"THERE was something mysterious about it. You felt it was a world unto itself that wasn't open to the public. I used to be fascinated by that." This is how Marcus Robinson remembers Belfast's Titanic Quarter in the days when it was still home to the thriving ship-building industry that employed his late father, Norman, a naval architect at Harland & Wolff.
The New York-based artist, whose documentary Rebuilding The World Trade Center won the Bafta for Television Craft: Photography-Factual earlier this year, was back in Belfast this month to make a short film about the ongoing regeneration of the city's most famous industrial area.
"I used to be fascinated with what was happening around the place," recalls Robinson (54), who would often visit his father at the Titanic Drawing Office.
"I used to love to be involved with what was happening or to be able to film things. "As life went on, they let me in a few times to do paintings outside the shipyard. I painted a lot of the port of Belfast before some of the older more beautiful buildings were demolished. "There's something about the old rusty bollards and the cobblestones and the old tram tracks which gives the place so much character, it really speaks to my soul. "I get a lot of that from my dad. He used to love the slight dereliction, the slight ambiguity of a space that's not really the city, yet is within the city. In some ways it was like the soul of the city, to have such a productive area right at its heart."
Featuring amazing 'fly-on-the-girder' footage, time-lapse photography and creatively integrated hand-drawn animation, Rebuilding The World Trade Center was filmed over seven years from 2006 to 2013.
Having debuted on Channel 4 last September, a newly extended cut of the film is set to premiere on America's History Channel on September 11. Robinson's Titanic Quarter film will be screened at a pre-broadcast party at 4 World Trade Center next week as an audio visual link between his inspirations past and present. As he explains, it came about thanks to the
involvement two of our most high-profile politicians. "Martin McGuinness and Peter Robinson visited my studio last September," reveals the former Campbell College and Cambridge University student, who has lived in New York for eight years. "We had a lovely meeting and afternoon and they met some of the iron workers featured in the film. They enjoyed that so much, I think it sparked off some momentum to create an event that would connect Belfast and New York." Thus, having secured backing from the Northern Ireland Bureau and other sponsors, Robinson returned home to document an area which has changed inmeasurably since it first fired his imagination all those years ago.
Filmed on his favoured 35mm stock, the Titanic Quarter project is set to include "beautiful night shots of the port of Belfast, Harland & Wolff at night, The Nomadic and the Titanic Building". "In a way, I remember it and love it more as it was," he confesses. "Although I'm less familiar with its new incarnation, it's fantastic - a really brilliant success story. "When I was a kid growing up in Belfast, the idea of tourists coming to Northern Ireland was absolutely unthinkable. So there's something about that connection with terrorism and the idea of healing and triumph over adversity that links to what's happening at the World Trade Center site."
Indeed, construction has continued at pace in Lower Manhattan even since the initial version of Rebuilding was screened on Channel 4 last year, and Robinson's cameras have continued to capture it all.
Number 4 World Trade Center and One World Trade Center are now completed, with the first tenants set to move into the former this October. There is also a World Trade Center Museum on site which opened in May.
According to the film-maker, all this has greatly increased the number of visitors, to the point where the site now feels "like Times Square downtown".
The Belfast man's studio on the 48th floor of 7 World Trade Center commands incredible views of the regeneration he has put so much time and effort into documenting.
Indeed, the film-maker was actually still hard at work hundreds of feet above the ground when the Baftas were taking place.
However, next week's pre-broadcast party will see Marcus finally being presented with his award. "I was actually filming at the top of tower four when I had a call from my friends at Channel 4 telling me we'd won," he chuckles. "It's very humbling to be appreciated by such a revered community of film aficionados- and to know that something quintessential about the spirit of the film has touched people."
n Marcusrobinsonart.com.
