NZ film maker turns his back on Hollywood

Wellington film maker Costa Botes has traded his Hollywood dreams for humbler ambitions.

He says his documentaries don’t appeal to the masses like Hollywood films do. They are more thoughtful and perhaps more troubling.

Intimate style: Costa Botes talking at a Spark Week film forum in Hamilton. Photo: Kim Fulton

“I don’t think I’ll ever go to Hollywood. And nor do I want to,” says Botes, in Hamilton for Wintec’s Spark Week.

“I don’t value the same things they do. I’m interested in ideas and trying to express things whereas they’re interested in money. That’s it.”

His movie Daytime Tiger is about New Zealand writer Michael Morrissey’s struggle with manic depression, and will screen in Hamilton on September 1 as part of the International Film Festival.

Morrissey tried to control his condition without using medication which he feared would affect his creativity.

Daytime Tiger explores the idea of the potential for happiness.

“People could be happy but they choose not to be,” says Morrissey in the film.

Botes says the reason for our decisions to be unhappy may be a film in itself. He thinks it’s a result of our culture and also television which he believes programmes us to think badly of ourselves.

While he’s not out to be Mother Teresa, he does want to reverse this trend.

“My movies are about people who have not given up on themselves.”

He has wanted to make movies since he was nine and hasn’t always had such a grim view of Hollywood.

“I used to see it as the dream factory.

“And, you know, at its best it still can be. But it’s like the deck is stacked against film makers who just want to work from passion and want to work from story.”

He has spent time solely writing and directing but now he prefers to do all the work on his films himself. He says it creates an intimate style and doesn’t believe Daytime Tiger could have been made any other way.

He says having a film in the International Film Festival means everything to a film maker.

“If you’ve got a movie and it doesn’t get selected for the film festival, particularly a film of this type, then your options for getting it seen fall below zero.”

But it’s the inclusion of his film The Last Dogs of Winter at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival he’s still pinching himself over. The festival is the second biggest in the world afterCannes. Botes describes it as the Olympics of film making.

He’ll be on the same programme as directors such as Werner Herzog who he’s looked up to all his life.

Botes is now working on a film called Finding Johnson. Set in Rwanda, it is about a young New Zealander trying to find a homeless man who helped him 10 years earlier to repay the debt he felt he owed him.

He is well known for a controversial film called Forgotten Silver he made with Peter Jackson. It is a documentary about an unknown New Zealand film maker who turns out to be fictional.

Botes took part in a film forum on Tuesday as part of Spark Week, and Hamilton Film Society members watched Botes’ Candyman on Monday night. The film is about the inventor of Jelly Belly jellybeans – David Klein. Botes describes Klein as a man tormented by the weight of regret and unable to be happy. The film is about the undoing of all that.

Watch the promo and earlier works below –

Finding Johnson from Costa Botes on Vimeo.