After his acclaimed documentaries profiling the likes of Ayrton Senna, Diego Maradona and Amy Winehouse, Oscar-winning director Asif Kapadia has chosen a subject close to his own heart for his latest movie.
While the trio of aforementioned documentaries were made as a trilogy examining ‘child geniuses and fame’, Kapadia is a lifelong Liverpool fan and has opted to mix his hobby with the day job, with a feature-length documentary about Reds legend Kenny Dalglish.
Exploring Dalglish’s time as both a player and a manager, the documentary also touches on the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters in a comprehensive telling of the 74-year-old’s career.
Asif Kapadia on his Kenny Dalglish documentary
“Kenny is of the era that could easily become forgotten soon,” Kapadia tells FourFourTwo. “His generation is starting to fade away. Each time we lose someone, all these incredible old stories emerge and we celebrate them. But why wait until they’re gone?
“When I agreed to make my film, I went up to Anfield and met Kenny in a boardroom. I explained that I don’t film people when I make my documentaries. I like to use archive material and piece it together that way. I said we’d just need to meet a couple of times for some audio, then I’d go off and make the film. He liked the sound of that.
“My original idea was actually to make a film that just celebrated Kenny the footballer. I wondered if it would be possible to not touch on Heysel and Hillsborough. But I very quickly realised that wouldn’t be an option.
“That misses the point of Kenny. He’s not linked to those disasters because he was there and he was a prominent figure at the time, he’s linked because he’s the person who stepped up, and those moments are really what make the man – it’s what makes him special.
“He’d have had an amazing career if it just included his time at Celtic. A lot of people will have never seen quite a lot of the footage. My team dug through endless reels of old film, much of which was archived or at people’s houses. We were the first to watch some of that footage in decades. I’ll admit, I wasn’t close to appreciating just how majestic Kenny had been.
“A modern player on mudbath pitches, as brave as he was brilliant. Then you get to Liverpool and it all just goes into superdrive. He had a swagger and an understanding nobody else did.
“He’s a wonderfully old school kind of guy, too. He doesn’t come with an entourage – Kenny turned up in a suit and told me off for not looking smarter, with that little grin. His only request when we met was a couple of cans of Irn-Bru and a giant bar of Dairy Milk.”
Kapadia admits that the modest Dalglish was not the type to over-egg his achievements, which created challenges for the filmmaker.
“I wanted to make a film that celebrates him, but Kenny isn’t one to big himself up,” he continues. “That was the most challenging thing – trying to get him to speak about his contribution to those incredible achievements, and not merely deflect the credit on to everybody else. But that’s what he tries to do. Anybody that has ever met him will tell you that.
“I think that has come across in the movie – how brilliant he is and how humble he is. He’s a superstar and I’m so proud of the film.”
Asif Kapadia’s documentary film Kenny Dalglish is now on Amazon Prime
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