That Summer centres on a project photographer/artist Peter Beard initiated in 1972 with Lee Radziwill (sister of Jackie Onassis) about her relatives, the Beales of Grey Gardens (her aunt Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and cousin Edith Bouvier Beale). The long-lost footage is brought back to life by the Swedish director.

First of all, how did you get in touch with Peter Beard and what attracted you to this material,very different from your previous films that were dealing with race issues and segregation?
Göran Hugo Olsson: It’s a shift from my previous films, but I’ve always made films about social issues. I am a political animal, but also a lover of film history and art. I’ve always had those two passions. From a young age, I would bike from an ANC meeting to the library in my Swedish hometown, to pick up the latest Interview magazine.

I met Peter Beard through Joslyn Barnes, my US co-producer. She was attending a dinner and Peter and his wife were there. They started to talk and Peter said he had this material. Joslyn knew about my fascination for New York art scene in the 1970s.

What do the glorious 70s in New York and the fancy Montauk/Long Island artistic community represent to you?
GHO: The art scene, social nightlife of New York in the 1970s was for me the very heart of cultural life. In the US there were problems with drugs, unemployment, racial issues, but at the same time the art scene celebrated freedom, tolerance, multi-ethnicity, disco, homosexuality and Peter Beard was very much at the centre of that scene. Plus he was involved in environmental issues in Africa and in the US.

What are your views on Peter Beard’s work as a photographer?
GHO: Peter Beard has to be recognised as one of the pioneers in wildlife photography. He has succeeded in putting onto people’s agenda issues that would otherwise have been neglected, such as man-made destruction done to Africa’s wildlife and in particular the killing of elephants. He has one photo with more elephants than there are in Uganda right now.

How did you work with Peter to revive the material he filmed with Lee Radziwill, and what where your biggest concerns while making the film?
GHO: Peter was generous and accepted that it’s better to have one vision and go with that. We discussed a lot, explored various ideas, I proposed the script and Peter was fine with it. I could have easily done a remix and intertwined the material with comments, but I wanted to keep it raw and give the audience a feeling of a hidden gem, out of respect for the originators of the material.

How much material was available?
GHO: I’m often asked this question. The material on the Beales wasn’t that large, but then we had a lot of other endless material, and I shot 10-15 minutes myself and could have done much more. But I wanted to keep it simple.

Because of the faded Polaroid images, the film has a strong sense of nostalgia and poetry, which contrasts with the reality of the Grey Gardens home which is in an appalling state of abandon. Did you discuss with Peter Beard how the Beales (whose past glamour was obvious) came to live in such a dilapidated environment and isolation, ie their rise and fall?
GHO: Even though many of us want a radical change in society, we all understand nostalgia that is part of being human. But the situation of the Beales at Grey Gardens is about how you are allowed to behave as a woman of a certain standard. They were protected by their privileged class, but only to a certain point, when society interfered with their lives. Their neighbours at East Hampton were afraid the real estate value of their homes would diminish because of the dilapidated state of the Grey Gardens estate and in 1971, inspectors from the Suffolk County Health Department interfered. This is something that would not have happened in Sweden. I discussed this a lot with Peter. Eventually, the house was renovated thanks to Jackie Kennedy Onassis’s financial contribution. I think the pressure was on Jackie to do it because of her status as a public figure.

Both Lee and Jackie lived abroad and were most probably not aware of how things were at Grey Gardens.

Lee Radziwill comes out as a charming and lovable person in the film…
GHO: I totally agree. She is like a super woman. She raises her kids, she has this handsome boyfriend [Peter Beard at the time], takes care of her relatives in this abandoned house, supervising the renovation works, and never loses her aura.

Ultimately why did Peter and Lee shelve this film project?
GHO: That summer, they were touring with the Rolling Stones, it was a busy time for them. Peter was sharing his time between Montauk, New York and Kenya. But they are prototypes in a way of the way people are today with Instagram. At the time, they probably thought: oh, let’s make a film about our family…but perhaps they were not dedicated enough to that project.

The film had its world premiere at Telluride in the US. How did the US audience react to the film and will it have a wider release there?
GHO: It was super special there and the cinemas were packed. Now Sundance Selects/IFC has bought the film and will launch it big in the US. Dogwoof will release it in the UK, and NonStop plans to release it in Sweden [in September]. All these are fantastic distributors and I feel very fortunate.

This film (like most of your films) was produced by Story AB in Sweden, in coproduction with Louverture Films in the US and Final Cut for Real in Denmark. Is it a dream partnership?
GHO: More than with any of my previous works, this film was a true collaborative effort with Tobias Janson [Story AB], Signe Byrge Sorensen [Final Cut for Real], Joslyn Barnes, and here with the Peter Beard Foundation, as the original idea for this film came from Joslyn, not from me. We were in it from the very beginning.

I’ve heard that you’ve have decided not to film new material and to dedicate your documentary work to archive material. Why?
GHO: I wouldn’t call it archive but existing footage. When I started with film, it was an exclusive apparatus. This has changed with technological development. Today, everyone has a film camera in his/her pocket. I can do films with my friends and family, but it’s not so interesting for the general audience. I’d rather take images that exist at SVT or other organisations, and build a story out of it.

What is your next project?
GHO: I’m doing a film about mass consumption, with another director called Rocky Farhat. She is a Swedish/Iranian visual artist/filmmaker. Story AB is producing again with Louverture Films.