This is a story not about Tracker, though. It's about Hook, Line & Sinker, a charming tear-jerker, belly-laughter, everyday-people gem set in Wellington and, as already mentioned, made on a shoestring - and a whole lot of love. It's also about the greening of the movie industry.
And let's not overlook the audiences' loyalty and tastes and, in this story, the aspirations of a couple of brothers to show art house and non-mainstream distributed movies in Kaitaia, where there isn't even a cinema.
Kiwis love the "look at us" kind of movie that is Hook, Line & Sinker. They also love the little battler ethos. In Hook Line & Sinker the battlers are a proud truck driver losing his job because of eye disease, and his family and mates who find ways to cope with the situation, and get taken to the edge. The battlers are also Torchlight Film's Andrea Bosshard and Shane Loader, who co-wrote and directed the film. They're determined to prove there is not only an alternative way of making movies that has Kiwi initiative written all over it, but a way of funding and distribution they call "sustainable".
Shot over five weeks in 35 different locations with a crew of 13 and a cast of 100 - and that phenomenally low $40,000, "such is the power of community" - Hook, Line & Sinker is grassroots film-making at its greenest, says Bosshard.
It's also a sign of the digital times. Film making has never before been so inexpensive but films have, ironically, never cost so much to make.
"Issues around financial sustainability and accountability are not part of the language of the notoriously money-hungry film industry," says Bosshard. "We are committed to using the new digital technologies to create a sustainable model of film making and distribution."
Their plan is to have box office returns from one film feed into and hopefully totally fund the next movie they make. It also requires distributing the film themselves, on a nil budget.
"We don't know the outcome as yet.
"We don't know whether in the current environment it is possible, and whether in the absence of a publicity budget we can hold it on screens for a sufficient length of time.
"But [we] feel a social responsibility and obligation to work modestly, work with our communities and tell stories that are sourced from them."
So maybe there's a future film script to be sourced from a Far North community story.
Hook, Line & Sinker's most northern New Zealand screening is in the conference room at the Northerner Hotel in Kaitaia.
If the room is needed for anything else, the film gets put on hold, says the pub's co-owner Jason Bridgford. And a film's season lasts as long as the audience keeps turning up.
Bridgford and his brother Mark have a major stake in the cinema business in the Far North. As well as the Northerner Hotel where they have a user-friendly e-server projection system to show films, they own the famous Swamp Palace movie house at Peria.
Sadly, Swamp Palace has been mothballed due the high cost that would be involved in upgrading its equipment. We're getting close here to the digital stuff Andrea Bosshard and Shane Loader referred to, but from a different angle. Bridgford estimates Swamp Palace's upgrade would require $200,000 to get 2K digital projection installed, a system that is the standard most major distribution companies require. The old Peria community hall might never make it into the digital era.
The Te Ahu community centre being built in Kaitaia will probably include a movie theatre and Jason Bridgford is keen to be involved with its management.
Back at the pub for now, though, the Bridgfords are determined to keep playing the kind of films they like to watch - arthouse, classic and Kiwi.
"We basically turned a wall into a screen. We pull in as many couches as we need, we make sure the audience know they can bring in their drinks from the bar.
"They can eat at the restaurant or order stuff from there to eat during the movie."
The room takes about 20 people - on couches, that is. There'd be more if the aim wasn't to keep things so laid back. The movie conference room theatre premiered at the pub last year during Department of Conservation's Love New Zealand Week when the Bridgfords showed the classic Footrot Flats. The proceeds went to the huge rescue effort that followed two mass whale strandings further north.
It doesn't get much more community-minded than that. Torchlight Films must be chuffed their movie is in such sustainable company.
As for that delightful Hook, Line & Sinker, "We'll show it until people stop coming," Bridgford says.
