By RUSSELL BAILLIE
Two films claiming to be probably the cheapest dramatic features released in New Zealand are finally getting some northern screenings, having already helped provoke debate about film funding and what defines "no-budget" movie-making locally.
The shot-on-video Uncomfortable Comfortable and Shifter, which cost Wellington's Gordon Productions $6000 and $2500 respectively, have already had film festival screenings.
Both films, say its makers, are minimal, improvised "close-to-the-ground dramas" set around inner-city Wellington.
Uncomfortable Comfortable, directed by Campbell Walker, is about a relationship break-up which one Windy City writer described as being "like spying on your flatmates through a hole in the wall." While Shifter, directed by Colin Hodson, who stars in UC, is about a paranoid chap who, er, shifts. More than once.
It might be a new start for first-stage New Zealand film-making which has had some financial stiffs of late - as the Listener's Gordon Campbell pointed out: "Through sheer talent and tenacity [Gordon Productions] are making entire films of quality for one third of what Creative New Zealand gives out for mere script development ... "
Or, it could be that in a film industry where scripts have always been the problem, these folks have decided to go without and claim the artistic high ground, just up the hill from Aro Valley.
Decide for yourselves. And see if life in the flats of Wellywood is all it's cracked up to be.
* Uncomfortable Comfortable screens at the Academy on Sunday at 6.15 pm with Shifter at 8.15 pm and at the Waikato Museum of Art and History this Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
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