Film students at Unitec’s Department of Performing and Screen Arts, in Auckland, will join with students from the Beijing Film Academy (BFA) to create a documentary project in 2010.
While other areas of Unitec have had various exchange programs for a number of years, this is the first such collaboration for Performing and Screen Arts. After discussions over a number of years, arrangements for the project finally fell into place in December, with confirmation that five students from the BFA are set to arrive in Auckland at the beginning of February.
The students will stay with Unitec for a period of 22 days, and the NZ component of the documentary will be planned, filmed, and partially edited, giving the Chinese students a unique opportunity to experience documentary filmmaking outside their home country.
This will be followed up in late June and early July, with a return visit by a group of Unitec film and television students who will travel to Beijing, to complete the documentary and experience filming in a different environment.
Unitec students have been communicating with the BFA students during the summer break, working together to brainstorm possible topics for the upcoming documentary.
“Trying to come up with a topic that can be filmed in Auckland and then Beijing has been really hard”, says Rose Damon, a Unitec student working on the project. “The time constraints are really tight, and with a situation like this it would be easy to just fall into a topic that simply compares the two countries or cultures, which we didn’t really want to do.”
Nevertheless, the students seem to have found a topic that fits. The documentary will take a look at relationships between Chinese and New Zealand couples, exploring the unique challenges such cross-cultural relationships present. Even though the documentary will look specifically at New Zealander-Chinese relationships, the students are hoping to tell a story that is much more universal in essence.
“You don’t have to be from either of those two cultures to be able to relate to the proposed documentary. Most people would know what it’s like to try to work through major differences in a relationship – the cultural aspect adds another dimension,” says Damon.
Coincidentally, the coming Chinese New Year will fall on Valentine’s Day, February 14th while the students from China are in Auckland. In the meantime, research for the project is going ahead in earnest, and the students are hoping to speak to many different couples in New Zealander-Chinese relationships.
“Young and old, straight or gay, married, de facto, divorced… and the terms ‘Chinese’ and ‘New Zealander’ are open to interpretation too. At the moment we just really want to talk to anyone in Chinese-New Zealander relationships who are happy to share a story or two with us.”
People in the Auckland area can contact Rose Damon, a Unitec film student:
Email: rose.damon@hotmail.com
Phone: 021 023 01808
Skype: rose.damon