...as BBC4 snaps up her documentary

Nina Conti’s ventriloquism documentary Her Master’s Voice has won an international film award – just as the BBC snapped it up for broadcast.

The twin successes come as vindication for the comedian, who funded the ‘labour of love’ herself, after being knocked back by broadcasters.

The film covers her relationship with the late Ken Campbell – the experimental actor, improviser and director who was her mentor as she took up the art – as well as the relationship between ventriloquists and their mannequins.

It has just premiered at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, where it won the audience award in the global section last night. Meanwhile, BBC4 has brought the broadcast rights, and is due to air it next month.

Conti told Chortle: ‘The film is pretty much a love letter to Ken Campbell. When Ken died in 2008, the entirety of his estate was left to his daughter Daisy except for one small corner – he left me his ventriloquist dummies.  So I had these rather emotive objects in my office, and I was struck by how they had lost their voices.

‘I was miserable about the loss of Ken, scared that the adventures would now stop and these frozen faces seemed to crave an adventure.  So I decided to make a film about taking his bereaved dolls on a pilgrimage to Vent Haven, the resting place for puppets of dead ventriloquists, in Kentucky, in 2009.  Vent Haven also hosts an annual international ventriloquist convention.

‘I knew this would work as a documentary so I set about writing proposals off to broadcasters and producers, but it was totally fruitless.  No nibbles at all.

‘I still believed in it strongly and I didn’t want anyone to scupper my fun, or my need to tell this story.  I mainly realised that doing it would be far more valuable to me than selling it.  And I knew it would help my grieving to do something batty in Ken’s memory and get to bring his puppets to life.

‘I took a film crash course at the Frontline Club in Paddington and learnt about everything from how to use a camera and edit on final cut, I was the only ventriloquist alongside frontline war photographers.’

After a year of struggling with it, Conti – the daughter of actor Tom and best known for her doll Monkey – finally recruited experienced editor Riaz Meer to help put the film together.

‘We worked on it a further year in our out of office hours,‘ she said. ‘I spent a lot of money on it, and you could say it was funded by a monkey gigging his arse off.’

After the edit was finished, Conti sent it to Spinal Tap and Best In Show writer Christopher Guest, who agreed to be executive producer – and since then, interest has spiralled. Her Master’s Voice has also been accepted into other international festivals, including one in Atlanta which starts later this month.

Conti said: ‘It’s a unique film, and I think that’s thanks to the undiluted method in which it was made, in that I didn’t have to worry about pleasing any funders so it just takes its own singular flavour. 

‘Also I felt totally free as a performer in it because no one was watching.  But now they are and I’m delighted to be sharing it.’

Here is a trailer.

Published: 18 Mar 2012