Te Puke's Sarah Clumont won the best documentary award at the Third Culture Film Festival. Photo / Stuart Whitaker
Te Puke's Sarah Clumont won the best documentary award at the Third Culture Film Festival. Photo / Stuart Whitaker
Te Puke’s Sarah Clumont has become an award-winning film maker at her first attempt.
Her film - Into the Grey Zone - Motherhood - won the best documentary at the recent Third Culture Film Festival, held in Tauranga for the first time.
“On my Spotify I have a song Dance‘til we Die (Stripped) that is just my vocals and an acoustic guitar. It’s very simple and that was the song that was supported in this movie.”
It is a powerful, emotional short film.
“It’s a sort of documentary/drama and it was supported by my music, by my songs and I wrote the script.”
“Essentially it is talking about women who sometimes fall through the cracks in the world and have to make some tough decisions and tough choices. It also goes into their childhood and why sometimes you get hurt a lot when you are younger and how it can affect who you are when you are older.”
Clumont says she heard about the Third Culture Film Festival and submitted the film “just to see what happened”.
She ended up with six nominations and three wins. As well as best documentary, she won the best music and best music video prizes.
“The next-biggest winner was a film from L.A. called The Night Passenger, which was a big industry film.”
Motherhood is her first, and so far only, film.
“I felt grateful [for the win] and the biggest question I had was ‘what am I going to do next?’.
“To get those awards was really cool and it was a cool night to share with other people and it was just fun.”
Festival director Harry Oram told Clumont her film and music were good examples of locally produced content that is of a high calibre.
“I’m not funded, this comes from my heart and my passion so it’s doing the best I can with what I’ve got and that’s essentially what drives me and helps me,” Clumont says.
She was invited to speak on a women-in-film panel held as part of the festival.
“Me, along with another casting director, we got to talk to a bunch of women in film and young people and we got to gather round and have an open and frank discussion about what it’s like to do what we do.”
Despite questioning what she will do next, Clumont has a lot of projects in the pipeline.
“My favourite project is the one I am working on and once they are released, my next-favourite project is the next one.
Sarah Clumont with two of the trophies she won at the Third Culture Film Festival
“I’ve got others in my brain and I’m always thinking about how to step it up for the next one, how to improve and iterate.
“I say to other artists, ‘if you don’t create, you end up dying inside.’ You’ve got to have an outlet so I feel, if I wasn’t able to create, I’d be like a plant put in the wrong spot.
“So I’ve always got to have that outlet and as long as I keep iterating and trying and progressing with different ideas and different people.”
Also a singer and actor, earlier this year, Clumont brought all her creative personas together under the umbrella of Citizen Audrey.
She says she had begun to expand her reach and content reaction and began to cosplay AI. She created a character called Audrey.
Clumont found she got more traction and attracted more followers.
“Audrey as a character took off, but it was getting too complex. I’d got my music, my character Audrey that I played often so I need to umbrella this whole thing and simplify the whole lot.”
She said it was a hard decision to make, but she took the plunge at the start of the year.
“I just rebranded everything as Citizen Audrey. It’s an older name and I wanted that older name because it feels like there’s a little bit of a safety in that name.
“Since then all my content and music has just got bigger - I have experienced the most amount of growth I have ever had.”
Performing opportunities have been few and far between, but she hopes to be able to do more and has been performing in live streams on TikTok.
“So there are film scripts, writing and acting on one side and on the other side is music and production, although both passions somewhat overlap.
“There’s quite a lot to manage then there’s the promotional side and I find that a bit harder to do, but as a small artist, you have to try and get yourself out there.”
Oram started the Third Culture Film Festival as an independent film festival while he was living in Hong Kong.
“There are a lot of other film festivals in Hong Kong, but they cater more to big studios and sponsors and a lot of it is very political,” he said.
The festival got good traction.
“We loved working in Hong Kong and had two fantastic years. It was growing, but the political state in Hong Kong was changing and the regime was cracking down on free art.”
Oram moved to England to continue his own acting and filmmaking career and came to New Zealand during the pandemic as all his family was here.
He decided the potential was here to resurrect the film festival.
“There are quite a few people interested in growing the film industry here,” he says.
“It has been four years in the making, and I was so happy to finally get it off the ground. This year was more of a pilot.
“We had over 200 films submitted and about 40 them from New Zealand, which is great for our first year. We didn’t know if people would still remember us.”
He says Clumont’s film showed up well against the international entries and she deserved her wins.
