Issue 20 | August 13,2012 | critic.co.nz

INTERvIEW WITH ALYx DUNCAN
New Zealand-born director Alyx Duncan took time out from the
busy international film festival circuit to speak to Jane Ross about
her debut feature film, The Red House, which is screening at the
NZIFF this Friday at 6pm at Rialto.
You describe The Red House as a fictional essay in which you pose
the central question “Is home where you are from, or what you carry
inside you wherever you go?” How does this question resonate for you?
In some ways I feel it’s possible to be at “home” in other parts of the
world and carry my identity and sense of “home” inside me, but I always
hold this small island (Waiheke) in the centre of my being. This connection
ultimately draws me back to New Zealand. Four years ago my father called
me and told me they intended to move away and would have to clear out
and possibly sell our family home. I was struck by the thought that all
the memories of my childhood and my family would get erased from the
physical environment. I wondered whether, if I went back to that place
years later, I would still feel it was home.
This film has two main characters – your father, Lee, and your stepmother,
Jia. How did you come to involve your family in this film?
Originally I had set out to make a very different film – a short experimental
documentary, with the house as the main character. The human
characters (my parents) were really only there as background extras.
However, once we started shooting I found my lens was increasing drawn
to the real people, and so we moved to devising a story more focussed
around characters they could play. Obviously they are not actors and in
fact are very private, shy people. Yet there’s something very intriguing
and honest about the movement of people within their “natural setting”.
You make specific reference to how the film gives a personal perspective
on globalisation. What do you perceive to be the apparent external
forces?
Film Editor | Sarah Baillie | film@critic.co.nz
I think many of the aspects of our lives now are informed or transformed
by globalization. The outside influences that intervene and start
the action of the film is that Jia’s parents need her to return home to care
for them. Once home, she doesn’t recognize her city. It’s changed from
the traditionally constructed city that she knew into a modern mega-city
that embraces a certain amount of homogenization – like many different
cities of the world now. For Lee, he feels the small island where he chose
to live his life has changed in ideology. He is trying to understand his
place in a world that’s changing from a small community, that’s been
relatively self-contained, to a place that is shaped by the currents of wider
consumer-oriented markets.
I really like the observation that you made about the filmmaking process
in terms of how you have to be present in the moment to be able to
recognise that something special is happening. Can you describe one
of those moments for me?
One of my favourite shots in the film is the one looking down the
tunnel in the train. I was lucky during that shoot. Francisco, who was
the primary cinematographer for the China section, was shooting the
main action with Lee and Jia so this gave me freedom just to look and
find moments. I happened to be at the front of the train as we went into
the tunnel and I pressed my lens against the glass to stabilize it and held
it there recording till we came into the next station. It wasn’t a shot I’d
shot-listed or planned but I really love its memorizing quality and how
that shifts our reality as we enter the new city.
What has been the best part of the making your first feature film?
Film
It was fulfilling using a poetic way of saying something that is true
and real. It’s deeply satisfying coming to know people, whom I thought I
knew, from a different perspective. The film feels quite honest and simple
and although the process was demanding, I felt very satisfied when I felt
it was coming together.
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