Get Tickets Before They Sell out!
Coming up in December, Lumiere Cinemas is showing ‘Three Wise Men’ – an hour-long screening of three short films that tell the stories of three different men.
The screening has been organised by filmmaker Oliver Dawe, who has two of the films in the collection. Oliver is the son of artist Bing Dawe, and so it comes as no surprise that art and artists are a theme that Oliver knows well.
We spoke to him about the films.
Hi Ollie, tell us a bit about Three Wise Men..
Well, they’re all short documentaries and one of the films is called ‘I Know I’m Going to Paint‘ and that’s about Phillip Trusttum. It’s really an artist profile. It premiered at Doc Edge this year and I produced, directed and edited it with a small crew and the cinematographer is Julian Vares. Julian’s really the connecting link between the three films in the screening. The film sold out at Doc Edge, so we wanted a chance to show it again because a lot of people missed out.
And the other two films?
‘The Scam‘ is another film I did with producer Amanda Jenkins for Loading Docs in 2021, and Julian shot that as well. That’s a wild story about a man from the West Coast who was scammed into becoming a drug mule and ended up going to jail. There’s a sad footnote to it, as he’s now gone missing and no one knows where he is. Other than Loading Docs, we didn’t really get the chance to screen it publicly because when it was released, we were in lockdown, so we wanted to be able to give it another showing. The third film is ‘My Dying Place‘ by Loren Jayln Kett and it’s a really nice film as well. They’re all gentle, lovely documentaries about three different men and their stories.
What’s your background Ollie?
Well, I’m a filmmaker based here. My dad is Bing Dawe who is a fairly well-known artist and sculptor and I guess that has influenced me in my interest with artists. The film I’ve done on Phil is the beginning of what I hope will be a string of films I want to do on artists – profiling them and having a visual record of them and their work. It’s kind of like an archive project. I know a lot of these artists through Dad, and so I thought if no one else is doing it, then I better do it! We have recently shot a film on Jaqueline Fahey and I’ve shot a little bit with Dad, so hopefully I can keep going with these films.
That’s such an important project. Archiving our artists and their work.
I was lucky when I was younger that my parents would take me to meet these different artists and we would go into their studios, and I would just sit there, and listen to them talk. There are a few good documentaries that were made around artists and their process in the 1970s and 80s and that’s something I really like – basically visiting artists in their studios, getting to watch them make something and just talking to them about how they work – learning their creative process. With the Phillip Trusttum film we shot, Phil’s partner Lee steals the film in a sense – she had such an interesting life herself – her mother was the fashion designer Fanny Buss – sadly Lee died shortly after we completed the film. I’m just so glad we managed to get her in the film. We have to start archiving our artists, we’re pretty bad at doing that here in New Zealand.
You’re remedying that with films like ‘I Know I’m Going to Paint‘
I hope so.
You grew up in Christchurch – what inspiration do you draw from the city in your own creative work?
I’ve never had any problem creatively, I’ve always had things I’ve wanted to make, so I don’t know that the two things are necessarily connected in my case. But in doing this last project, I will say it has hammered home to me how much creative history the city does have. I’ve been finding it really interesting to discover these things. I think generally Christchurch is good for creativity as it has afforded artists to be able to live a bit cheaper and there is a lot of collaboration between artists. It’s easier to approach people, I think. I lived in London for a time, and I always had that feeling of ‘I don’t see how I’m going to create things here’ like how am I going to borrow stuff and things like that! It’s easier here in that sense.
Will you continue with your artist profile documentaries, do you think?
I think so. It’s tricky because there’s not a lot of money around, but I really like doing these documentaries. Julian and I recently shot Dad on 16mm film and so we have a piece there. I have a list of artists I’d love to film, but it’s time and money.
The Lumiere screening of Three Wise Men takes place on December 8 – at 5.45pm.
