NZIFF 2019 Q&A - Richard Lowenstein, director of Mystify

NZIFF 2019 Q&A - Richard Lowenstein, director of Mystify

My film is.... Mystify: Michael Hutchence

The moment I'm most proud of is ...
The level of unseen archive and especially finding the Kylie and Michael footage. 
When we interviewed Kylie for the doco she described how Michael had filmed their first date in Hong Kong using a little wind-up camera which I had given him. I asked Kylie if she knew where the footage was and she said it was lost a long time ago and possibly at Paula’s place.
Months later, I had handed over films for scanning and the guy from the lab called me and said ‘we’ve got this footage of a very young Michael and Kylie on a boat on Hong Kong Harbour’.
It had been in my attic all along.

The reason I carried on with this film when it got tough is.....
I’m stubborn.
Filmmaking is chipping away at a big wall and trying to convince people to give you 2, 3, 4 or 10 million dollars all based on what’s written down on paper. Every time someone threw barriers up, it just made me more resilient and determined to push through and achieve what I wanted to do. There were extraordinary hurdles we had to get over to get it done

The one moment that will resonate with an audience is......
This is a very sad film.
 You’re not going to come out signing and dancing, you’re going to have real feelings about a real story and this is something that’s going to make you really feel.

The hardest thing I had to cut from this film is........
Footage of Michael performing so I could keep it to 100 minutes. I would have liked to have shown more songs and to have had a section about his acting career.

The thing I want people to take from this film is ......
Notice what’s happening to people around you. This is a plea for observing and understanding, and in a way it’s my apology. I was in Michael’s inner circle and I saw something disturbing and didn’t do anything either. Watch, understand and do something – watch the car crash happen.

The one thing I'd say to aspiring filmmakers is.....
Persevere. You need to have passion for what you are doing, and perseverance to keep doing it … and be unique and different.