themselves to be educated is this wide, we’re clearly doing something wrong. This is not just a gap; it’s a gulf and we need to focus on closing it.
In the UK, we have a youth unemployment rate of 18.4 %, which is, by no means the worst youth unemployment rate in EU member states, but it is not the best either. Today, too many young people find themselves looking at the world without a map, unable to gauge any sense of direction for their futures. It is our job, as educators, to start drawing that map for them and start creating a world that they can understand better.
if we were to take a teacher from their classroom in 1915 and place them in a modern-day classroom, they would still be able to deliver what we recognize to be a lesson
If we were to remove a world-class doctor from his practice in 1915 and place him in an operating theatre today in 2015, he would be completely incapable. The world of medicine has developed and advanced in the last 100 years, to the extent that it would be no longer recognizable to even the very best in medicine. However, if we were to take a teacher from their classroom in 1915 and place them in a modern-day classroom, they would still be able to deliver what we recognize to be a lesson.
My question is- how is it that these extraordinary developments have taken place in the world of medicine but remain to be seen in the world of education?
Luckily- we do have a tool, and that tool is called ‘digital’. Teachers understand and value the power of technology, and this year, there were 10 TES resources downloaded by teachers every second. Clearly, the very best teachers are using the very best technology to improve. This is not just a theory, this is a teacher led digital revolution and it incredibly overdue.
I’d like to conclude with my opening statement:
“The first step in solving a problem is recognizing that there is one.”
Now that we have established that there is a problem, our next question must be- “how are we going to solve it?”
Today, Lord Puttnam attended the Venice International Film Festival to deliver his opening statement for the high-level debate on the Digital Single Market.
Following on from his speech at the Cannes Film Festival in May, he reiterated the importance of ensuring that the proposed Digital Single Market will not have an adverse affect on creative content, warned against the industry sounding unnecessarily defensive and advocated innovative new patterns of investment.
His speech marked the start of the roundtable discussion between filmmakers and policy-makers, ‘In the context of the digital era, what are the new challenges faced by the audiovisual sector?’
This weekend, David Puttnam received a special honour at the Montreal World Film Festival and on August 31, treated the festival goers with a film masterclass.
Rather than ask David Puttnam to name the great British films he has made, the easier question could be: What great British films didn’t he have a hand in making? It may be a shorter list.
As a consequence of his film success on the other side of the pond, he is now Lord Puttnam, or Sir David. But frankly, he wishes folks would just call him David, or Puttnam.
Puttnam, who was knighted in 1995 and appointed to the British House of Lords in 1997, is being fêted by the Festival des films du monde. And most deservingly at that.
The tribute features free outdoor screenings in front of Place des Arts of some classic Puttnam productions, including Chariots of Fire, Midnight Express, Local Hero, The Mission and Robert Lepage’s Le Confessionnal.
Puttnam will also be giving a master class on film, Friday at 2 p.m. at the Imperial Cinema. And few are in a better position to discuss the subject than his Lordship.
In addition to the aforementioned films, Puttnam, who began his career in advertising, produced such fare as Mahler, Bugsy Malone, The Duellists, The Killing Fields, The Mission and Memphis Belle, among many others. His films have won 10 Oscars and 25 BAFTAs (the British Oscars).
Plus, Puttnam has taught film at various universities in the United Kingdom. And, of course, he got quite the education on American cinema when he served as chairman and CEO of Columbia Pictures in Hollywood for one turbulent year in the mid-1980s.
So, what message will Puttnam seek to impart to those partaking in his master class?
“Firstly, that film is a very important business,” says Puttnam, 74, over a cappuccino in an Old Montreal hotel lobby bar. “It’s much more than an entertainment business. It’s what frames our attitudes to the world. It’s about who we are, and it’s about how we can contribute to the world — and even how we can change it.
“Second, I will try to take people into the happenstance involved in me getting into this world. I will try to demythologize the business. I remember very well when I was a kid in north London and how (intimidated) I was by Hollywood.
“There really is no great mythology attached to the business. It’s really a question of having really good ideas, having something to say and having the guts and the persistence to follow through.”
This is not empty rhetoric. The fact is, many of Puttnam’s films have made a social and/or political impact.
“I also believe I have avoided this false paradox that in trying to make relevant films, you’re simultaneously making them not entertaining. The trick is to create genuine entertainment which carries some punch with it.”
Puttnam carried through with this philosophy, but in less familiar terrain, in producing Lepage’s Genie Award-winning mystery drama Le Confessionnal in Quebec in 1995.
“My wife had gone to see the original Lepage play at the Edinburgh festival and had been knocked out by it,” he recalls. “Since I always take her advice, I saw the play and liked it enormously. (Lepage) had it in the back of his mind about making it a movie, and weirdly I had always been a big Montgomery Clift fan. And the fact that Lepage was dramatizing the shooting of the Hitchcock film I Confess in Quebec City, with Clift, which I knew well, was very attractive to me.
“I have to say, I’ve never been less troubled on a movie set than this one. It was really one of those rare and extraordinary trouble-free existences. Robert was also very kind. He let my son Sacha, just starting out in his music career, do the film’s score, which was a huge break for him. And (Sacha) hasn’t stopped since.”
Puttnam stopped producing for a spell. But after a 17-year absence, he is set to produce another drama next year: Arctic 30, about the Greenpeace activists who were thrown in jail in Russia after trying to mount an oil rig in Arctic waters. Based on Don’t Trust, Don’t Fear, Don’t Beg by Greenpeace’s Ben Stewart, the project is already being dubbed Chariots of Ice.
“Emma Thompson pulled me back into production,” says Puttnam. “But there is a bit of a backstory. One of the things I did in Parliament was I took through the House the world’s first climate-change act, which set carbon limits.
“Each year it gets attacked by the energy industry. As a result, I got to know a lot of the NGOs, and a couple of them came to see me about Arctic 30. I then read the account and thought it was pretty good. They asked if I could help and I introduced them to Emma, who had just come back from the Arctic. Then she told them ‘not to let Puttnam off the hook.’ And I just got sucked into it.”
Puttnam concedes that the Russians may not be too pleased about the film or his involvement.
“I’d better be careful not to drink any polonium,” he cracks, in reference to the substance that killed Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.
Given his extensive knowledge of the business, there had always been an expectation that Puttnam would eventually direct a feature. But he never has, and isn’t about to do so now.
“Several times I kind of flirted with the idea of directing,” he explains. “I had a good reputation with Warner Brothers, and I think they would have trusted me — albeit on a reasonably inexpensive film.
“But the problem for me was that I could always think of someone who was better than me to direct, and if you’re a remotely professional producer, you can’t do that. I would have an absolute horror in having to fire myself at the end of the second week,” he jokes. “That was something I was not ready for.”
Puttnam is known for showing the sort of humility for which most Hollywood execs are not noted. That could explain the collision course that ensued when he took over Columbia Pictures in 1986.
“Frankly, though, I only have myself to blame,” he says. “But without doubt, I think we did bring in some fine pictures that year, and we had more Academy Award nominations for Columbia than ever before in their history.
“I think the quality of what we did was good, although it could have been better. But financially, that year was a bit of a bust.”
Puttnam was relieved to leave the studio a year later.
“Nor do I think it’s very likely I’ll ever be asked (to run a Hollywood studio) again. But I was the only non-American ever to run an American studio. And I ran it so ineptly that I will remain the only non-American ever to have run an American studio,” he says with a big grin.
“I was bad — really bad. The job didn’t allow me to do any of the things that I’m best at, and it basically played to all the things I’m not very good at.”
Candour is clearly not one of those things.
“At this point in my life, if I can’t be candid, it’s all been a waste of time.”
When David Puttnam receives the Grand Prix of the Americas at the Montreal World Film Festival, the award will come as part honor, part vindication for the veteran Oscar-winning producer.
“I retired from filmmaking 18 years ago and you do wonder if anyone remembers you existed,” says Puttnam, 74. “So it’s a very nice re-affirmation that you did have a successful career and you must have done something right.”
The award is also very timely, as 2015 is an important year for Puttnam. Like some ex-mob figure who thought he’d finally escaped his former life, he’s found himself back on active duty. “Much to my amazement, I’m making another film, ‘Arctic 30,’ ” he says.
Puttnam was persuaded to produce the Greenpeace environmental advocacy thriller in part because of his own activism. “I took the world’s first climate change bill (through the British Parliament), and I’m very proud of that,” says the Londoner who was made a peer in 1997 and sits on the Labour benches of the House of Lords. “I was asked for advice about the film, and then found myself getting more and more involved.”
If it’s his swan song, it marks a fitting end to a charmed career that began in advertising in the ’60s and continued with the production of such flamboyant projects as Ken Russell’s “Mahler” and “Lisztomania” in the early ’70s. “I had this extraordinary run, right the way through ‘The Mission’ in ’86,” he recalls. “During that time I managed to produce some 25 films.”
Over his career, Puttnam’s work has won 10 Oscars, 25 Baftas and the Palme D’Or at Cannes.
He has worked with many larger-than-life directors and has fond memories despite the many “ups and downs and stresses” of production. “Ken wasn’t easy, but I probably learned more from him than anyone else. I learned to think on my feet, not to carry too many preconceptions into the process and what not to do.”
Puttnam produced Ridley Scott’s first feature, 1977’s “The Duellists.” “Because of the tiny budget,” he recalls, the director also got involved in the camera department and production design. “I never saw anyone work so hard for such a pittance.”
1978’s “Midnight Express” was the first big international hit for both Puttnam and helmer Alan Parker. “This success changed everything,” he says. “I’d have never been able to make ‘Chariots of Fire’ without it.”
“Each one of the films and directors I worked with really owed a huge debt to the ones before,” Puttnam explains. “Michael Apted did a terrific job on ‘Stardust,’ which made it possible for me to raise money for ‘Bugsy,’ which got Alan off the ground, and in turn Ridley, and so on. And most important, if Hugh Hudson hadn’t done such a wonderful job with ‘Chariots of Fire’ (the 1982 best picture Oscar winner) there’s no way Roland Joffe and I could have ever made ‘The Killing Fields’ and ‘The Mission.’” Both were Oscar-nommed for best pic.
In 1986 Puttnam became chairman and CEO of Columbia Pictures, and he’s brutally honest about his brief, often divisive tenure. “Not only was I the first Brit to run a big Hollywood studio, I was so inept that I will remain the only one,” he says. “I didn’t know what I was doing. It was hubris.”
Today, Puttnam is doing what he wants, focusing on education and politics. “I’ve had an amazing career and I wouldn’t change a thing.”
