Given my belief that I now had the know-how and ideas necessary to make successful documentary films, it was natural that I should begin thinking of making films within a Commission context.

An obvious idea was that the Spokesman’s Service where I worked should have a video explaining its organisation and activities. I presented the idea to the Head of the Service, arguing that the completed film would be useful for visiting journalists, and more particularly, would be helpful for showing to correspondents newly accredited to the Commission. His response was positive and I began scripting for the shooting of a video to be called “A Day in the Life of the Spokesman’s Service”.

The project, of course, required the agreement of the Commission’s Audiovisual Production Unit and the assignment of production resources. By a stroke of good fortune, production of “A Day in the Life of the Spokesman’s Service” was allocated to a young Greek cameraman working in the Commission on a five month traineeship. I immediately took to Nicolas Tserepas, an enthusiastic and good-looking heavy smoker, speaking his own brand of heavily-accented and extremely well-mannered English.

He was thrilled to be able to make a film from start to finish, including the commissioning of music and an atmospheric opening sequence filmed from a car entering one of Brussels’ traffic tunnels.

As I adapted the subject to Nicolas’ technical requirements and ideas we became good friends. By spending time with him, particularly on things like editing, I added to my own knowledge of all aspects of direction and production. By the time “A Day in the Life” was completed – with what must be rare footage of Jacques Delors working in his Berlaymont office – we shared the vision that we might someday make films together commercially.

We wound up with ideas for presenting the dramatic diversity of Europe’s landscapes and cultures in new ways, but did not find anyone prepared to run with the treatments. The possibility of filming on Samos, Nicolas’s family home, was tempting as a retirement prospect. I could see myself sipping an iced glass of the island’s delicious sweet wine at a harbour-side table, looking out at the blue sea, with passing tourists wondering whether the elderly gent with his director’s viewer hanging from his neck, and a Taos Moving Pictures baseball cap on his head, is some well-known film-maker.

I bought the expensive professional viewer in a film-equipment store in 1989 on a trip to the Soho centre of the British film business. My ambition was to begin work on a treatment and story I might submit for consideration to the European Script Fund, established as part of the new Media programme launched by the Commission to promote and support Europe’s film-makers and the film industry.

As every major director pictured in the press or in film magazines seemed to have a viewer readily available, it seemed to be both essential equipment and essential to one’s image as a serious movie person.

In fact, I have made little use of the viewer. With the exception of the preparatory work which paved the way for my 1990 film project, I have occasionally used it on holiday for scrutinising paintings in art galleries or as an aid to the composition of a landscape sketch.

By the end of April 1989 I had worked up my first feature film to be presented to the Media European Script Fund. It comprised a four-part submission, covering the background to the presentation, a synopsis, notes on script development, and a formal application and budget chapter. I tried to make the proposal sound commercial, introducing it as “a romance set in the future”. The proposed title, “Playing for Time”, referred to the central focus of the story, the determination of a brilliant concert pianist, supported by a wealthy husband, to fight a serious but operable cancer. Psychological and alternative treatments available in an advanced holistic medical centre are seen by the patient’s laser surgeon as essential to the preparations for a major operation. The pianist and her husband are invited to view a documentary made by the surgeon himself of how a similar tumour case was dealt in the more primitive times of the early 20th century.

This film within a film was central to my script. The documentary would in fact be one of the documentary ideas I was working on at that time, the true story of the unsuccessful treatment by surgeons of Rik Wouters (1882-1916). Wouters, a Belgian painter and sculptor of enormous talent is little known in the English-speaking world. I had already researched his life with a view to the possibility of one day trying to promote his reputation internationally through a short film or an illustrated article.

My submission was acknowledged by Script on 2 May 1989, but it took up till October before I heard it had been ruled out of consideration.

Of course I could not have reasonably expected to make a breakthrough on the basis of a first submission experience, but was disappointed that the letter came at the end of what had been an unusually tense and disappointing summer.

My acceptance of an invitation to speak at London Yearly Meeting, the major annual gathering of British Quakers, held in Aberdeen in July, had led to a stressful period of preparation. This stress was compounded by the fact that London Yearly Meeting, my first and last, turned out to be one of the most difficult in the contemporary history of British Friends. The gathering was unable to reach any point of togetherness on the issues under consideration and there were very un-Quakerly moments when Minutes reached at one session met with calls that they should be reconsidered at the next. Somehow, this unsettling experience seemed to sour the Scottish holiday which brought us from Aberdeen, up into the Highlands, and back for a week at the Edinburgh Festival. The fact that the weather was cold and miserable may have had something to do with it.

One good legacy from the Aberdeen experience was a list of quotations and aphorisms I assembled to help me think about the idea of a more peaceful, compassionate, open and just Europe.

A second rejection of “Playing for Time”, at the beginning of 1990, emerges from my files as something that brought considerable pleasure. Having read in the Sunday Times of 21st January 1990 that the American Film producer Sherry Lansing wanted cancer to be her next subject, I sent her a copy of my script presentation.

She replied personally to say: “Thank you for submitting your treatment Playing for Time. After some thought and discussion, it has been decided that this project doesn’t quite meet our needs. I am therefore returning the material to you with best wishes in your effort to get your story on film. Thank you again for thinking of us.”

Yes, I felt good about that. I know I have not always achieved the same sense of warmth and encouragement when having to write negative administrative letters myself.

Read more: 1990 – Film Festival Selection