Loading Docs presents: The Jump

We are working with a group of innovative film makers, Loading Docs, to showcase great short Kiwi films. Watch The Jump, one of 10 three-minute documentaries.

"Balls, bungy and videotape."

In 1980 with a healthy mix of imagination, balls and roughly remembered Newtonian physics, a Kiwi bloke jumped off a bridge and started a worldwide phenomenon. The Jump reveals unearthed footage of Bungy's beginnings and tells the amazing tale of its unsung creator, Chris Sigglekow.

Director bio

Alex Sutherland was born and raised in central Auckland on a diet of art, spacies and 80s film. Graduating with a MFA from Elam School of Fine Arts, Alex has been directing music videos and TV commercials for over ten years. In 2007 Alex co-founded Thick as Thieves, a boutique visual content production company based in Auckland.

Producer Bio

Rebekah has a background in feature documentary and films and currently works as a producer for films and TV commercials. She worked as the PM and key researcher on Vincent Ward's feature-doco Rain of The Children. Rebekah also worked on Shirley Horrocks' feature documentaries The New Oceania and Marti: The Passionate Eye. She has a first-class Masters in Documentary Filmmaking from Goldsmiths College in London.

"This is a personal story for me. Chris Sigglekow is my father-in-law and I've known the family since I was about eight years old. I can remember coils of bungy cord lying around their house. The film has been in my head for a long time.

"What I also loved about this story is the quintessentially pioneering Kiwi spirit, and Chris perfectly exemplifies that point where science and research give way to just bloody doing it.

When I heard about Loading Docs' short documentary initiative, I immediately thought this would be a great way to jump-start Chris's story to life and get it out into the world.

The discipline of having to distil a story like this down to three minutes forces you to think about what is absolutely necessary to tell the story and what is really driving it."

Click here to visit The Jump's website.