Sport Doco Fans Delight! ‘Wheel Blacks: Bodies on the Line’ and ‘Grit & Glory’ Out Now

DEGANZ members have been working away over the past couple of years to bring about new documentary projects focusing on some of Aoteatroa’s top para-athletes and their hopes to qualify for the 2024 Paralympics.

Wheel Blacks: Bodies on the Line

Created by DEGANZ board president Robyn Paterson and fellow member Jai Waite with their production company Sweet Productions, the three-part docuseries follows Aotearoa’s wheelchair rugby team in their bid to qualify for the Paris Paralympics. Despite having to rely on fundraising, charity, and volunteers, the Wheel Blacks are not only fighting for a chance in Paris but also for the future of the sport that has transformed their lives and is a source of inspiration for many.

The series shows the behind-the-scenes of the sport and team, as the players juggle work, family, training, and life with a disability. Ultimately, the series is a story of grit, determination, passion, and hope.

Directed by Robyn and edited by Jai, the creative team has a strong connection with the topic. Jai is a former Wheel Blacks and was on the team when it won gold at the 2004 Paralympics in Athens.

Wheel Blacks: Bodies on the Line is available on Neon and Sky Go now!

Grit & Glory

Directed by Dan Salmon (DEGANZ) and edited by fellow member Emma Patterson, Grit & Glory offers insight into the lives of six NZ athletes as they strive for the 2024 Paralympics.

Following the athletes across two years, the documentary highlights the unique highs and lows of the gruelling process of training and qualifying for the Paralympic Games. From cyclists to swimmers to track runners and a long jumper, the featured athletes share their stories and how they’ve gotten to where they are now. While some are world record holders and have competed at the Games before, others are working to qualify for the first time, pushing themselves farther than ever before.

In an interview with the NZ Herald, executive producer and field director Robyn Scott-Vincent expresses the documentary’s aim to demonstrate that the para-athletes are elite sportsmen, pursuing their sport at an elite level saying,

When you watch the games you don’t understand a lot about the back story. You should by the end of [the documentary] really champion these athletes and know what it’s really been like for them to get there. They absolutely meet their challenges every day head on and they’re not asking for sympathy.

Grit & Glory is available on TVNZ+ now!

 

Last updated on 28 August 2024

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Postcard from MIFF

View from the Top banner

I’m writing this in my hotel room. I arrived today at lunchtime and got thrown into the fray with the three NZ directors attending the MIFF Accelerator Lab, Awanui Simich-Pene, Vea Mafile’o and Te Waiarangi Ratana, and about 40 Australian directors.

Vea and Te Waiarangi’s shorts ran in the first short programme that screened today. They held their own.

The Australians are also good short filmmakers and they addressed a diverse range of topics and themes, across a variety of genres. I’m looking forward to the second short programme tomorrow,

The wonderful thing about shorts is that they allow true creative expression, one of the things I will mention tomorrow in the panel I’m participating in titled ‘Thinking Long and Hard About Shorts’.

On the walk from the hotel to the cinema where we watched Justin Kerzel’s documentary Ellis Park—a beautifully made, at times very sad, but ultimately uplifting biopic about legendary Australian musician Warren Ellis—I was a little shocked to hear from one of the Australian directors that they don’t receive government support for the production of shorts.

The quality of the Australian shorts I saw was certainly good, so these short filmmakers here have found a way to get their films made. Melbourne City featured in a number of the credits. Good to see a city getting behind their filmmakers.

I shared a cab into the city with Jackie van Beek who while living in Australia made at least five self-funded shorts before she returned home to NZ and got her first NZFC support for a short, then went on to make her debut feature, Inland Road.

It can sometimes seem that we in New Zealand lean too hard on NZFC for support when there are other ways of going about it. The Low-budget filmmaking workshop we ran with directors Michael Duignan, Tom Levesque and Tom Sainsbury showcased how they got their feature films shot on their own bat. I know Michael at least however was able to get post-production support to finish his film from NZFC—the finishing grant NZFC offers is something the Guild would very much like to see continue.

In the brief time I’ve been here it does seem things are tightening up for domestic Australian production, but it is certainly still more buoyant than at home. They have commissioned shows from the streamers and their own networks, while international production is for the moment keeping crew busy, at least here in Melbourne, according to one of the Australian directors I talked to.

I’m sorry to be missing NZIFF but I’m at least getting to see a good number of films while I’m here at MIFF. Next is Australian director Charles Williams’ Inside.

Hope you are all catching some great NZ films at the festival.

 

Tui Ruwhiu

Executive Director

 

Last updated on 16 August 2024

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Three New Zealand Directors Selected for the 2024 MIFF Accelerator Lab

DEGANZ is excited to announce the three New Zealand directors selected for the Melbourne International Film Festival’s (MIFF) Accelerator Lab. Each director is attending with a short film screening at the festival.

The Accelerator Lab will take place across four days during the festival this year which is running from 8-25 August. It is designed to nurture tomorrow’s top screen directors on the journey towards their first long-form works.

This year, DEGANZ is managing the participation of New Zealand short filmmakers in the Lab with ED Tui Ruwhiu attending to assist NZ’s participants, observe the sessions, and participate in panels scheduled in the Lab programme.

2024 MIFF ACCELERATOR LAB NEW ZEALAND DIRECTORS

Awanui Simich-Pene

Awanui is a filmmaker and television director of proud Māori descent. Her distinctive cinematic voice is informed by her steadfast commitment to authentic Māori storytelling and wahine perspective. She earned the NZFC Māori Screen Excellence Award for her direction of Titty & Bash in the acclaimed portmanteaux film Waru and is an alumna of Jane Campion’s A Wave in the Ocean Crest programme. Her 18 years of production experience have been balanced between writing, directing and script supervision.

 

First Horse
Aotearoa, 1826. A dying man rides home along the coastline, while a Māori girl weaves a toy boat. She ventures through the forest to launch her boat and is led astray. Sensing danger, she hides and spies on the man and his horse. Fascinated by the horse, she approaches the man. Realising he may have infected her with his disease, he faces a dark dilemma: let her go and risk spreading the illness further or end it there.

 

Te Waiarangi 

Ngāi Tūhoe and based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington). Raised by a single mother, surrounded by whanau and contemporary Māori art. For Te Waiarangi, storytelling is like a responsibility – if you can tell stories, you should. He wants to make films that uplift and celebrate Māori and Indigenous peoples. Te Waiarangi has been working steadily as an Assistant Director since 2018 which led to being invited to the writer’s room for Wellington Paranormal Season 4.

 

 

Honey Kaha
Presented to us in mockumentary style by writer/director and lead actress of Honey Kaha, Dr. Julia Love invites you to rediscover the genre-bending romp of New Zealand’s first badass wahine hero in this unearthed, early 80s funny, silly and smart action-thriller, complete with intentionally campy production values, over-the-top dialogue and hilarious yet thrilling bouts of action and violence!

 

Vea Mafile’o

Vea, the founder of Taro Patch Creative, is an award-winning Director/Producer with a vibrant passion for Pasifika arts. She excels in nurturing Pacific storytelling, with extensive experience in roles like Production Designer, Camerawoman, Reporter, Director, and Producer. Her works, including documentaries and dramas, have premiered at prestigious festivals like Berlinale and Sundance. Vea’s achievements include directing acclaimed TV series and founding the Nuku’alofa Film Festival. A practising artist, she holds a BVA and PGDip in Moving Image Installation from Auckland University.

 

Lea Tupu’anga / Mother Tongue
Katherine, a young speech therapist of Tongan and European heritage has lied about her Tongan language skills to work with Siaosi — an elderly patient with aphasia who has lost his ability to speak English. Out of her depth, Katherine must find a way to communicate or risk her patient’s life.

 

Last updated on 14 August 2024

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‘Ka Whawhai Tonu’ Selected for TIFF’s Centerpiece

Ka Whawhai Tonu – Struggle Without End has been selected to screen in the Centerpiece programme at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), marking the film’s North American premiere. DEGANZ members Te Rurehe Paki and Martin Brinkler, ACE edited the film, which was written by Tim Worrall (DEGANZ).

The Centerpiece programme honours and celebrates cinematic achievements by curating compelling stories from global perspectives. The programme reflects TIFF’s commitment to providing an elevated platform for international cinema, acclaimed titles from festivals around the world, highly anticipated premieres from international talents, and the latest work of influential filmmaking luminaries.

TIFF programmer Jason Ryle shares,

Visually spectacular and told from an staunchly Māori perspective, Ka Whawhai Tonu features stunning debut lead performances from its two young stars and appearances from Māori screen legends Morrison and Cliff Curtis. With a cast and crew composed of many descendants of the actual battle of Ōrākau, director Jonathan and writer Tim Worrall draw a direct and potent connection between the legacy of the strength of one’s ancestors and the power that’s inherent in cultural perseverance.

It’s great to see this impactful film reach an international audience.

 

Last updated on 14 August 2024

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‘Bookworm’ Wins Audiences’ Hearts at Fantasia

After opening Fantasia International Film Festival, NZ feature Bookworm, edited by DEGANZ member Dan Kircher, won the Audience Award for Best International Film.

This year was the festival’s 28th run with a record attendance and various sold-out screenings rivalling the festival’s pre-pandemic years. After counting up thousands of votes from the attendees, Bookworm came out on top followed by Le Comte de Monte Cristo in silver and Rats! in third.

New Zealand audiences can now catch the film in local cinemas to see the newly introduced father and daughter head to the wilderness on a camping trip for the ultimate test of family bonding, watched from afar by a deadly black beast that could be the answer to all their woes.

Congratulations to Dan and the rest of the Bookworm team on the win and local theatrical release!

Last updated on 14 August 2024

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