Kurt & Courtney

Nicholas Broomfield, known as Nick, is an English documentary film-maker. Broomfield films with a minimum of crew, just himself and one or two camera operators, which gives his documentaries a distinctive style. Broomfield is often in shot holding the sound boom.

Broomfield was awarded the BAFTA Lifetime Achievement Award for Contribution to Documentary, and was given honorary doctorates from Essex and Surrey University. He was awarded the Californian State Bar Award for his contribution to Legal Reform and is a founder member of the Morecambe Bay Victims Fund. He studied Law at Cardiff University, and political science at the University of Essex; subsequently, he studied film at the National Film and Television School. Broomfield’s early style was conventional Cinéma vérité: the juxtaposition of observed scenes, with little use of voice-over or text.

It was not until Driving Me Crazy (1988) that Broomfield appeared on-screen for the first time. After several arguments regarding the budget and nature of the film, he decided that he would only make the documentary if he was able to conduct a sort of experiment by filming the process of making the film—the arguments, the failed interviews and the dead-ends.

This shift in film-making style was also heavily influenced by Broomfield’s experience in attempting to release his earlier film Lily Tomlin, which chronicled Tomlin’s one-woman show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. Tomlin claimed that the film was a spoiler for the actual show and filed suit for $7 million against Broomfield. The documentary was shown on public television but not widely released. Eventually the footage shot by Broomfield was used in the video release of the one-woman show.

It is for this reflexive film-making style—a film being about the making of itself as much as about its subject—that Broomfield is best known. His influence on documentary is clear: Michael Moore, Louis Theroux and Morgan Spurlock have all adopted a similar style for their recent box-office hits. Film-makers who use this style have been referred to as Les Nouvelles Egotistes; others have likened his work to the gonzo reporting of Hunter S. Thompson.

Broomfield’s best known work is probably Kurt and Courtney about Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, one of the few films selected then banned at the Sundance Film Festival. A previous film, Soldier Girls, that he co-directed with Joan Churchill won 1st prize at Sundance a few years previously.

In 2006, Broomfield changed his style again into what he calls “Direct Cinema”, using non-actors to play themselves. He completed a drama called Ghosts for Channel 4 inspired by the 2004 Morecambe Bay cockling disaster when 23 Chinese immigrant cockle pickers drowned after being cut off by the tides. Ghosts won numerous awards and helped raise nearly half a million pounds to help the victims’ families.

Battle for Haditha (2007) worked with ex-Marines and Iraqi refugees, as well as known actors. The film was shot sequentially, enabling the cast to build their characters as the story progressed. It also used real locations, and a very small documentary-style film crew. Although they worked from a detailed script, the actors also improvised and added dialogue. The script was based on research with the Marines of Kilo Company who took part on that day, the survivors of the massacre, and the six thousand page NCIS government report. Battle for Haditha won numerous international awards. —Wikipedia