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Shedding new light on dark days
03 October 2006
The making of a film about the Aramoana tragedy has been both fraught and rewarding for film director Robert Sarkies. He talks to Margaret Agnew.
Proud is not the right word, says filmmaker Robert Sarkies. "Relieved" is more like it, he observes wryly.
Making a film, Out of the Blue, about the massacre at Aramoana on November 13, 1990, when resident David Gray shot and killed 13 people, has not been easy.
Many Aramoana residents, survivors of the shootings, family members, friends and neighbours of the dead, have strongly opposed the film.
And now that it has had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, some have even asked the chief censor to ban it from New Zealand screens.
The director acknowledges that for someone with connections to Aramoana, this film "is never going to be a pleasant thing".
During our interview, he ranges from the brutally honest to the combatively defensive, taking his time answering questions, at times speaking slowly and deliberately, desperately wanting to be understood.
You get the sense that he is struggling internally, with the career-focused filmmaker at odds with the boy from Dunedin who wants to be understood and liked.
With the benefit of hindsight, would he agree to the project again?
"I have to say `yes, I would'. As a storyteller, I think it's really important that our society allows our own stories to be told. Our own stories are sometimes painful. They're not always the feel-goods or the World's Fastest Indians, but as soon as you restrict your storytellers, you end up in a pretty sad and repressed society."
Making the film has undeniably been good for Sarkies' career, with journalists beating down his door and even bad publicity counting as good publicity with his producers.
Obviously he doesn't want to be seen as benefiting from tragedy, but he certainly has.
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My family has owned our crib in Aramoana for several decades and generations of my family have grown up holidaying at The Spit, as it's known locally. None of my family is thrilled with the idea of the Aramoana movie.
Rosemarie Clouston, sister of Gary Holden, who was David Gray's neighbour and his first murder victim, and Donna Jamieson, whose father Tim Jamieson was killed that day, are both among those publicly opposed to the film.
Yet Sarkies insists that most people who object to his movie are those slightly removed from the tragedy, who are "much more resistant than the very people whose story we were telling".
"It comes back to that core question, I suppose – who owns the story? I don't. I don't claim ownership in any way, but I think society does.
"For me, it was one of those events. I remember the headline in the Sydney Morning Herald the day after. It really resonated with me, it was: `The day New Zealand lost its innocence'. That's a huge thing to say.
"There's no point in overstating (Aramoana's) importance, but I don't think you can overstate its emotional impact on the country at the time or its continuing impact right through to today.
"The publicity we've had ... not publicity," he corrects himself, quickly and self-consciously. "The controversy we've had over the film hasn't just been generated by a small number of locals. There is a natural fascination about this subject matter by everyone, including journalists all over the country."
What struck Sarkies about Aramoana at the time was that: "it connected us to similar events that had been happening and continue to happen around the world. There's nothing extraordinary about `man running loose with a gun'. Big deal, we see it in movies all the time. But for us as Kiwis, the idea that that could happen here, in a place of true innocence, was as completely mind-shifting as the idea that America could be internally bombed by foreign terrorists would have been to Americans at that time. I think as a piece of history, it connected us with the rest of the world."
Out of the Blue fits into that peculiarly New Zealand Cinema of Unease that Sam Neill so eloquently explored 11 years ago. This is a shift for Sarkies away from his darkly humorous short films and first feature film, Scarfies.
He says it wasn't a deliberate shift, however. "This wasn't the project that I was intending to do next."
Sarkies was planning to stay firmly in the fantasy realm with a bigger budget children's fantasy film – "slightly dark, but very funny" – that he and his brother Duncan have been working on for the last five years. Film funding is hard to find for any locally made independent film, let alone a big budget one, and the Sarkies' project started to slow down.
Robert Sarkies began thinking about "getting real", maybe doing a documentary. It was then that he heard that the producers who had optioned Bill O'Brien's book, Aramoana: 22 Hours of Terror, were trying to approach him with the Aramoana movie project.
"It's obvious why they thought of me. Because I had a local connection. It's fair to say that having a Dunedin connection, and my parents still live there, it did mean that you couldn't hit and run."
The visuals of Aramoana are enormously appealing to a filmmaker, he says. The mole, which stretches out into the Pacific, "it's a visual symbol really. You talk about the Cinema of Unease, well that's the road to nowhere. It's the southern equivalent of little Janet Frame running down a road, only she's not going to end up anywhere," he laughs. "It feels like the end of the Earth in a positive exotic way."
Aramoana is an incredibly peaceful place, and a place where, ironically, Sarkies had sought time out from a hectic schedule years before his current film project.
"Strangely, the only day off while I was filming Scarfies, which was over seven weeks, the thing that I did, having no idea it would be my next film, was I hired a bike and cycled to Aramoana. I did that to seek peace. I did that to get away from the chaos of filmmaking and to come back refreshed and replenished. And that's why Aramoana attracts so many artists and different types of people.
"That's part of the sadness of what happened there. Why there?"
Sarkies is at pains to point to the intense collaboration he and his co-scriptwriter Graeme Tetley (who has worked on many New Zealand films including Vigil and Bread & Roses) went through in making this film.
"All of the people who are alive and depicted in detail in the film, those living people helped us with the script. The help that we had from those people made me and Graeme feel morally OK with putting their story on film, because they did trust us.
"Absolutely no-one said `yippee, the film is being made'. Of course they wouldn't, but some of the people who we spoke to said they were surprised a film hadn't happened earlier. A lot of people I've spoken to (who were) involved in the event said a strange thing, which was that it felt like a film when it was happening, I guess because it was so surreal."
The director says, "We didn't want to come to the story with any agenda, except the agenda as filmmakers to make a compelling film, or attempt to, and for that film to have some meaning. We didn't (want) to point the finger at the police or anyone, but on the opposite side of that coin, we didn't want to make everyone feel squeaky clean.
"What interested me about the story was that these people were people. Some people drink a bit more than they should and other people swear a bit more than they should and, you know, some people collect a few too many guns than they should.
"We made it for New Zealand to look at. You always make a film hoping that the story you're telling is actually larger than the events you're depicting."
Despite opening the film in Canada's prestigious film festival before releasing it in New Zealand, Sarkies claims that he doesn't care whether Out of the Blue appeals to the international market.
"I'm sure the producers ... ", he stops himself from saying what his producers may think, and takes a different tack.
"You want your film to appeal to as many people as possible. Appeal is a weird word with this one, because it's not an appealing film. Usually when I'm introducing a film I say, `I hope you enjoy it' but introducing this one I can't say `I hope that you enjoy it" but `I hope that you experience it', because that's what film can do. It can enable you to be in the shoes of Helen Dickson and ask `would I be that brave?'."
Sarkies visited Helen Dickson (played by 74-year-old Lois Lawn) who was awarded the George Medal for her bravery at Aramoana, and is now in her 90s living in a rest home.
"It's a typical thing for New Zealand heroes. They never say `I'm a hero'. It's always just `anyone would have done it'. Maybe that's true that many other New Zealanders would have acted that same way.
"I would like to think it's celebrating the nature of us as a people, as New Zealanders. I suppose it's celebrating the nature of us 15 years ago. I hope the film will allow people to reflect on `do we have that same innocence now?', `do we have that same care for others?'.
"I don't really know my neighbours in Wellington. I know them to wave to and say hello to, but it's not a particularly meaningful relationship."
This is reflective of another way New Zealand is becoming more like the rest of the Western world, says Sarkies. Although, "We're still better. The longer we hold on to our caring nature, and the longer we hold on to the idea that people come first, before money, and I think that's still the case in most of New Zealand, with the exception of parts of Auckland, the better."
So what sort of reaction did Sarkies' film get at the special screening held in Aramoana a few weeks ago?
"The reaction in Aramoana wasn't (hostile) to my face. Everyone was really respectful."
He says that one person who had been against the film at the first public meeting in Aramoana came to him after the private screening and said they'd been waiting for him "to stuff it up and you didn't".
"Another lady there (who'd been against the film) came up after the screening and was very very chatty and definitely felt we'd done a good job. Her main complaint was that I ummed too much in my introduction, which I did."
Some opponents of the film have refused to see "the massacre movie" as one Aramoana resident described it to me.
"That's completely their right," Sarkies says. When he was ringing the people directly affected by the film's depictions, he told them: "It might be better not to see it. You need to choose and not to feel compelled by other people in the community or by me."
"I think 70 people from Aramoana turning up to a public screening is a pretty decent number so it would be unfair to say there was a large number (missing). There will of course be some, but I guess you make a film about an entire community at your peril. You can't hope to please everyone, and making a film about this event, you can't actually hope to please anyone.
"No-one wants something that's in their past that they would rather forget, brought back. And I know that. I think you've got to temper that fact or problem with a greater need for storytellers to be able to tell stories, for journalists to be able to write articles, for documentary makers to be able to make documentaries."
The crew filmed many of the beach scenes at Aramoana, and only filmed there for two days. "Aramoana liked to think that it won by not having us film there. We were never going to film it in Aramoana. It's changed so much. Aramoana now is not Aramoana of 15 years ago. It's got paved roads. The whole area around David Gray's crib is completely transformed."
Plus, he adds, "Just the idea of taking guns, or firing blanks even, in Aramoana is just as abhorrent to me as it would be for anyone."
It remains to be seen what sort of response his film will get from the New Zealand public and the international film community, but it's undeniable there have been huge benefits for the director in making this film.
He's a sensitive man and does not seem to have come out of this experience unscathed. A lot of this interview seems to have been spent in self-justification.
Obviously filmmakers look for compelling stories, but the question remains: should this film have been made?
Sarkies believes his film will help people, especially Dunedinites, to talk about it.
"Dunedin people don't speak of this. It's like an ugly sore that festers under the surface. I know the film's painful for many of the people involved. I've just gotta hope, as its maker, that it does some good as well.
"Making a film is like having a baby. You can't help but feel protective of your baby."
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Otago



Aramoana film pledge honoured

Wednesday August 9, 2006

The unofficial world premiere of a film based on the Aramoana massacre will be shown to the community hit by the tragedy in November 1990.

Filmed mainly at Long Beach near Port Chalmers in February and April, Out of the Blue will get a private screening before its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The move honours a commitment film-makers made to the people of Aramoana this year, director Robert Sarkies and producer Steven O'Meagher said yesterday.

The film tells the story of the community during the 22-hour ordeal when resident David Gray went on a shooting spree, killing 13 people.

When the project was announced in November last year the film-makers faced opposition from some in the Aramoana community who said they did not want old wounds reopened.

"What we will be doing is honouring a commitment to the Aramoana community to be the first to see the film," Mr Sarkies said.

Another promise was to remove the name Aramoana from the film title.

Mr Sarkies thought many people in the community would decide against seeing it.

The film-makers had originally hoped the film would have its world premiere in Dunedin during the international film festival currently on in the city.

But they realised after filming that more time would be required for editing.

"We're very disappointed to not get in a festival here," Mr Sarkies said.

"We didn't want to rush it for the festival deadline. We wanted to make a better film."

The invitation to screen the film at the Toronto festival next month meant it had been "recognised as something worthy of a festival", Mr Sarkies said.

"It's fantastic for the film that it gets a prestigious premiere.

"It will be interesting to see how it works for an international audience, which will be different to the local audience," he said. "We have got so much more emotional investment in the story."

Whale Rider and In My Father's Den went on to further success after they were screened at the Toronto festival.

The official New Zealand premiere is expected to be in Dunedin before national release on October 12.

- OTAGO DAILY TIMES