By Nicola Igusa

The value of different perspectives in film making is valued now more than ever, says Auckland University of Technology screen production Associate Professor Arezou Zalipour.

“We’ve just seen the historic win of Parasite at the 2020s Oscars – the first non-English language production to win Best Picture,” she says.

“In the same ceremony Taika Waititi used his Jojo Rabbit win for Best Adapted Screenplay to encourage Indigenous kids all over the world to pursue art.

READ MORE: Historic Parasite Oscar may be game changer for global film business

“Hollywood is being changed by ‘outsider’ voices and here at AUT we’re helping prepare our students for that world.”

Dr Zalipour’s Contemporary World Cinemas paper, a selected topic in the AUT School of Communication Studies television and screen production department, is first offering by the university in a transnational storytelling approach.

It bridges theory and practice in a unique way through examples of Academy Award winners and nominees for Best Foreign Language Film (Best International Feature Film) and beyond.

Students in the course say it is refreshing and absolutely essential to be able to critically analyse film styles as well as their own choices when making a film.

Film making techniques
The course prompts deeper thought about film making, changing the way students think about film making and enable them to examine a wide range of film making techniques and narratives.

Dr Zalipour has designed a further paper to be offered in Semester 2 this year for post graduate students, Making Cinemas of Difference. This paper takes a “de-Westernising” approach in film and filmmaking by engaging, among other concepts, with issues of racism and postcolonial theories in film and practice, and teaches how to make a video essay.

“We learn from the masters of film making and storytellers, which allows the students to build their understanding of how film can be made to construct and convey a sense of identity and place,” she says.

“By exploring films from the Middle East, Asia and Europe, our students learn to recognise different modes of storytelling and film language, and the way culture, society and storytelling are intimately combined, and then apply that learning to their own film making.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Rahul Bhattarai

Nine years on the popular Flavourz Film Festival has grown and grown … with more than 170 people watching the screening of 15 student documentary and feature productions at Auckland University of Technology at the weekend.

The short films – ranging between 2min30sec and 12min – featured topics as wide ranging as birdlife, culture, ethnicity, matchmaking, migration, plastic pollution, racism, the Banabans of Rabi and the closure of Hato Petera College. Some were quirky and funny.

“Flavourz has evolved over the years. In the beginning it had a small screening and a small lecture hall, now we have got about a 170 people here today,” said senior lecturer and film maker Jim Marbrook.

READ MORE: Banabans of Rabi short climate change documentary chosen for Nuku’alofa

“it’s a showcase of some of our really interesting work with the focus on diversity and culture.”

Marbrook was one of the founders of the festival along with Tui O’Sullivan, Isabella Rasch and Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie.

“We got the idea to put on a film festival to celebrate diversity,” said Marbrook

AUT has one of the New Zealand’s leading school of communications with the latest facilities and highly experienced staff for the students to learn from.

A Migrant’s Story, by Irra Lee, one of the films screened at the festival. Trailer

‘Lucky students’
“In a Bachelors of Communications Studies programme students are very lucky because we have a very strong journalism school and we have screen production courses,” said James Nicholson, curriculum leader and a senior lecturer for television and screen production.

An 11 minute postgraduate documentary, Banabans of Rabi: A Story of Survival, by Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom, made as part of the three-year-old Bearing Witness climate change project, was one of the films screened.

It has been accepted as an entry in the Nuku’alofa Film Festival in Tonga later this month.

Banabans of Rabi shows the impact of climate change and on the remote northern island of Rabi in particular.

Hele Ikimotu was inspired to make this film in order to explore his own unknown Kiribati culture and the struggles of the people on the island where the Banaban people had been relocated by the British colonial government.

Such voices are seldom heard in the mainstream media.

“When it comes to climate change it is only about the bigger cities and the islands,” Ikimotu said.

‘Telling the stories’
“In Fiji, it’s always about Nadi and Suva but not so much about the outer islands. So, I thought this would be a good opportunity to tell the stories of those who don’t get the opportunity to talk about what they are going through.

“I had never really experienced that side of my culture, never knew too much about it,” he said.

“So when the opportunity to go to Fiji came with the Pacific Media Centre, I used it to go to Rabi. I knew it was a difficult trip but if I put in some effort it could happen.”

The trip from Suva to Rabi was 15 hours long.

“it was a very gruesome trip, with up to seven hours in a motor vehicle at a stretch, and a boat ride,” said Blessen Tom.

Banabans of Rabi: A Story of Survival will be screened at the 2018 Nuku’alofa Film Festival in Tonga on November 22/23.

The inaugural Flavourz film festival in 2009.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz