NZIFF 2019 Q&A - Shirley Horrocks, director of Peter Peryer: The Art of Seeing

NZIFF 2019 Q&A - Shirley Horrocks, director of Peter Peryer: The Art of Seeing

My film is.... 
Peter Peryer: The Art of Seeing (an in-depth profile of a great New Zealand artist).

The moment I'm most proud of is....
In a feature-length documentary there are many interesting moments, but one I remember vividly happened when we took the artist, Peter Peryer, back to the Hokianga, and we visited the pub where he had lived as a boy. Re-visiting the bar (where his Dad, a boxer, had sometimes had to spar with difficult customers) and his bedroom (where the wallpaper would shiver and rustle on windy nights) stimulated a lot of interesting anecdotes. Peter grew up as a very independent and original personality.

The reason I carried on with this film when it got tough is.....
Funding for feature-length documentaries is always a struggle, but there were so many people who knew and admired Peter Peryer’s work, who cheered me on. A number of them contributed to a Boosted (crowd-funding) campaign. I also received a modest but important grant from Creative NZ. So there was no doubt there was plenty of interest in this project. Also, though none of us anticipated it, I was documenting Peter just in time. He died from a sudden heart attack just a few days after I had completed the filming.

The one moment that will resonate with an audience is.......
Hopefully there will be many moments since Peter takes us through his life and his art in a very engaging way. But I expect there will be particular interest in the story of how he worked with his former wife Erika as a model. Both she and Peter talk eloquently in the film about how they created the dramatic series of Erika photos. There is also a great controversy that ensued when Peter’s photo of a dead cow at the side of a country road was part of an art exhibition in Germany. The New Zealand government tried to stop it because it they thought the Germans might imagine that our country had dead cow disease! The Germans laughed at the provincial behaviour of our government in attempting to censor art.

The hardest thing I had to cut from this film is........ 
It is a common failing of film-makers that they go on too long. I call it ‘the three ending problem’! Of course I had a lot more footage than I could use. But I’m very aware of the need to be selective, and Peter Peryer was the ultimate example of selectivity in terms of his own photos. He chose only a few of those he shot as ‘keepers.’ Similarly, I observed the traditional film-maker’s rule of ‘Kill your darlings!’ (or at least some of them).

The thing I want people to take from this film is .....
I hope that everyone who sees this film will be left in no doubt that Peter was not only one of our greatest photographers, but one of our greatest artists. I also believe that the film functions as a masterclass in photography. Troubled by today’s endless flood of digital photos, Peter was adamant that the key issues were always choice of image, framing, and a merciless avoidance of clichés.

The reason I love the NZIFF is.......
So many of today’s media products are very commercially-minded – they mildly entertain us but leave us with very little to think or talk about. In contrast I look forward to the Film Festival each year because it offers films that are thoughtful, original and surprising. A fortnight of films that are the real deal!

What I want to see at this year's NZIFF is......
I’m buying a lot of tickets, but above all I want to say: Don’t overlook the classics! The Lodger, Apocalypse Now, Andrei Rublev, and the Agnès Varda films are timeless examples of why film festivals exist.

The one thing I'd say to aspiring filmmakers is.....
I agree entirely with Peter Peryer when he said: Make sure you know the history of your art. And be ready for the long haul. The key question is whether you’ll still be seriously involved in your practice a decade from now (or in Peter’s case, nearly four decades).