From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment.

I'm Elvis Mitchell.

You can also hear the show to KCRW.com.

I think my guest, artist and director, Steve McQueen, has a talent for using space

in his work and in his directorial debut, the film Hunger, which is the look really at the last

six weeks of the life of Bobby Sand. Steve, thanks so much for being here, first of all.

Thank you very much for inviting me. And I think the way you use space is really interesting

to me. I mean, the way people inhabit space and the way I think people are either comfortable or uncomfortable in it.

It seems to have been an interesting consideration in hunger.

Yes.

Interestingly enough, not just the space of the actual participants of the movie, but the position of the Cameron and the crew,

because that's what makes the sort of

situation. I mean, for example, in hunger, I actually wanted to actually film in the May's

prison where the events of the 1981 hunger strike took place, but unfortunately, or fortunately

for us, the authorities at B refuses access. And I think if we did shoot there, what would have happened was the weight in history of that place,

would have affected the performance, would have affected the crew.

So what we did instead was build a set, which is identical to those sort of dimensions of the one leg of the H block,

because the actual prison is designed as if a H, as a symbol of a H.

Actually, it was designed by the Germans to house the Bainemannof,

and then this prison design came directly from there

to house the loyalist and republican prisoners,

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