The Documentary Exploring Grief, Anger and Recovery After The Killing of Mark Duggan And The London Riots
George Amponsah's film casts a humane eye over the cause and effect of events in 2011.
[T]he shooting of Mark Duggan, at the hands of the Metropolitan Police, on August 4, 2011 in Tottenham, North London, sparked the worst rioting the country had seen for over 30 years and, more importantly, an attempt by his family to find out why he was killed. Screening at the BFI London Film Festival, George Amponsah’s documentary, The Hard Stop (named after the police tactic of forcing cars off the road), can’t, and doesn’t seek to, resolve this issue. It was adjudicated that Duggan’s death was lawful and there appear few legal avenues left to take in order to exonerate the dead man.
In certain respects, the film most closely resembles Mathieu Kassovitz’s 1995 film La Haine, a film so remarkable in its depiction of inner-city community relations in the aftermath of police brutality and rioting that the then French Prime Minister, Alain Juppé, privately screened it to his cabinet. Any current government might be encouraged to follow that example. By focusing his attention on two of Duggan’s closest friends, Marcus Knox-Hooke and Kurtis Henville, as they deal with grief, anger and deepening disillusionment, George Amponsah’s film is an undeniably emotional and raw account of the aftermath of that day in August.
Criticism of the film may well point to imbalance or bias; to which it wouldn’t be unfair to respond that it may be seeking to redress an imbalance perpetrated, not just in the four years since Duggan’s death but over decades, by a press and successive governments that appear to remain largely and willfully ignorant of how a proportion of its own society lives.
"I realised that the truth in the story that I wanted to tell was never going to be about what people say but what you saw people doing."
How did you become involved with the project?
I was at a party in Tottenham and got talking to someone who said she was a community leader. I told her I was a documentary filmmaker and I don’t know how the subject came up, but we got to talking about the riots that [at that time] had happened only a year earlier. I told her that I wanted to make a film about the people who were at the epicenter of those disturbances, and she said she knew two people who were and that they were also interested in making a film. So she got in touch with Kurtis, who then contacted Marcus and we took it from there.
Was it always part of your plan to solely talk to Marcus and Kurtis?
It wasn’t necessarily, at the time, but when I first met with them and the first discussion we had – obviously I didn’t take the camera – was just to talk. The first thing they spoke about was making a drama, a fictional account, about Marc Duggan. Firstly, I told them that I don’t work with screenplays or actors; I’m solely a documentary filmmaker. And secondly, I said that I thought there was enough drama going on in their lives and they both agreed.
Marcus Knox-Hooke
Was it a help or hindrance to not have direct participation from Mark Duggan’s family?
I realised I wanted to make a film which reflected Mark Duggan, and who he was, by following the observations of his close friends, particularly Marcus, who at that time was being accused of ‘instigator’ of those initial disturbances in Tottenham. I just wanted to follow these guys and by doing that I got some access to the family, to a certain extent. It was never going to be, and I was more than satisfied with this fact, a film where I followed the family. They were going through a very complicated legal process, which became an increasingly sensitive, and it can be very hard to make a documentary with people in such situations. It was really a case of finding Mark’s friends – who had the same background, been brought up on the same area – because I thought if you can tell something about someone by the company they keep, then let’s see what we get from these guys and see how that reflects upon Mark.
Kurtis Henville
How difficult is it assembling the information as presented to by certain people as opposed to information you gather during the research process – especially in an evolving narrative such as this?
There were all sorts of different points of view at the time about Mark Duggan – things coming out in the media and through the inquest, when that started, from the people I was talking to like Marcus, Kurtis and his family. I realised that the truth in the story that I wanted to tell was never going to be about what people say but what you saw people doing. And specifically that became about Marcus and Kurtis. The truth that lies in The Hard Stop is what you see those two people doing over the course of three years; how they behave, how they comport themselves. By the end of the film, Kurtis is cleaning toilets in order to change his life – to put himself in a position whereby he won’t be lost to his kids and that he can be role model to them. And you see Marcus mentoring young people, specifically Mark Duggan 13-year-old son, in order to prevent them from becoming victims of lethal force by the police, or from other young people who might be involved in gang culture. To me, these things are undeniable truths. It doesn’t matter what their, or anyone else’s, opinions on Mark are; it’s a case of seeing what these guys are doing now, and making a judgment on that.
"The truth that lies in The Hard Stop is in what you see those two people doing over the course of three years; how they behave, how they comport themselves."
The only thing that’s clear about the situation is that Mark Duggan lost his life in 2011. The only people that can tell us what really happened that day are someone who’s no longer with us and officer D53, whose name we’ll never know. I just thought, I can’t unravel that – it’s not my job. The way I was taught was to make films about people and not to make news stories. Start with emotions and feelings. That’s why it’s nice to hear you compare it to La Haine because what you’re left with at the end of a film like that is an emotion. It’s not a clinical dissection on the whys and wherefores or the rights and wrongs of these events.
This country’s media have become heavily invested in the Black Lives Matter cause in the US but it feels as if Mark’s death and the subsequent rioting have been, if not ignored, then maybe put to one side – as if that problem was an isolated incident. Did you have any experience of this being the case while making the film?
Well the British Film Institute has mostly funded the film but the initial funding came from Sundance in America. They had seen the media reports over there and were really interested in what actually happened. For the first year that we were trying to find funding, excuse the pun, it felt like we couldn’t get arrested. It felt like we were just knocking on door after door and getting nowhere until Sundance became involved. It’s easy to become dismissive of what’s in your own back yard. When you’re dealing with a subject matter that’s as contentious as this I think it’s easier to pay attention to what’s happening somewhere else. Maybe that’s part of human nature. What’s important to remember though is that these guys don’t see themselves as victims and they don’t present themselves as victims. They’re guys that make things happen for themselves and I think that makes them heroic.
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