Small film with big heart to premiere at Festival

For Immediate Release
9 June 2009

Small film with big heart to premiere at Festival

Locally filmed and produced documentary This Way of Life has scored it’s first hit with selection in the New Zealand International Film Festival in July.

Shot on location in the Ruahine Ranges and Waimarama Beach, the film follows the Hawke’s Bay-based Karena family and their fifty horses over almost four years of their life.

“The Way of Life is a modern parable of how to live well with little. The stunning natural environments of Hawkes Bay were the perfect backdrop to tell a local story with universal themes,” says director and cinematographer Tom Burstyn.

Selection in the NZ International Film Festival means the film will screen in Auckland and Wellington with further region screenings to be confirmed. “ In Peter Karena and his family, Barbara Sumner-Burstyn and her husband Tom have found as charismatic a subject as any filmmakers could ask for”, says Festival director Bill Gosden. “But what makes the film especially powerful is the Karena’s unconventional and incredibly positive response to the questions that confront many families in these anxious times. This is exactly the type of formally impressive, personally engaging work that makes it a pleasure to programme the Film Festival.”

The documentary has been produced locally by Cloud South Films Ltd which has been established by journalist Barbara Sumner-Burstyn and Canadian cinematographer Tom Burstyn. “Our documentaries are personal, well researched and socially relevant. To premiere at the NZ International Film Festival means that our local story is reaching a nationwide – and possibly even international – audience. We do believe this film will surprise people and win audiences all over the world,” says Sumner-Burstyn.

This Way of Life will be released theatrically in New Zealand next year. In the meantime Cloud South Films intends to submit it to a number of international festivals.

ENDS

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