Unitec student films vie for top honours at NZ Youth Film Festival

The festival is dedicated to providing a national platform to find, celebrate, and empower the next generation of filmmakers and creators from Aotearoa.

The films, Saint Albert’s Park and Young Burden were capstone projects for last year’s graduating Screen Arts cohort.

Saint Albert’s Park Director of Photography (DOP) Torin Linkhorn is also up for the Canon Best Cinematography Award, while Young Burden’s lead actor Manahi Taoho is a finalist for the South Pacific Pictures Best Actor Award.

“Congratulations to all involved. This is a great achievement for the Screen programme,” says Associate Professor, Vanessa Byrnes, Head of School, Creative Industries. Both films were also selected for the Pollywood Film Festival in Auckland. The public screenings are on at Mangere Arts Centre on 11 November and Auckland Art Gallery on 22 November.

Saint Albert’s Park was also selected for the Pacific Island Film Festival (PIFF) NYC which ran in Manhattan, New York from 18-21 September. The PIFF is held annually and is a platform for Pacific voices to be heard, encouraging the preservation of culture throughout the region, and in the United States.

Both films had a pair of emerging Kiwi-Samoan filmmakers at the helm.

Young Burden, written and directed by Marcus Savelio, explores how a Pasifika teenager, faced with the responsibilities of young fatherhood, balances peer pressure and his upbringing.

Marcus is a former Head Boy of Mt Albert Grammar School who chose to pursue film ahead of his other passion dance, utilising his strong links with his church youth group to make the film.

Written and directed by Hermann Retzlaff, Saint Albert’s Park was inspired by his youth playing basketball with his cousins at his local park in West Auckland and the relationships that were forged with the people they met there.

The film tells the story of 23 year-old James who returns home after completing his university degree but finds himself overwhelmed by conflicting memories from his past.

“I am very proud of the work that my entire cast, crew and I were able to accomplish with it and so hope it will go far,” he says.

Hermann says he had a “pretty movie-centric upbringing mainly thanks to my Dad”.

He remembers watching a lot of movies at Event Cinemas in Westgate where his passion for film grew.

While attending Mt Albert Grammar, Hermann chose to enrol at Unitec because of the Screen Arts programme’s “hands-on and practical approach, which was different to the theory-based way of learning at high school and other courses”.

He says his family were very supportive of his chosen career path.

Unitec’s string of successes on the local and international film festival circuit continues this month with two student films being selected for the Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival being held in Wellington on 20-21 November.

Echoes of a Narcissist is created by Georgia Normington, while Two Lines was made by Prema Cottingham – both current second year ākonga in the School of Creative Industries.