Documentaries used to be the black sheep of the big screen, unwanted and unloved. But now they are entering a golden age with more than 500 documentaries entered into this year's Documentary New Zealand Festival.
Stuart Page took seven years and poured thousands into his labour of love, Shustak - a documentary about an eccentric New York photographer who moved to Christchurch, and was Page's mentor at art school.
"There seemed to be a lot of old fuddy-duddies there, you know, wearing tweed jackets, smoking pipes," Page says. "And then I heard this guy shouting in this room and you know waving his arms around, and it was like a breath of fresh air. I think he's taken some great photographs and I realised there was no book about him. Something should be done. Then I realised (it would) have to be me."
Shustak quickly caught the eye of the organisers of the documentary festival.
"What I really like about this documentary is that it was really edgy and not in the traditional way of making a documentary, because Stuart is an artist himself," Dan Shannan from the DocNZ Festival says. "He created something which is quite unique."
Other artists are also in the spotlight such as Toki, a 3D bunny girl created by a Korean-born New Zealander and there is an examination of the 2004 killing of homosexual David McNee.
The 11-day festival sees world premieres for eight of the nine New Zealand documentaries.
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