Olivier Stockman, co-Director at Sands Films

In the area of Rotherhithe, in the heart of the London Docklands, there is a Grade II listed building called Grice’s Granary. This grain warehouse, originally built around 1780 and extended during the XIX century, today is the house of a film production company called Sands Films. Sands Films is also a renowned period costumier: if you have watched, for example, Les Miserables, Gangs of New York or Tim Burton’s Alice and Sweeney Todd, the costumes you have seen on the screen were made here. Let’s find out more about this amazing company in this interview with one of its Directors, Olivier Stockman.

When and how Sands Films started its activity?

Sands Films started in the 1970s. It is difficult to put a starting point, it has more to do with the development of the people. Christine Edzard was born in 1945 in Paris and in her twenties she decided she wanted to work in the theatre, in costumes and in set design and she worked with Rotislav Duboujinsky and Lila De Nobili. She eventually got to work on Zeffirelli’s film Romeo and Juliet in 1968. There she met Richard Goodwin, who was the producer of the film and became her husband. Once they got married, in the late 1960s, they moved to London. Here, in the early Seventies, they did Tales of Beatrix Potter, a ballet film, which re-introduced Rotislav Duboujinsky to design the costumes and the masks, which were organically made by the people who were making the film. As Sands Films did not exist yet, they made the costumes a bit haphazardly, in their house and wherever they could. The film featured dancers from the Royal Ballet, with Frederick Ashton being the choreographer. At that time, the Royal Ballet had a rehearsal space in Butler’s Wharf, which was a very derelict place, like all the Docklands. This was how Christine and Richard came about this area of London. They eventually discovered this part of Rotherhithe and they found this warehouse which was abandoned. That was in 1975. Taking over this building became in itself a job, an ambition, a project that is very much of a part of Sands Films. Sands Films has this way of doing things that comes from a blend of theatrical and filming approach, which is totally linked with this particular building. All the subsequent films came out from the atmosphere and the spirit of this building.

Where does the name Sands come from?

It’s nothing particularly original or exciting. Because their married name is Goodwin and there was Goodwin Sands, a bank of sands in the Thames estuary, they called it Sands Films. However, in the logo, originally a design by Duboujinsky, which represents a little mouse and a hourglass, the little mouse embodies the idea of being little by opposition of being big and mighty. While all the film companies have always tigers, lions and big eagles, here there is the notion, in the context of the 1970s, that small is beautiful.

Talking about costume making, the company started doing it with its very first film, Tales of Beatrix Potter. But when did it become one of the cores of the business?

In some of our films, like The Nightingale and Biddy or the vegetables in Stories from a Flying Trunk, the costumes were made here when they were an element of specialism or had some specific requirement, such as for dancing. When we started working on Little Dorrit, we wanted to produce costumes which were true, authentic, not in a nostalgic way, but in a naturalistic way. For that reason, it came natural to us that we would make ourselves those costumes, and we would experiment in understanding how they are made and in understanding the fabrics, the dying, the colors, the cuts. That included doing elements of millinery, making the hats and trying to do things in the original technology. People noticed these costumes as being unique and different and having this authentic feel of real clothes rather than dressing up outfits. For this reason, they came back to us and asked us if we could do the costumes for them. And so, we started making costumes for other people’s films in the same spirit, using the experience and the expertise we had developed.

Sands Films had a lot of nominations for prestigious prizes, for example two BAFTA nominations for Tales of Beatrix Potter and two Oscar nominations for Little Dorrit, and sometimes you won these prizes, like the Oscar for the costumes of Marie Antoinette and Little Women. Would you be able to list these achievements?

I don’t know, I have never even bothered making a list. I think our main achievement is to retain our integrity and to retain our independence. There is no prize or medal for that, except that we have survived lots of different crisis, changes of technologies, changes in the way the world works, the way film are funded. I don’t know what Oscar nominations we had, it doesn’t really kind of matter very much to us, while what matters is the fact that we managed to continue and to never stop and keep the same ideas going.

Beside the official achievements, is there any work of which you are particularly proud or which has represented a meaningful result for the company?

As I said, it’s the integrity and the continuity of it that is the greatest achievement. It is the fact that the costumes that we make today are not fundamentally different from what we were doing all those years ago because our guideline is not a fashion or a temporary fancy, but it’s an aspiration to reproduce the way costumes or clothes were made at their time. Visually they fall and feel like what you see on reference. To do this consistently for forty years is difficult because people are always tempted to do differently, to do bigger or to simplify. Which means that our stock of around 10,000 costumes is coherent, they can work together. There are a lot of costumes house where the costumes are conceptually so different that they don’t belong to each other, you can’t put them in the same film or in the same scene. But then, I have to say with some disappointment that this aspiration is fading away in the cinema world. The costume designers of today are less interested in a sense of authenticity or a kind of relationship with reality.

This is quite sad. Let’s hope this tradition doesn’t get lost.

I think there will always be people interested in a formal naturalism but at the moment it’s not a main interest.

Rotherhithe is definitely far from the Hollywood glamour. However, you have famous actors coming here for their costume fittings. Can you reveal some names?

They all come here. And they like coming here because it’s not as impersonal as all the other costume houses which are usually set up in warehouses or in very gloomy industrial estates. The other reason why people like about coming here is more subtle and has to do with the nature of the costumes. The costume is the only tool actors have to do their work. If you think, cameramen, painters etcetera, they all have their tools to do their arts. But the actor has got nothing, just his memory to remember the lines and the sense of moving his body. The way their body looks like or appears to the audience is 99% the costume they wear. So, being able to feel the costumes and to talk about the costumes with people who look at the costumes with that point of view, rather than just the style or just the fashion side of it, it is important because it’s part of the building of their character. Some actors like to be involved in that process, like Timothy Spall and Helena Bonham Carter. Also, I suppose, some stars, like Keira Knightley, they like coming here because they are just another person rather than a star. Some of these actors suffer from being treated as VIPs all the time, whereas here it’s more like a workplace. When they come here, nobody really notices. They see us like friends or part of their work. Vanessa Redgrave and Miriam Margolyes are very pleased to come here, too.

As you said, this building has played a huge role in the company history. But, at some point, you had to launch a shareholders program to save the building and save the company itself.

We often have had very serious financial difficulties but never surrendered completely to the fact that we couldn’t continue, so we were always trying to find a solution to the problems. In the end of the 1990s/ beginning of 2000 we were effectively paying rent, as the building belonged to an asset management company. The rent was getting higher and higher and we could not pay it anymore. And of course, in the world we live in, the property assets are worth more than us, more than Sands Films. From an asset management point of view, the aim was to get rid of us, empty the building and redevelop it to luxury flats. We thought of everything we could do to prevent that, and, ultimately, the only thing we could do was to buy the property. To do that, we had to set up a share scheme. So people bought shares and we could buy the property. But, because we are still not cash rich, when they need the money and want to sell their shares, I need to find new shareholders to replace them, which is a lot of work but it’s not as bad as having to find the money for the rent.

If you are interested in becoming a shareholder of Sands Films, you can find more information and documents in the following web page: https://www.sandsfilms.co.uk/shareholders.html

Are your shareholders mainly local?

There are many local people but they are not all local. There are some actors, filmmakers. Vanessa Redgrave, Keira Knightley and Miriam, they are shareholders, and there are also some people I have never met, who live far away, but who still like what we are doing.

I asked this question because you are very rooted in the local community, also thanks to initiatives such as the cinema club or the picture library. How is it important for you to be a reference point within the local community?

It’s important because obviously, if you are interested in theatre, literature, art, cinema, you are not interested just for yourself, but you want to share it with other people. People who make films are very isolated from the audience. Watching the films and having a live interact with real people is really exciting, because you meet in person the people for whom films are effectively made.

How do you see Sands Films in a ten years perspective? Still adhering to integrity and consistency or do you see a kind of evolution?

There is evolution all the time, but the integrity will remain. I don’t know about the costumes much, because if people don’t want our costumes, or if the purpose of the costumes looses its value in other people’s eyes, then we will probably do less costumes. The modern technology of streaming or reaching out the interested audience through the Internet is the reality of the XXI century, which we embraced. So I am sure we will continue following this evolution of technology. I think what we will do is continue to find a purpose for the building, to house what we think it is essential. Ten years is not that long, when it’s longer it’s more difficult to predict. And then probably after that we will get flooded!

Hopefully it will not happen, even if the building is very close to the river bank and climate change is really something to worry about. My personal wish is for Sands Films to be able to continue surprising us with their films and costumes for a very long time.