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Self-made man Self-taught filmmaker Mark Forbes discusses in-person film festivals and his latest documentary Quiet on Set: The Class Division in the Film Industry? M ark Forbes didn’t go to film school. In the late nineties, London courses cost around
£20,000 – a high price that’s only gotten higher. Like many in the industry, Forbes can attest to one simple, yet unfortunate fact: “Working-class people have been excluded for decades.” Growing up in north-east Scotland, Forbes knew he wanted to make films, but didn’t quite know where to start. “My stepdad was a writer, although he didn’t work in the film industry. He wrote a script for me,” Forbes recalls. “It was a horror film called Hobgoblin , and my first attempt at making a movie. It got into the Raindance Film Festival 26 years ago and, despite being a small, independent film, that was a taste of things to come.” While at Raindance, he remembers seeing an early screening of The Blair Witch Project . “It was quite nerve-racking because I knew lots of the films were much better than mine,” he says honestly. “It was a surreal experience.” After releasing Hobgoblin , Forbes continued making horror films before branching out into documentaries and dramas. “I did a bit of everything,” he admits. Over the years, he’s directed 17 films, picked up 17 awards and been accepted into 86 festivals internationally. “It hasn’t been an easy road,” he remarks, with Covid-19, union strikes and the cost- of-living crisis all casting their impact on both Forbes individually and the industry at large. But these obstacles never stopped him, and now he’s speaking out on behalf of all working-class creatives. Do-it-yourself Of his 17-title filmography, Forbes has made at least five films entirely by himself. “It’s not that I choose to work alone,” he clarifies. “It’s nothing like that.
It’s purely down to budget restrictions. If somebody came to me and said, ‘I can edit this film for you for a good fee, or for free,’ obviously I would jump on that. But it’s not easy to get people on board when you’ve got no money.” His latest feature-
length documentary, Quiet on Set: The Class Division in the Film Industry? (not to be confused with Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV ), took Forbes 19 months from start to finish, with no crew and no funding. “It’s about the classism in the film
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