Oscar-winning producer Lord David Puttnam has challenged aspiring filmmakers from the North East to lead the way in a new cinema genre. Arts writer Gavin Engelbrecht meets the 74-year-old life peer.

OSCAR-WINNING film producer Lord David Puttnam is clearly proud of his new watch.

“It is called a Shinola,” he said, taking it off his wrist to show.

“Unemployed people in Detroit, seeing there was no future in the auto industry, got hold of an empty building and made a decision to do something about it.

“They decided to start making bicycles and watches. They got some guy from Switzerland to teach them and what they have done is create a fantastic business. It is a wonderful story.

“I got my wife to buy this watch for my 74th birthday. When my granddaughters, who are in their 20s, saw it they said ‘Grandpa, that is a Shinola. It is the coolest watch anywhere’. And do you know how they knew about it? Through social media.”

Lord Puttnam is not just showing off his gift but illustrating the fact that there are no barriers to success in the creative industry.

The man who achieved renown with films such as Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, The Killing Fields and Chariots Of Fire, spoke to The Northern Echo after delivering an inspirational lecture at the University of Sunderland, during which he challenged young, aspiring filmmakers in the North East to blaze a trail in a new genre.

He said: “The nature of connectivity today allows young people with imaginations and ideas to talk to global audiences.

“The notion that your idea is trapped in the North-East is a fallacy. If your idea is strong enough, it can go anywhere. What you need is the confidence and the ability to use the technology that exists to make sure that it does go everywhere.

“Inside the experience of the North-East are the germs of things which can explode, because they have a truth attached to it, which is a new truth. The film medium is exactly the medium to use and the fact that you have YouTube to get your work exposed is fantastic.”

At a lecture about the role of identity in cinema, Lord Puttnam said he decided to call it a day in filmmaking after seeing Trainspotting because as “fantastic” as it was, he felt he could not or would not be able to make a similar film.

He said: “What I am trying to do is encourage you. Where is your Trainspotting going to come from? Where are you going to go that is going have me saying ‘I recognise that... that is touching the truth I knew was there’?”

Lord Puttnam concedes he has no clue what the new genre may be — but does not think it will be “science fiction or monsters fighting”.

He said: “It will have to be quite complex and original.

“I have worked a lot of my life in parliament and I know that the world I inhabit is almost entirely divorced from your own. I want to see a film that is powerful that says you cannot go on like this — someone is going to do it and I want it to come from the North East.”

Lord Puttnam believes social reality as perceived in the North-East is a more accurate reflection of Britain.

Warming to the theme after his lecture, he said: “One of the reasons I am always drawn back to the North-East is there is a truth that emanates here.

“This is a place where I find decent, hardworking, ordinary people with capital O — not people living on the fringes terrified of their overdrafts.

“People here value the NHS because they have a memory of their grandparents being terrified of being ill. These are truths which have been lost in the south.

“It would take someone from the North- East to reconnect this country to why the NHS is fundamental to people’s life.

“People forget that 60 to 70 years ago, illness — quite apart from infant mortality — was the fear that haunted every household because illness meant death and loss of work. People forget that and they need reminding.

“You have to believe you have a story the rest of the world wants to hear.”

Lord Puttnam had a schedule to keep to and checked his watch, perhaps thinking it was time for someone to take up his challenge.