Filmmakers Mike Leigh and Elaine Proctor on their close friendship

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/17/filmmakers-mike-leigh-and-elaine-proctor-on-friendship

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HER STORY Elaine Proctor, 53, novelist and filmmaker

Before I met Mike, I felt like I knew him. After watching Meantime – an unbelievably desperate film – I devoured everything he’d made. Then, in 1989, I was studying film when he walked through the door to teach us. He was the first person who thought I was funny at film school. Everybody else thought I was unbelievably earnest and anguished. I grew up in South Africa and there was a lot of personal upheaval I hadn’t yet got to grips with.

Alongside learning, I discovered the pleasure of his company – his sense of humour, his love of food. He’s entirely committed to his work, but at the same time full of a irony, warmth and affection. What I took out of that experience – and has remained true – is that I entirely trust him.

We stepped inside his practice during his teaching. He was very tough on using anything that wasn’t the unadorned truth – for example, when I wanted to move the camera on tracks, he challenged me. After my graduation film screening, he stuffed a piece of paper in my hand. It said: “You are a great filmmaker.” I keep it in my box of treasures.

His friendship has been important to my life. I was working in Namibia when my three-year-old daughter had a near-fatal cobra bite. After that I withdrew from making films. I had years of desolate domesticity but the one person I felt I could call or see was Mike.

If you have a teacher who is important to you, you hold a sense of them in everything you do. I feel unbelievably lucky to be a close witness to the contribution he’s made to British film. I love him. He’s a mensch.

Elaine Proctor is the author of The Savage Hour (Quercus, £16.99). To order a copy for £11.19, go to bookshop.theguardian.com

HIS STORY Mike Leigh, 72, film and theatre director

It was the first time I was teaching at the National Film School when I was Elaine’s tutor. The deal I had with her and each person in the workshop was that they would write and direct a film on location, but I would jump in and jump on them. What was interesting about Elaine’s film was you could immediately see she knew what she was doing. She was practical – that’s to say objective and skilful – but also got out of it what it was about emotionally.

Teaching at a film school isn’t like teaching at a university: it’s very informal, we’re a fraternity of filmmakers, and the fact that somebody happens to be the tutor and somebody else is learning is academic. But I’m very flattered by what Elaine says about me as her teacher. I certainly couldn’t say that about anybody who’s taught me. When we were both in competition at Cannes in 1993, she says I showed her how it works, but I had never been to Cannes before, so I must have been bullshitting.

She’s gorgeous, very intelligent and doesn’t take shit from anybody. I know lots of filmmakers who decide they’re going to be novelists as well, but very few pull it off. Elaine’s done it and succeeded. She is also a hostess with the mostest. Not so long ago, a brilliant producer, Margaret Matheson, who did Abigail’s Party with me, reached a significant birthday. Elaine coordinated a secret party – it was 30 years of British cinema in one place, and great fun.

She has a really good sense of humour and a great twinkle. We now have a more occasional friendship, but we’ve always been on the same wavelength.