A new Kiwi documentary tells the story of how blood, sweat and tears are changing the lives of men at a Kaikohe gym.
The documentary Kaikohe Blood & Fire begins with a quote from Matthew 5:9 – “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” That’s followed not long after by muscled, bearded beast Antz Nansen shadowboxing menacingly, juxtaposed against his opponent, the clean-skinned, clean-shaven Dhcamad Armstrong, who is shown peacefully stretching.
After that the rival heavyweight kickboxers put their heads together, pray, then get in the ring at a Stealth Fighters League 2 fight night this year for a very bloody result.
Faith, hope and love followed by explosive violence pretty much sums up Kaikohe Blood & Fire, a fly-on-the-wall feature documentary about “small-town heroes with big hearts”, which will have its premiere at the New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF) in Auckland today.
Aiming to bring pride to a region with entrenched deprivation, the documentary follows Team Alpha, a collective of kickboxers at The Mill gym in Kaikohe, bringing hope to young men in a town at the epicentre of Northland poverty and deprivation. Kerikeri director Simon Ogston, who edited, produced and filmed the documentary, describes the film as “a human story about how this small-town gym is changing lives”.
Ogston shoots down and dirty with the fighters on the mat, inside the ring, in sweaty changing rooms and at ankle-level, where every kick makes the viewer wince.
Voiceovers from the fighters answer questions we want to ask: how do you handle the deafening din when thousands of people watch you take a beating? And why do you volunteer to let someone beat you to a pulp in the first place?
Three of the most interesting Team Alpha characters, each of whom is at a different stage of his life, give different answers to these questions.
Team Alpha’s leader and most decorated fighter, Dhcamad Armstrong (pronounced Dee-Car-Mad), is a charismatic Mormon funeral director who wears a suit most days, before donning shin pads and gloves. He says, “I like to be covered in blood, no matter whose it is.”
He’s the youngest of seven brothers, and his name is an acronym standing for his brothers’ names.
A rising fighter in New Zealand’s professional kickboxing ranks, Armstrong, 37, brings intense discipline and relentless optimism to the scruffy young men who walk through the door for the first time, hoping to get away from the temptations, crime, poverty and trauma outside. We join Armstrong and his boys in garages, kitchens, arenas, in the back seats of cars when his fighters are fretting on the way to a fight.
Former Rebels bikie and doorman Dave Faulkner, 52, is the second hero of the film. In a slice of typical Northland life, Faulkner is introduced rounding up a stray “Staffy” (Staffordshire bull terrier) and walking barefoot past a bent, rusty letterbox outside his parents’ weatherboard bungalow.
Faulkner is rebuilding his life, working at a kiwifruit factory and living in a sleepout with a mountain of golden trophies in the corner. He says his new reality is “pretty humbling” compared with his old lifestyle of “easy money”. But he feels proud just using his Team Alpha coffee mug every day.
“Since this mug’s come in, I haven’t looked back. Team Alpha all the way.”
Across the film’s 85 minutes, Faulkner shows us how much his new Team Alpha colours mean to him as he distances himself from his former gang life.
“I’ve gone from being a number for the system to inspiring 11-year-olds,” he says. “I’m inspiring these young fellas in here to be better than me. Through martial arts, you can better your life.”
Ogston’s film chronicles Faulkner becoming a mentor to youth who join to escape the temptations outside the gym, including Paora Tau, who begins the film as a schoolboy with no male role models but is soon on his way to becoming an experienced fighter, beginning by boxing 11 rounds to celebrate his 11th birthday in front of 20 big men, all standing around in support.
“It’s not just boxing, it’s bonding,” Tau tells us.
Whānau are everything in Kaikohe Blood & Fire. One of the most fascinating characters is Jonti Wright, a physically large but retiring 29-year-old who grew up in a remote valley, dreamed of becoming a fighter, but ended up bullied, abused, depressed and anxious. That is, until he steps through the gym’s doors and Armstrong takes him under his wing.
Wright undergoes an emotional journey that took Ogston 800 hours to shoot across three years. Those 800 hours contain many nuggets of gold, including when Wright tearfully phones his mum, Ngaire, after a comeback fight with a surprising result.
“I said to Dhcamad when I came in, ‘I’m sick of surviving’,” Wright told the Herald. “I said, ‘I want to be alive’. Coming here’s been life-changing.”
It’s been life-changing for Ogston, too, who took on the project after visiting the gym to briefly film a friend who was training there.
“I was struck by Dhcamad Armstrong, what a charismatic and effective leader he was. It’s not often you find someone who combines the qualities Dhcamad does. He’s a great leader, a great family man and also devastating in the ring.
“I also got to know the rest of the team better and I knew I had something special, and that’s what kept me coming back.”
The documentary takes viewers inside the life in Kaikohe for many – gumboots, chickens, baked beans on toast, karakia, Māoritanga, facial tattoos, gang colours, weeds, dairies, hoodies, and state housing old and new. That’s mixed in with plenty of heart-melting tenderness and plenty of sweatsuits, broken noses and ripped toenails.
After funding to film a TV series didn’t come through, Ogston changed to “Plan B” and instead made a feature-length documentary.
Kaikohe Blood & Fire, Ogston’s sixth film to be shown at NZIIF, is named after a Salvation Army “blood and fire” motto he spotted at a funeral service. He thought of Team Alpha’s kaupapa of clean living and rebirth.
The question of Kaikohe Blood & Fire is this: can Armstrong’s example of clean living, discipline, Christian faith and relentless optimism defeat Hell’s Angels gang member Antz Nansen at the end of the film – and will a win in the ring mean a win for troubled Kaikohe?
Then again, as the film shows, the effort often matters more than the outcome.
“Not everyone that comes here has to fight, the fighting is the cherry on top,” Faulkner told the Herald. “People that come get the positiveness. Team Alpha isn’t just a fight team, it’s a family.”
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