Life Unscripted: A Day In The Life of Doc NZ
by: Keith Barclay

Screen Hub
Tuesday 24 February, 2009

About eighteen months ago, I put on my Screen Hub uniform and attended the last DocNZ Summit. It''s now moved to what will become its regular slot on the calendar, following close behind AIDC (in a strictly non-prison movie shower-scene way) to maximise the Summit''s ability to attract international speakers and guests.

The trade-off with the new date was that I had to miss the Oscars, so I didn't get to watch all that gushing on the red carpet, faux-surprise acceptance speeches and Hugh Jackman. So far, so good.

I also missed seeing James Marsh's Man on Wire pick up a little gold man for Best Documentary Feature. When I saw it a couple of weeks ago I found Philippe Petit one of the most irritating people I've ever watched. Half an hour in I was willing le petit batard to jump.

The Best Short Documentary Award and short gold man went to Megan Mylan's Smile Pinki, keeping faith with this year's recession-friendly Poverty Chic theme which enabled another set-in-India project to hoover up the bulk of the major awards.

So, that's what I didn''t do today. What I did was attend the opening day of the DocNZ Summit in sunny downtown Auckland.

The welcome note in the Summit programme came from John Key, New Zealand's latest Prime Minister. He informed us that this year's Summit and accompanying International Film Festival has a twin focus on ''Germany and humour'', two words that rarely appear in the same sentence without a negative between them.

I wondered our new glorious leader had addled his brain when he collected a double fracture at a Chinese New Year celebration, after leaving the stage without using the stairs - a classic comedy move in itself. Or perhaps he'd simply mislaid his irony filter.

However, at the “Auckland City Council networking function in celebration of Auckland’s international partnership with Hamburg and support for the screen production industry” (which would surely be all one word if translated into German*), Thomas Tieschl, award-winning producer from filmtank and impromptu ambassador for Hamburg, proved an entertaining and humorous speaker.

He noted that Hamburg is the only European city with which Auckland has an international partnership. Having spent over thirty hours on planes getting here, he now understood why.

Another first-day speaker with plenty of experience of flying over Germany was Robin Kewell, who started his working life as an RAF bomber pilot. After a few years of that he saw the error of his ways and re-trained as a silversmith, finally entering the world of film and television as a stunt cameraman in his late thirties.

Now resident in New Zealand, he''s worked on over 350 film and television projects as film-maker and cameraman. A fan since childhood of Heath Robinson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, he's filmed in some of the world's harshest and most challenging environments, shooting nature doco's in the sub-Antarctic, Hawaiian surf contests, and promo''s for the overly optimistic Eritrean Tourist Board during a short-lived ceasefire in the thirty-year war with neighbouring Ethiopia.

In addition to showing some impressive clips of his extreme camerawork, he shared the contents of his intrepid cameraperson's travel kit. It featured some familiar friends such as glad wrap (instant rain- and dust-proofing for cameras) and duct tape (useful for sticking banana-palm leaves together to make trousers, or for sticking your head back together following a machete attack).

Less traditional items included an apple for stopping water droplets forming on camera lenses (particularly useful when shooting watersports, of which Robin''s done a lot), and a sacrificial wallet. It should be filled with expired credit cards, high denomination bills of useless currency (Zimbabwean dollars are particularly good being not worth the paper they're printed on - literally), and a picture of kids – a neighbour''s kids will suffice if you don't have any of your own. In the event of being mugged, donate the sacrificial wallet to the cause with a suitable show of distress and avoid the temptation to smirk.

The focus on humour closed the first day's panel discussions, with Dan Shanan facilitating a discussion between Yishai Orian (dir. The Beetle), the afore-mentioned Thomas Tieschl (prod. The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories) and NZ's Te Radar (film-maker, Christmas in Bethlehem: a Naivety Play).

Starting with a quote from the late Billy Wilder, “If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you,” the panel examined ways of tackling difficult subjects in a humorous way.

Te Radar felt trust, particularly between a film-maker and subject, was of paramount importance, that the humour should come from the situation and the people experiencing it. He spoke against a Borat-style of setting-up people to present themselves at their worst, preferring Louis Theroux's approach of the naïve outsider.

Another important factor in getting a good result was the team. Te Radar drew an analogy between comedy and music – some people don''t have a musical bone in their body. With the best will in the world, they won't appreciate the subtleties and possibilities – the musicality. With comedy it's the same. You can beat some people over the head with strong comedic material, but they won't see its potential.

Thomas showed clips from The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories, and Metal in the Country. It's fair to say that watching the clips the comedy lost something in translation, because both films require more understanding of their subject matter than was possible in the time constraints of the session.

Yishai spoke of the challenge of how to make an unfunny subject funny: cancer will give a good dramatic story, but a funny film about cancer is difficult. Referencing an earlier session which addressed marketing ideas, when an example of creating an online video game to market a movie about refugees in Darfur was given, it felt as though it came down to personal values.

Te Radar closed the session with a clip from Christmas in Bethlehem, in which he talked to people who'd lost children in the struggle between Israel and Palestine. It's certainly a depressing and topical subject, but the clips he showed illustrated the lightness of touch he'd talked about earlier.

Jews yelled at other Jews, calling them traitors for wanting peace with the Palestinians. The ''traitors'', whose child was murdered by the Palestinians, told Te Radar that New Zealand, not Israel, was the promised land. It was a fine example of the humanity of the film. Perhaps humanity rather than humour should have been the focus. Humour is only a part of humanity, and if we discover and present the humanity in our subjects and their stories, the humour will be revealed.


* For the record, Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz is the longest German word in use. Literally it translates, rather disappointingly, as "Beef labelling supervision duty assignment law". Stop trying to pronounce it unless you really, really like knowing the answers to very obscure trivia questions. If that''s the case, you should get a life – unscripted.

Keith Barclay
Our New Zealand editor, Keith Barclay, can be contacted on 021 400 102

editor@screenhub.co.nz

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