I wasn’t under pressure to get `a story’ on screen the next day. I think the curse of television is the need to parcel things up and explain them before the dust has settled. Never sure what they could make of the footage or how long the “Diana” phenomenon would last, the film-makers were taking a big risk.”I didn’t really worry about media saturation,” says Alwyn, “because I was aware that I was looking at it all with a very different eye. By seven, we were out with cameras.”Taking shifts, a team of directors and cameramen filmed night and day throughout the next week. “We kept sitting around thinking, `Oh God, we’ve missed it,’” remembers Lambert, “until we finally reached critical mass at about five o’clock that afternoon. “It seemed ludicrous not to do something, but the size and suddenness of it all caught everyone by surprise.”It wasn’t until the day before the funeral that the team finally made up its mind to shoot.
Far too many people for the lack of noise.”Alwyn went into work the following day and “niggled away” at the series editor Stephen Lambert to make a documentary about what was going on. “On the Thursday I’d been down to Kensington Palace with my family to have a look, and it was a very odd atmosphere Thousands and thousands of people and an uncanny hush. Not bad for a film that nearly didn’t happen.”It started as a kind of collective dare,” says the director, Richard Alwyn. But having already snatched a prime spot in the packed Christmas schedule, “The Shrine” now looks set for limited cinematic release in the United States. Made for the BBC’s Modern Times strand, “The Shrine” describes the outpouring of public grief that greeted news of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. A lyrical record of spontaneous devotion, it is a documentary that captures the eeriness of mass mourning without seeking to package it as narrative or laden it with the banal reportage of outside news broadcasts.Thanks to the popularity of ratings-friendly “factual soaps” such as The Airport and Driving School, the sight of such meditative, impressionistic work is becoming rarer on our screens. In the early morning a couple cling together singing in whispers, their disembodied heads floating in the darkness.
Surreal scenes taken from a remarkable film to be shown next week.
Giant speakers dangle from the sky, tin-bottomed acoustics relating an unseen funeral to the silent crowds below. Richard Alwyn was determined to document the mood: the result is a disturbing TV film called `The Shrine’. He talked to Liese Spencer about mass mourning as seen through the camera lens
A grainy video image of a hearse fills the screen. Pitched by unseen hands, bunches of flowers bombard the vehicle as it snails relentlessly down the street. They were days when Hyde Park was packed but scarcely a sound was heard.
