DocNZ: pitching comp and other award winners
by: Keith Barclay

Screen Hub
Friday 27 February, 2009

The DocNZ Pitching Forum wasn't exactly a contest, although to get the sap rising the afore-mentioned NZFC, still in Valentine's Day mood, had kicked in a $1,500 sweetener for Best Pitch.

Pat Ferns facilitated the forum. The panel saw eight pitches, offered advice, helpful comments, suggestions of alternative and/or additional routes to funding and various pointers (not including the exit).

Seven of the pitches addressed, in broad terms, immigrants to New Zealand exploring their identity in relation to their homelands. The stories and motivations driving the projects varied with the pitchers telling very personal stories, some of which explored social and political issues.

The winner of the cheque, by a nose, was Dan Salmon for Pictures of Susan, the one pitch that didn't fit into the roots theme. It's a story about communication, the story of Susan King, a fifty-six year old New Zealand woman who stopped talking at the age of four and hasn't spoken since.

The second of twelve children, she did draw, producing over two thousand pictures, until she was twenty-seven. Her drawings are expressive, disturbing, intricate works, with a plethora of penises. Then she stopped doing that too.

As another aside, an update on the winner of the last DocNZ Summit's pitching forum, Zoe McIntosh for Lost in Wonderland, in which a cross-dressing crusading lawyer fights for truth, justice and the right to wear nylon stockings. Zoe won a trip to AIDC last year, pitched at Documart and managed to secure a pre-sale to SBS.

The completed film will be delivered to SBS next month. Zoe and her producer, Costa Botes, continue to have difficulty generating serious interest from NZ broadcasters, despite being a NZ story.

The Summit's second pitch contest was for the DocNZ Goethe-Institut Scholarship. It's hard to say at the time of writing what the scholarship prize will comprise, beyond being based on a expenses-paid three-month residency in Germany. (Let's avoid the temptation to joke that the second prize is a six-month residency.) The Institut is keen to work with the winner to tailor a programme that will best serve the project they pitched.

Christoph Mücher, director of the Goethe-Institut in Wellington, drew the Summit's twin threads of Germany and humour together, announcing that although the session would start late, the Germans were all there on time.

The late arrival of certain panellists throughout the day, and indeed the non-appearance of two, prompted speculation that wrist-worn GPS units should be issued in next year's goodie bags.

Originally, the intention was for the pitch session to be conducted behind closed doors, but a late decision was taken to make it public. The decision was made over lunch. The instruction, “Open up ze pitcher,” was apparently given in reference to a third carafe of Gewurztraminer, but misconstrued due to the loss of the final syllable in traffic noise.

Ten finalists presented. One had to pity Hans Robert Eisenhauer, ZDF/Arte, and Sue Woodfield, TV3, who were on both pitching forum panels during the day. Eighteen projects in one day is an awful lot of material to consider.

After due consideration, the winner was Julie Hill's Wind of Change, about the fall of the Berlin Wall and featuring the band Scorpion: How a hard rock band became the poster boys of perestroika and their song [the eponymous Wind of Change] the soundtrack to the end of the cold war.

Go here http://www.the-scorpions.com/english/discography/records/ to revisit those halcyon pre-reunification days when rock'n'roll heroes shamelessly wore satin pants two sizes too small, teetered on platform shoes and permed their hair – all in pursuit of unsafe sex, drug addiction and premature deafness. There are some things that even pulling down the Berlin Wall can't change.

And as if making two people happy on the same day wasn't enough, the DocNZ Awards were sprinkled like gold dust throughout the Festival Launch at the Hopetoun Alpha on Wednesday night.

Ahem. (Pauses to open envelope) And the winners were...
International Competition - Short Documentary: Don Roberto's Shadow
International Competition – Feature Documentary: At the Death House Door
Special Mention: The Heart of Jenin

New Zealand Competition – Short Documentary: An Ordinary Person
New Zealand Competition– Feature Documentary: Shustak
Special Mention: Assume Nothing

Best Emerging NZ Filmmaker: Stuart Page, Shustak
Screenrights Best Educational Documentary: The Last Western Heretic
Best Editor: François Verster, Sea Point Days
Best Cinematographer: John Collins, Ian Kerr,The Wild Horse Redemption
Best Director: Heddy Honigmann, Oblivion

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

editor@screenhub.co.nz

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