August’s Screening Room post comes from long-serving Kiwi actor and sought-after acting coach Miranda Harcourt, ONZM. Miranda is a great supporter of New Zealand’s short films, and serves as an ambassador for Show Me Shorts Film Festival. Miranda’s first short as a director, Voiceover, won Best Short Film at the 1997 NZ Film and Television Awards. She is sharing three powerful NZ shorts that influence her work.
I love short films; In part because they make my life easier. I teach acting and run workshops all over the place and have recently run a workshop in Sydney for the writers and actors on a hit web-series. Like many of the workshops I run, it is only a daylong exercise – I can’t screen an episode of a TV show, let alone a feature. But I want the actors and filmmakers I am working with to experience a rewarding story arc. Enter short films! There are three I almost always show.
Truant
Truant is by TV and commercial director Michael Duignan. There are many things to love about this beautiful short film, and one of them is the way the characters use objects. I also love the production design, the gorgeous ensemble performances and Michael’s take on the classic New Zealand trope — the coming of age of a young man.
Fog
Fog is a celebration of a special and unique New Zealand place. The location is being celebrated again on TV at the moment in the current Lotto Pirates ad. The place is Ngawi, a wild, rough, inhospitable gravel beach on the East Coast of the North Island. Jim Moriarty and Tina Cook give beautiful performances as the parents of a shy young man who wants to escape. A wild misfit, played by Chelsie Preston Crayford in her first role, inspires him.
Peel
The last film I will mention is the first short film by Jane Campion, Peel, which won the Cannes Palme d’Or for Best Short Film in 1986. This film is an investigation into a series of tiny moments that build something remarkable. It finds something universal by being particular, something all my favourite short films have in common.
Short films have always been a building block for new actors as well as directors to develop careers. These three wonderful shorts demonstrate that.
