TOI WHAKAARI FILM PROJECT QUARTERS FEATURED AT NEW ZEALAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVALView GalleryHide Gallery

Quarters is a set of four evocative short films made by students in their last year of Design at Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School. The film project was funded through the School’s pitched project scheme, which supports independent collaborative work made in a student’s final year. Jessica Sanderson, Rowan Pierce, Ian Hammond and Richard Larsen all graduated in 2009.

Quarters is a compendium of abstract, dream-like short films that capture diversity in Kiwi experience and challenge familiar concepts of national identity. Jessica Sanderson’s Our House reanimates the latent memories of a family home that is being left for the last time. Rowan Pierce’s Bethankit focuses on the traditions and rituals of Scottish culture: through distance and time these practices take on arcane, even surreal, qualities. The Depth of Place by Ian Hammond unearths faintly grasped images of childhood, while memories of a distant past become tangible in Richard Larsen’s On the Shore of a Frozen Sea. Also screening on this programme is Alyx Duncan’s Appetite, which reimagines the mythic creation of New Zealand in a bustling sushi bar. More information at the New Zealand International Film Festival website.