Mt Aspiring College - 2020 Open National Winner

Nga mea iti

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In a preoccupied world, sometimes the most important things are the simple, the beautiful and the present. Emerging from lockdown, we asked ourselves and people around us what they had noticed when everything stopped. This film is an organic response to capture our connection with our local environment and our appreciation for nga mea iti. 

The film was initially inspired by the work of Massive Theatre who made the most of physical limitations during the lockdown, drawing on very simple home resources to create positive filmed performances.  A brief was presented to students in the Cultural Committee to create a work that allowed different students to work to their strengths in a collaborative process to bring us back together after working remotely. They bravely learnt new skills in film production as no students had previous experience making a film in this way. They had a zero budget which meant they worked to make limited resources a liberating part of their process. They filmed everything on one school camera.  The students worked with a provocation based around noticing and appreciating the very simple details of life while being confined to their home bubbles. The filming was done across two weekends with performing cast simply responding to the environment and their favourite places in their home town spontaneously without a prescribed text or movement plan. The directors gave prompts and pushed performers offers further in a very organic process to find beauty in the simple act of humans being present in their environment drawing on both internal and external spaces. The original soundscape was created by two students to support the intended mood of the work.  The voice-over text was developed and written by the writer using ideas from verbatim interviews conducted by the students with people in their community when they first emerged after lockdown. The students demonstrated that when everything changes they can look with curiosity instead of resentment and find new ways to respond with a lens of hope.