A new film by Associate-Professor Annie Goldson (ONZM), from The University of Auckland’s Department of Film, Television and Media Studies, will premiere at the forthcoming World Cinema Showcase.
The feature-length documentary, An Island Calling, traces the 2001 killings in Suva of Fiji Red Cross Director-General John Scott and his partner Greg Scrivener. The murder of this openly gay couple is still clouded in rumour and political mystery. Scott, a fourth-generation, Fiji-born European, was the repatriated prodigal son of a powerful colonial family. As the Director-General of the Fiji Red Cross, he had gained international attention during the coup of 2000 when he went to the assistance of hostages trapped in Parliament for 56 days. Guided by John Scott’s brother, Owen, the film features friends of the couple, lawyers, Fijian gay activists, and seasoned Fiji observers. The film also includes interviews with the family of 22-year-old Apete Kaisau, who was ultimately charged with the killings.
Bill Gosden, Director of the NZ Film Festival Trust, which organises the World Cinema, describes the film as "excellent and level-headed". He sees the film as placing this tragedy within Fiji’s volatile heritage of colonial privilege, evangelical Christianity, immigrant work force and indigenous entitlement.Associate-Professor Goldson says it was a hard film to make, given its subject matter and given that another coup occurred in Fiji just prior to production beginning.
(Image: Fiji Red Cross Director-General John Scott being "escorted" from Fiji's Parliament building, 2000).
She is thrilled that An Island Calling has been selected for the Showcase and is very grateful that support from TV3 and New Zealand on Air made its production possible. She also received additional support from SBS-TV in Australia and a Sundance Documentary Institute grant.
Shortly after the festival release, a shorter (44-minute) broadcast version of the film, entitled Murder in the Pacific, will air on New Zealand’s TV3 and Australia’s SBS-TV.
Check out the trailer below...
Fiji's lavish homes, private clubs and manicured gardens are the idyllic backdrop for this tragic whodunit fixed around the brutal murder of a prominent gay couple in this now troubled post-colonial paradise.
No comments:
Post a Comment