Right to choose? British director tackles the debate that divides US
Controversial and explicit documentary explores the moral and social conflict over terminations
A British film-maker is stirring renewed controversy over America's attitude towards abortion, with a documentary that contains shocking and explicit footage of an advanced stage termination.
Tony Kaye, who made his name as a award-winning director of commercial and music videos, has spent 16 years and devoted $7m (£3.4m) of his own money to produce what he hopes will be the definitive documentary on the American abortion debate. The film, which has opened in New York and is set for release across 23 US cities, has divided critics, with some hailing it as the documentary of the year, others denouncing it as sensationalist. Detractors have also pointed out that most of the talking heads who appear on camera are male, including Noam Chomsky and the lawyer Alan Dershowitz.
Kaye began shooting Lake of Fire in 1992 as a way, he says, of exploring his own deep moral uncertainties about abortion. His personal opinions, he told the Guardian, are as polarised as those of the American public. "If I had to tick a box I would say I was pro-choice. I would vote for a woman's right to chose without hesitation, because without legal abortions poor women die." But emotionally, he says, he is "completely opposed to abortion. I see it as murder - the taking of another's life."
The result of his own internal conflict is a documentary that is, in the conclusion of Cineaste magazine, "a maddeningly elusive film". Shot in arty black and white, it has sequences that will dismay pro-choice feminists and pro-life fundamentalists in equal measure.
The most shocking section of the 152-minute film is footage shot by Kaye himself of the abortion of a 20-week foetus. It shows the foetus's head and eye staring straight at the camera, its hand in a metal collecting tray and its foot placed on a ruler and measuring just over 3cm.
The foetal parts are checked by a doctor to ensure the operation has been completed while he explains why he has conducted the operation: "The really important thing is that we have been able to help this young lady to get on with her life by facilitating her decision not to be a mother at this time."
Kaye told the Guardian that he wholly agreed with those sentiments. "But the irony of that moment is that you are seeing a snuff movie - they have chopped up a human being, a baby."
The footage, which Kaye describes as "probably the most controversial shot ever shown in cinemas", has raised accusations that the documentary is slanted against abortion. But other graphic images, including a picture of a woman slumped in the corner of a hotel room where she had died trying to abort her own foetus with a coat hanger, will prove no less shocking to pro-life supporters.
Lake of Fire
The title, Lake of Fire, is a reference to the hell to which religious fundamentalists featured in the film believe anyone involved in abortion will be condemned. The film includes extraordinary historic shots of the violence committed by anti-abortion extremists in the 1990s. Kaye interviews on film Bayard Britton, an abortion doctor in Florida who explains that he comes to work wearing a bullet proof vest. "If I didn't do this job it probably wouldn't get done. So I do it."
Kaye also talks to Paul Hill, an anti-abortion activist who tells the film-maker that "whatever force is justified in defending the life of a born child is also justified in defending the life of an unborn child."
In 1994 Hill, a former Presbyterian minister, put his words into action: he shot and killed Dr Britton and his colleague James Barrett. Hill was later executed for the murders.
The film also hears from a nurse, Emily Lyons, three weeks after she was caught in a bomb blast in 1998 at her clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, in which a police officer died. Her face is covered in shrapnel wounds, she is blinded in one eye and is in a wheelchair. She says that what angers her most are the letters she received after the attack telling her to burn in a lake of fire. "If only they knew that I've already been in that lake of fire, and I'm not ready to go back."
Kaye, 55, is no stranger to controversies. Brought up in the Jewish community of Stamford Hill in north London, he became a highly in-demand director of edgy commercials in the 1980s. His one big venture into Hollywood, a feature film about a gang of Californian neo-Nazis, American History X, earned his lead actor Edward Norton a 1998 Oscar nomination for best actor. But it ended in acrimony when Norton and the film's producer tried to make changes to his final cut. Kaye spent $100,000 on full-page adverts in the Hollywood trade press denouncing them both, blotting his reputation with the studios.
Lake of Fire marks his potential return to the fold, as does a feature film that he has currently in production called Black Water Transit. But the abortion documentary is more than a career move; it is a personal exploration.
Personal touch
His almost obsessive interest in the subject began when he was living in London and when his then partner had a termination, he told the Guardian. "She wanted to have the abortion. I wanted to have the child. I respected her wish and I went through with it with her. But it left a mark and I have been very curious since then."
Abortion is one of the clear demarcartion lines in the US 2008 presidential election campaigns, with all Democratic candidates supporting the right to choose, and all Republican candidates supporting the right to life, with the notable exception of Rudy Giuliani who says he hates abortion but believes a woman should be left to decide - a position not dissimilar to Kaye's.
Abortion clinics still face intense lobbying against them by pro-life groups, such as the 40 Days for Life campaign that is now being organised across many states. Although the 1990s campaign of violence against abortion practitioners has ceased, medics still take measures to protect themselves and there is now a federally imposed cordon zone around all clinics. "There has been less violence in the past few years, but that's because the anti-abortion groups are winning," he says.
The last 30 minutes of Lake of Fire follow a woman called Stacey, a former victim of domestic violence, as she goes through her fifth abortion. It shows the intense emotional impact of the procedure. "It's just been a really tiring day," Stacey says after it is all over. "I know I made the right decision. But it's not easy."
guardian
