Beyond the Reach, an adaptation of a young adult book published in the 1970s, pairs the somewhat unlikely duo of freshly squeezed Brit actor Jeremy Irvine and Hollywood royalty Michael Douglas as hired guide Ben and rich businessman Madec respectively, the latter coming to the American wild west looking to bag an out-of-hunting-season prize. While they are out there all alone in the desert things go a bit awry and Ben ends up having to use all his knowledge to stay alive.

New Empress spoke to Jeremy about the making of the film, trophy hunting and most importantly, what he’d had for lunch.

So…what delights did you have for lunch today?

My lunch is conversation about films! It’s not so bad really, I know some actors says they hate doing press but I don’t think that…come on, you get put in a nice hotel, you get treated nicely and you get to talk about, hopefully, a job you like doing. It’s not working down the mines, is it? I’ve certainly had worse jobs.

Though Beyond the Reach looked like it was pretty tough to make, was there any fun?

It was great fun because I was spending two months in the desert with Michael Douglas and Michael Douglas is a lot of fun, but physically I’m hoping this is the toughest role that I have to do for a while. I read the script and assumed that it wouldn’t really be that hot during the day…it was brutal, really was 110 degrees plus during the day and freezing cold during the night, with snow a couple of times. I was having three and a half hours of prosthetic make up every morning and I had to do quite a big physical transformation because I’d just lost a lot of weight for The Railway Man.

Was that because you had to do a lot of wandering around with your clothes off in this film?

Well I was very skinny, I’d lost about 35 lbs and the director (Jean-Baptiste Léonetti) phones me up one day and says we’re going to be looking at your torso for 90% of the movie (Beyond the Reach). I think his exact words were (puts on french accent) ‘Jeremy, you must have ze abs’! I had to start getting up at 4am and eating egg whites and going to the gym twice a day, yeah that was tough. I’m not a gym person so I was a bit miserable.

Did you learn any survival techniques for being out in the desert or did you just follow direction?

Well I’ve always done a lot of camping out and stuff, every family holiday I ever had was camping out in the middle of nowhere but I learned to rock climb (for BTR) and I’ve never rock climbed before, that was intense.

Michael Douglas plays the ultimate pantomime bad guy in Beyond the Reach. Do you think that was meant to make the whole film a bit more lighthearted?

It was. When I first read it, the script was very dark and a lot of the darker stuff wasn’t in the final cut. I think it gives itself a bit of a tongue in cheek feel, the movie has a few laughs at itself. It’s Michael Douglas doing what Michael Douglas does best.

You do a lovely American accent for the film, was that because you’ve done quite a lot of work on it for a few previous films?

I really haven’t worked in my own accent for a while, that’s just the way it is. If you’re a British actor working in Hollywood it’s not a matter of can you do it, you have to do it. I like doing accents, it’s a good way to get into character in the morning. I did a movie in North Carolina (breaks out said accent) and I’ve done a few different American accents now.

Is it hard remembering to stay in the accent?

No..accents take an extraordinary amount of time to learn properly, if you’re forgetting to do the accent then you haven’t spent enough time working on it. You have to keep doing it until it’s second nature.

Time for a random question..on your IMDB profile. It seems to me that plenty of actors manage their own pages, especially what is written about them, and your picture is quite cheesy in the style of Danny Zuko – did you choose it?!

I don’t know what picture is on there. I’m on IMDB now..oh I’m IMDBing myself, that’s awful! Yeah, god, I just look a bit pissed off, wonder what I was so angry about. It was from a photo shoot about 6 months ago.

So it’s not your selfie pose then?

Certainly not! I don’t walk around brooding with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth.

Back to the film then – it’s a bit different to the usual sort of action film. It’s a bit western, a bit cat and mouse and seemed to have an anti-hunting vibe, did you get that?

No, I didn’t really get that. I was doing press with Michael a couple of weeks ago, and Michael’s been fairly outspoken on his opinion that gun control in America should be tightened up and people were asking what about in this movie and he said, ‘I just like the movie’. Michael actually bought the material for this with the idea of playing my part when he was my age. For me, well you’d be surprised how many scripts you get sent which are basically rehashes of something else that has been successful recently. I hadn’t read a script like it and that is very appealing to me.

I think I got the anti-hunting vibe from the discussion between the two characters and Ben was very dismissive of Madec’s trophy hunting.

Trophy hunting is wrong; if you’re killing an animal just so you can put its head on your wall..I don’t know how you justify that. If you’re going to eat it that is slightly different but I don’t feel wonderful about that either. You see these photos on the internet, some fatcat who’s gone off to Africa to shoot a giraffe or something…you just think, does that make you feel big and powerful?!

You’ve done quite a variety of films (War Horse, Now is Good, The Railway Man), is that a conscious thing or are you just good at sifting through those scripts that seem very similar?

It is a conscious decision, mostly because there isn’t a specific genre that I go after. It normally comes down to if you’ve finished the last page and you just have shivers down your back, or you’re still thinking about it a week later…that’s a sign of a good script. BTR was a fun film and every now and again you make a film that’s hopefully more than just a movie.

Like Stonewall?

Stonewall, when I read it, well first I found the script very moving and it made me cry, always a good sign, but then it finished with the fact that 60% of the homeless population in America today are gay and when you think about that and realise what it means, how relevant the story of the Stonewall riots still is today. I think things are going in the right direction but there’s still a long way to go, here (the UK), in America and the rest of the world in terms of gay rights and equality. So it felt like an important film.

Is raising awareness of equality issues important to you?

I think I’ve been very lucky in growing up in London and being in such a liberal industry; it is very easy to forget that there are parts of the world that aren’t like that and I was certainly very shocked when I started travelling round and coming into contact with people who didn’t feel the same. Any awareness that the movie can bring to that can only be a good thing.

Beyond the Reach is in UK cinemas and VOD from 31 July

Stonewall is released in the US in September 2015

After three years of mounting anticipation and a trio of solo film outings, the Avengers have finally reassembled, this time to battle a psychotic AI and its mad, mechanical fighting force. As the world’s mightiest superheroes learn more about each other and lives come under threat from maniacal androids, their feelings threaten to change and friendships evolve.

Writer/ Director Joss Whedon has delivered an inevitably darker but surprisingly twisted sequel, weaving sci-fi horror with surreal imagery for an unusual and slightly unbalanced follow up.

New Empress joined the director and cast at a press conference in central London to discuss the production, the writing process and what it was like to develop the characters within the Marvel universe.

Joss Whedon (Writer/ Director): It was easy going into Age of Ultron in a way because a lot of the questions about the characters had been answered and you know what you have to work with, which is a bit of a comfort. I always said we should have Ultron in the second movie before we even made the first. He’s big, powerful, angry, metal and strong enough to take these guys on. But as he’s been angry for so long, he might be a little unhinged.

Chris Evans (Steve Rodgers/ Captain America): Marvel does a great job at bringing a lot of the same people together, in front and behind the cameras. So coming back together as a group kind of feels like family. In an action film there may not be as many tangible opportunities to play off in terms of acting. Where more reality-based movies are a little more grounded given the environment, in a movie like this you may be just sitting in front of a green screen or talking to a tennis ball. But I think a lot of the people here have very healthy imaginations and have spent a lot of time running around in the backyard with a cape around their neck.

Jeremy Renner (Clint Barton/ Hawkeye): You were the only one sitting around talking to a tennis ball, Chris. But whatever comforts you. It’s a huge testament to Joss to write a movie bringing together all of these characters who are all extremely interesting and fantastic. Coming back to the world seeing where these crazy people that we are playing, are headed and knowing that Joss is gonna take us there into his own twisted psyche. It’s a chess board in that you need all the pieces for it to make sense.

Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff/ Black Widow): I get most excited about reading Joss’ script because it’s like a big pay off after a long wait. All of the individual cover letters before the script that he writes are so delightful and self-deprecating. What’s great about my character is that she’s deep and grounded. She’s experienced trauma and was never able to make active choices for herself but now she finally is. But it’s bad timing. One of the Black Widow qualities that I love and am interested in is that she is put in a situation where she might be able to do something for herself and open up in a way but there is this greater calling that’s pulling her and she very selflessly chooses that. It’s heroic in a small way but she has to be a slippery fish for her job.

Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda Maximoff/ Scarlet Witch): I’m just thrilled to be a part of this whole group and world. Marvel make such great films with a balance of depth, humour and action and all the characters are humans with weaknesses and strengths. In this film, I think there’s a special highway to everyone’s own personal worlds and lives, and what makes them human – I think that’s what makes this film so great. It’s mind-boggling.

Robert Downey Jr (Iron Man): I probably get most excited about my first costume fitting. And me surrounded by full length mirrors. But Hawkeye’s got a hell of an arc this time. And also Paul Bettany (Jarvis/ The Vision) has a very interesting turn. And also Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch! I think Paul, Lizzie and Aaron came out and exceeded expectations, left, right and centre. I feel like they triumph in the film.

Paul Bettany (Jarvis/ The Vision): It was lovely to be finally on set with a bunch of people I’ve been, supposed to have been, working with for ten years but who I’ve never actually met before. So that was nice. Initially I would just turn up at the end of the film with the superhero power that, if anything was still unclear, I could clarify it just by talking. It would take two hours and they would give me a big bag of cash and I would go away finding it hard to imagine how the contract could ever be better. But it was honestly a dream, everybody was so welcoming.

Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/ Hulk): They actually paid you in cash?

Paul Bettany (Jarvis/ The Vision): When I was doing the voice. It seemed like a big bag of cash to me.

Joss Whedon (Writer/ Director): If I had a key on my computer that said “a billion dollars” I would press it. I just try to write as well as I can. The thing I love about Marvel comics and what Kevin Feige is doing with the Marvel Universe is he approaches each new movie as a completely new idea. He’s not interested in creating a formula, he’s interested in creating a universe. As long as somebody who really cares is at the head and that somebody is interested in creating new versions of superhero movies and not just falling into a pattern, I don’t think I’ll get that far away from Marvel because I love it so much. After my long rest I plan a longer rest and then possibly an eternal rest but I have no immediate plans for the future right now. Which is the best thing I have ever said.

The Decent One, which won the best Israeli Documentary award at last summer’s Jerusalem Film Festival, is a portrait of Heinrich Himmler from his youth to shortly before his death, using only photographs and archival footage and excerpts read out from diaries, letters, memoranda and diktats. New Empress spoke to its director, Vanessa Lapa.

NE: Were there any surprises for you in any of the diaries, letters and other materials you looked at whilst researching the film?

VL: Yes, lots. Not on a historical level, but on a human and emotional level. One realised again and again just how perverted Himmler was. I didn’t know much about him apart from what I knew from history books. Right up until the end, I was still being struck by how twisted and perverted he was.

NE: Was it a contrast between the domestic personal writings and the historical facts that shocked you, or did you find the content of the personal writings disturbing as well?

VL: I don’t think we have a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde character here. I didn’t see an especially loving husband or father or lover. I saw a strict, violent man in the home. Of course, in his public life it was a different kind of violence, but constant demeaning, educating and punishing, depriving a child of love because it did something bad to the extent of instructing its mother not to sign letters ‘Mother’ anymore, is in my eyes violence. Not physical, murderous violence, but still violence. To tell your wife on your wedding night that you love her very much, but that there is something you love more – in this case National Socialism – is not very romantic, to say the least. What shocked me was the coherent line between the public and the private man.

NE: These attitudes, though, the obsession with harshness, discipline, militarism and nationalism, were very much of the Germany of that time though, weren’t they?

VL: Himmler made choices. Most of us don’t and won’t make similar decisions. The fact that he was what he was, like many – militaristic, strict, cold, and so on – doesn’t mean that everyone could make the same leap to do what he did. However, in certain geopolitical and socioeconomic situations characters like this can be formed and could act as Himmler acted.

NE: Do you think that Himmler was mentally ill?

VL: No, I’m positive that he was not. But I’m sure that it’s debatable. We worked with a psychiatrist who analysed the contents of the letters and diaries. His conclusion was that Himmler was not mad. I’m sure there are other psychiatrists who may see signs of mental illness in Himmler’s personality. But as far as I’m concerned I don’t believe that that he was mad. I believe that as citizens we need to be constantly aware and attentive so that we can avoid such situations and such characters. And of course, Himmler didn’t act alone or in a vacuum, that period produced many monsters. But we can avoid the conditions that created them.

NE: One thing that strikes me about Himmler is that he was very credulous and of obviously limited intelligence. He adhered to some silly mystical beliefs, as well as nonsensical racial and biological ideas. Do you think his credulity and dull-wittedness played a part in his cruel behaviour and that generally these two things can lead to the committing of acts that we label ‘evil’?

VL: I totally agree with how you characterised Himmler. This is what is so frightening, that at the end of the day he was a dull, mediocre, not especially intelligent, even a stupid and pathetic man. Yet, he was able to mastermind such horror, achieve a high political position and change the course of history.

NE: Did the ironies produced by the juxtaposition of word and image take a lot of work and research, or did this fall into place quite easily?

VL: That’s an interesting question. On the one hand the number of texts was huge, so it was quite difficult to build a developing, well-told story. It was difficult partly because these writings were not written for publication and are very repetitive and sometimes very boring. On the other hand, there is a lot of self-revelation through stories and anecdotes in the letters. There were a lot of revealing side stories relating to homosexuality for instance, and the choice of using some of them was a narrative choice. The biggest challenge was to build a story that was not boring.

NE: Were you at any point charmed by his daughter Gudrun’s writings, her being a daughter and woman, like you. Or did you feel distaste and hostility towards her, too?

VL: No, I wasn’t charmed by her. I feel the same way towards her as her father because of the choices she made and because today she still follows his. She is a Nazi and I despise what she is today. As for her as a child, however, she was a normal admiring daughter in love with her father, which I was too, and which is healthy. I had no issues with her as a child, but with her parents and the way they corrupted her. She was her father’s victim. I tried to reach out to her from the beginning, and to obtain an interview or meeting, but she never wanted to talk to me. I would still be interested in meeting her.

NE: What would you ideally like the viewer to take from the film?

VL: Well, first, ideally of having been on a cinematic journey or experience. I personally like to feel that a movie has taken me on a journey, and that I’m not just a passive viewer looking passively at someone else’s story, one that I will forget in a second. Secondly, to have made them reflect, and to bear in mind what they have seen and heard, and that this will help them to take some responsibility as citizens.

The Decent One is released theatrically & on Curzon Home Cinema on April 3rd.

Christopher Nolan’s latest work of wonder Interstellar opens in cinemas this week. Despite a clunky final third it’s a visually astounding and riveting sci-fi blockbuster with a strong, emotional core that will hopefully pave the way for more intelligent mainstream movies based on original concepts.

New Empress attended a press conference with the director and cast in London last week to discuss the production, the future of film as a medium and asked the actors what it was like working with Chris Nolan on a project of such a scale.

Christopher Nolan (Director): My interest in Interstellar came down to a couple of key things. The first was the relationship between the father and his children. I’m a father myself so I found it very powerful. I liked the idea of combining that with a story that speculates about a potential human evolution, where mankind would have to reckon with its place in the wider universe. I grew up in an era that was really a golden age of blockbusters. If you look at Close Encounters and the way that addressed the idea of a supernatural environment, where humans would meet aliens, then addressed the fact that it came from a very human perspective. I really liked the idea of trying to present today’s audiences that kind of storytelling.

Matthew McConaughey (Cooper): One of the things that attracted me to it was that is that it challenged mankind but remained incredibly faithful in our capacities. But I don’t think any of the actors ever felt overwhelmed by that. Even though we filmed for five months and on a large scale, when you’re acting in a Chris Nolan film it feels just as intimate, raw and natural as most independents. But that’s mainly because Chris was never overwhelmed by any of it.

Jessica Chastain (Murph): With Chris it’s all practical, so you actually have things to react to as an actor. There’s no green screen, they were chucking dust in my face every day and that was a real corn field we grew. We would do three or four takes and he would let me try what I wanted to without imposing anything that wasn’t natural. Chris opened up my performance in a way that I would never have imagined. So, as incredible as the technical and visual aspects of the sets were, we never lost the emotional components.

Christopher Nolan (Director): One of the other things I loved most about Interstellar was Amelia, the character Anne plays. I think it was just a wonderful role and I took it to Anne knowing that she was very interested in science and knew she would completely get this character and know what she was about.

Anne Hathaway (Amelia): I just loved my space suit! The moment I first put it on, I lit up. I felt like a kid at Halloween I was so happy. I’d be putting it on and Chris would come in and I’d be like “I need to adjust something, it might take twenty minutes” and he would be like “Ok. I’ll be looking at jet packs.” But it was also very challenging. During my first fitting, I had been wearing the suit for about an hour and I realised I was not going to be able to slack off in the gym on this one. I initially thought I could eat, as I wasn’t going to be wearing a catsuit but I had to work out just as hard. And that’s also what I love about it, the inherent challenges. They’re not easy, and they’re not easy in real life but they raise the dramatic stakes.

Michael Caine (Professor Brand): I’ve done six pictures with Christopher and every one was a hit so whenever he asks me if I want to do a movie I say yes. And when he asks if I want to read the script I say no. It’s quite extraordinary. Nothing is what it seems with Chris. I’m a very good amateur gardener and I’ve seen quite a lot of wormholes but I never understood them before this movie. And then I met Kip Thorne (Scientific Consultant and Executive Producer), who I was basically playing in the film. I thought I knew what to do. I grew a beard like Kip and asked him lots of questions about things that were puzzling me. Then I went into my office set, which he had designed, and there was an algebraic problem which was about fifty feet long and four feet high. And that’s when I stopped trying to be clever.

Christopher Nolan (Director): The thing you hope for, doing an original project like this that isn’t a sequel, franchise or based on something from another medium. You hope that if you succeed, it would encourage that type of film-making within the studio system. It’s what we tried to do with Inception and it would be nice if it would work with this as well. One of my earliest movie memories was going to Leicester Square to see 2001[A  Space Odyssey]. I was seven years old and I have never forgotten the scale of that experience. I saw my first IMAX film when I was fifteen and then immediately wanted to make features. So working on this scale and in this medium is a long held dream of mine. We have been swamped by digital video technology but film has to have a future. Even from an archival perspective, the libraries and film studios can’t function without it, so it’s very important to preserve its place in the film-making process and obviously that’s something I do, to help preserve it for future generations.

Kelly Reichardt is a director working on the fringes of a system which mostly chooses to ignore her. She works on films in her summer holidays, ploughing the lonely furrow of making cinema that allows us to think, hope and dream. The overriding sense of Reichardt’s characters is one of stillness in action and reaction; a motion controlled by escape of their past and futures. Possibilities are offered even as they are destroyed; which she turns inward to attack her protagonist’s sense of self and hopeful transgression.

Her gelastic debut feature, River of Grass (1994), forces us to look judgmentally at a couple so desperate to feature in their own road movie that they run before the inevitable crime to come. Old Joy (2006), is about two competing narratives in which intertwining and antagonistic avenues of masculinity equipoise: the rebel-without-a-cause and the midlife crisis. Wendy and Lucy (2008), a primary echo of Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley, focuses on America between the fault lines of economic disaster and love, which journeys within and without misery and all too real ill-judged experience.

Meek’s Cutoff (2010) is a story which has the mythical shape of a Fordian western steered through the contours of the repetitive rigours of Samuel Beckett. The pioneering protagonists are lost in the forbidding, desert landscape of the Oregon Trail circa 1845, but their real journeys – ethical and spiritual both – take place largely within their private existence.

Reichardt’s latest film, Night Moves, is a reactive throbbing elective insight to the failings of individual acts of political terrorism. The film follows three environmental activists who seek to blow up a damn in the Pacific Northwest and the fallout from the success of this doomed action.

Can you tell me a little about the influences on Night Moves?

When you’re writing and making a film there are years in there. You read many things, some that are topical, some that are inspirational and some that turn out not to be meaningful. The research into Night Moves was so fun. There were so many different ways to go. Being able to dive into films I hadn’t watching in a while was great, films like Robert Bresson’s The Devil, Probably (1977) and Fassbinder’s film with his mother (Germany in Autumn, 1978). Generally all those great European films that deal with radicalism as well as old news articles that looked at the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground and Patty Hearst who was always in the news when I was growing up, alongside the Angela Davis trial. Revisiting all that as an adult and trying to find out the patterns that happens to radical groups and their intentions and how they end up in a world of isolation, paranoia and violence; and how these things unravel. Then integrating those ideas with the environmental movement in the North West of America those last few years.

How difficult was Night Moves to get made?

Getting my films made is difficult and that has a lot to do with the sort of stories I’m interesting in telling. Small scale stories that focus less in the winners in life, those ideas do not attract financing. The 90s were very much a male decade and it was all about working out how I could get the power in my own hands and not be at the mercy of an industry that I didn’t fit into in anyway and still make narrative work. I went back and made a 15 minute Super 8 film with two actors and a two person crew and after that I eventually made Old Joy but that took years to save the money to make and was a two week shoot with a six person crew, two actors and a dog. I then realised I would only be make these smaller films that would only be shown to my friends but at least I had figured out how I could work. By happenstance though Old Joy happened to have more of a life than I expected and led me to be able to make another film. It always seems temporary and could come to end at any point.

A lot of adjectives used to describe your work are intended as perjoratives such as “nuanced”, which I would see as a positive. Is this frustrating?

It was very sad recently that Ken Loach said that after all these years of filmmaking he has realised that films have very little influence on the culture ultimately and then he added that when you consider the state of filmmaking that is a positive thing. It’s a real chicken and egg thing, I went to a talk the other night in Portland from a man who runs a record store there called Mississippi Records and it was pretty fascinating. His thesis was that the culture always follows music and at times like the Civil Rights movement where there has been positive change it has happened concurrent when these voices in music have been able to break through into the popular culture, even if by accident. There was a writer and critic for The New York Times who wrote an article about “having to eat his cultural vegetables” and he wondered if there was anything in it for him. My films were included in what he referred to as cultural vegetables. So if someone who writes for one of the most influential papers in the world says he doesn’t find value in something like Tarkovsky and these ‘slow’ movies don’t add up to anything, that is worrying. On the flipside though if you look at a film like Wadja, you have to ask how did that manage to cut through? There are films that surprise you and breakthrough, they must somehow be able to feed people what they need. Idiosyncratic work is very expensive and time consuming to distribute and so if distributors can’t find a way to market your work it feels for them like too much work or too expensive to be worthwhile.

Night Moves is in cinemas from August 29

How to Survive a Plague is a life-changing documentary, directed by David France, which follows NYC activists from the early 1980s onwards desperately campaigning for the HIV and AIDS crisis to be taken seriously by US politicians, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Pharmaceutical Companies and hospitals.

Through pure perseverance and sweat, blood and oceans of tears, cooperation finally yielded an effective drug combination in 1996. This Oscar-nominated documentary leaves you in no doubt that if you need something to be done, you have to cling on for dear life and not let go until it happens. I caught up with David France over Skype for a chat about his film and the ongoing battle against HIV.

Congratulations on an excellent film. I’ve watched it twice now; the first time I was crying in the cinema, the second time I was really angry. Were those two reactions the ones you were going for?

Thank you. I actually think it’s a third emotion. Maybe if you watch it again it will happen. The story thrills people: I’ve been in audiences where people leap to their feet afterwards this sense of having been on this triumphant journey, that they hadn’t expected. People expect that a movie about AIDS is going to make them sad or angry and it does, it can’t not because so many people died and there were so many ways that the death toll could have been stopped that were ignored or denied to the community of people who were suffering.

But at the same time what these few people, men and women, most of them with HIV, were able to accomplish was phenomenal. Without any medical training or political training without anything in common, besides their HIV infections, they were able to build this grassroots social justice movement that not only radicalised the way medicine is practised and science is undertaken and drugs are regulated, released but also began the forward motion of the LGBT movement in a way that didn’t exist before, and that ultimately gave us the momentum that’s brought us where we are today. It all somehow came out of the dark crucible of this massive, tragic epidemic.

Would you say that you’re as much of an activist as a journalist and filmmaker?

I am not an activist…I learned early on that I wasn’t any good at it. What I was much better at was telling the stories of what other people were doing and that’s what I’ve done in How to Survive a Plague. It’s really to repeat the story that I witnessed, you know, I’m in the footage –  I’m there in the film in the background, as a journalist with notepad, always on the margins, always pushed against the walls of those meetings, very impressed at what they were doing and also very hopeful. I hoped that they would succeed.

At the end of the film you mention the number of people who were dying because they were unable to afford the AIDS drugs, that’s not changed that much has it?

When I finished the the film two years ago there were 6 million people on the drugs, today there’s 10 million people on the drugs and I’d like to take responsibility (laughs) I’d like to say I had something to do with that but I doubt it it’s really the work of today’s activists who are fighting to lower the cost of those drugs and who are building these vast healthcare delivery networks in parts of the world that had never had such things before. And building the support networks that are allowing and encouraging people to begin taking the drugs and to stay on them every day without fail for the rest of their lives. There are 18 million HIV infections in the world and 10 million of those people are on effective medication today and that’s thanks to activism, that’s thanks to the work that is still being done.

It’s going to be a big leap to get the rest of the 18 million people on to the drugs, isn’t it?

It’s not that they are further afield within the countries where there are effective programmes it’s that they’re in countries where there are no effective programmes, bits of the world which have not yet addressed the problem. It will be no more difficult there than it was in South Africa which today is a model for treatment access globally, not just in sub-Saharan Africa. They’ve really shown the way and if they can do it, we can get it done…in all the places untouched by AIDS medication.

Do you think that the making (and reception) of films like yours and Dallas Buyers Club suggests that there’s less discrimination against people with HIV now than there was?

In world history it’s the most stigmatised disease ever. You know, Cancer used to have a stigma attached to it and that’s been eliminated…but HIV stigma still needs addressing in the West, not just parts of the world that we may think of being a decade or two behind the rest of us.

I showed the film in one of the townships in South Africa, in Khayelitsha which has the highest concentration of HIV infections in the world; it’s a dire community of shacks and shared toilets, toilets shared by hundreds, with no electricity and people came out to watch the film. A young girl, probably a teenager, raised her hand afterwards and she had a question and a statement, her statement was ‘thank you for showing us this film, until now I didn’t think anyone else ever got it’. They internalise it so much that she thought it was ‘only us here in this terrible world’. Then she asked ‘in your country, do you bury people with AIDS in the same cemetery as everybody else’? which suggested to me that they’re dumping bodies, because that stigma is so intense that even the dead are stigmatised.

You’ve been writing about HIV and AIDS for thirty years; what inspired you to make How to Survive a Plague now?

Well, I dedicated the film to my lover who died of AIDS, Doug Gould who died in ’92, so I was thinking about the anniversary of his death, thinking about those years and how hard it is sometimes to remember them and how inconceivable (those years) seemed to people who hadn’t been through them. And i felt a responsibility to try and convey that to people who weren’t there, for them to know that in this recent, recent history this tragedy was allowed to happen.

As Peter Staley (activist) says at the end of the film; ‘that brave group of people stood up and fought and, in some cases, died so that others might live and be free’. That we dont know about that is crazy, that we don’t know what this handful of people did for the rest of humanity is crazy.

How to Survive a Plague is released on DVD and Blu-ray on 31 March

Twitter: @SurvivePlagueUK and @ByDavidFrance

The third solo avenger outing since the gang assembled two years ago finally arrives this week with Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Introducing more gritty, urban characteristics than Marvel’s recent flights of fancy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier incorporates conspiracy and espionage thriller elements into a story of double-crossing and subterfuge.

The film’s directors and cast assembled for a press conference in London last week to discuss various aspects of the production but most interestingly, the stunt work and the upcoming battle between Captain America, Superman and Batman.

Anthony Russo (Director): This is the first movie where we really get a chance to catch up with Captain America in the modern day. He’s just woke up after seventy years and discovered he’s alone and that no one he knows is around anymore. It’s a very isolated place for him, a very vulnerable place. His relationships with other characters in the movie are even more important because he has nobody.

Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/ Captain America): He is just a good man with morals and values. You can put him anywhere whether it’s a period film or political thriller and that quality will still come through.

Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff/ Black Widow): You will get more of my character’s back-story in Avengers 2. She has a rich past, definitely comes from a dark place. All these years Natasha has been acting as a gun for hire and we are now starting to witness her character’s progression. But exploring that story further will possibly be for a future instalment.

Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/ Captain America): There are always injuries. Whether you end up in a cast or not. Doing that stunt work is physical stuff, even when you block a punch that punch lands somewhere. We’re all getting old so it has lasting effects.

Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff/ Black Widow): I’m forever wounded. I have old wounds dating back to Iron Man 2. But that’s part of the joy isn’t it. Actually it isn’t part of the joy. As you sustain more injuries over time it hurts for longer. I have some battle wounds from my kung fu, part of Natasha’s fighting style is that she uses her thighs so I like to do as much of the stunt work as possible.

Samuel L Jackson (Nick Fury): I don’t. I use my stunt man extensively. I have no issues with him being hurt, that’s what he’s paid to do. He loves it. He’s from a stunt family. His father was a stunt man. All of his brothers are stunt men. Before he ate breakfast in the morning his Dad used to kick him down the stairs or make them jump out of windows to make them come downstairs to get the breakfast. He worked more than I did.

Joe Russo (Director): It is a very ambitious undertaking, probably the most ambitious series of films that have ever been made in terms of how they are connected… We are aware that the Captain America 3 and Batman Vs Superman release dates clash in 2016. We’re working on that now but I think when two cars are steaming towards each other, one of them has got to get out of the way at some point. Marvel announced that date originally and have been holding it for a long time but all we want to do is make the best movie we can.

Andy Nyman talks to Mark Searby about the joint interests in horror which led him and co-writer Jeremy Dyson (The League of Gentlemen) to create a scream-worthy stage show.

More New Empress Mag Video Blogs here

Silent film isn’t enjoying a renaissance, it never went away: Mark Kermode talks about this most stylish foundation rock of cinema in the past and present.

Previous New Empress Magazine Video Blog goodies can be found ‘ere: NewEmpressMagazine

To celebrate all the lovely video blog shizzle that we’ve been giving you this year – here is a selection of bloopers from Mark Searby, who is never even the tiniest bit afraid to look silly in the name of film worship…as it should be.

To look back over our video blog action please do visit the New Empress Youtube page here: NewEmpressMagazine