Student filmmakers shone light on a range of issues at the Flavorz Film Festival 2010 at AUT University last night.
Themes ranging from depression in Asian communities to the relationship struggles of young New Zealanders featured among the professional-quality productions. The evening was also a prelude to the Investigative Journalism conference at the university this weekend.
The winning film, From Limping to Leaping, a community video by third year AUT University student Melissa Elmers, talked about the prevalence of gout in young Maori and Pasifika men and its affects. The film highlighted how society perceives gout as a self-inflicted injury, which is damaging to the progress of improving the health of gout sufferers.
John Utanga, from TVNZ’s Tagata Pasifika, and current chair of the Pacific Media Centre, was MC for the event.
Utanga, who also attended the inaugural Flavorz festival last year, said he had been looking forward to seeing the students’ films. “Inspiration” for TVNZ Important ideas in last year’s films were developed by the Tagata Pasifika team. Utanga said Flavorz was a good platform for budding designers to air their ideas to the New Zealand public.
“We do watch it, and we do take inspiration from it,” he said.
The second prize was awarded to Nick Catley, Jeremy Olds and Deanna Yang for Swept Under the Carpet, a film addressing the unspoken problem of depression among New Zealand’s Asian community. Yang says the idea developed due to the lack of Asian focussed films in New Zealand.
“Growing up as an Asian person I haven’t really see many Asian documentaries,” said Yang. “So we decided it was a direction we wanted to go in.”
AUT University Vice-Chancellor Derek McCormack said he was proud of the work the students produced. “There is a great array of people going into it,” he said.
Third place went to a first-year production Buttons in Time, which gave the audience a look into relationships in this day and age and how people are treated within them. Flavorz organiser Isabella Rasch said the films shown last night were a step-up from last year’s work and she felt the festival was a great success.
“Last year we had a lot of humour and satire,” Rasch said. “This year it was more personal. “We’re looking forward to next year.”
Crowd favourite A crowd favourite, The Struggling Butterfly, written and directed by Aziz Al Sa’afin, showed a young Muslim boy’s struggle to commit to Ramadan while growing up in New Zealand. Al Sa’afin said he drew on his own past experiences to create the film and his struggle to combine Kiwi and Arabic roots. Rasch says the drama was an insight into an issue that many New Zealanders never see.
Fiction as well as non-fiction films were shown, and both types portrayed cultural experiences in different ways.
The best films - made by first, second and third year students – were selected for the festival by AUT University lecturer James Nicholson and the School of Communication Studies’ television lecturers. Nicholson said selection was based on the subject matter and the standard of the productions.
The winners received a prize-winning certificate and cash prizes totalling $1000 from the Pacific Media Centre.
The festival was sponsored by the Pacific Media Centre and School of Communication Studies at AUT University.
Courtney Wilson
