A smashing time in Kaikohe

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

Children in a scene from Kaikohe Demolition, a documentary by Florian Habicht

Florian Habicht didn't write the dialogue in his latest film but he has a favourite line: "It may look a bit paku but it's lovely."

The director laughs as he stretches out the last word in a fine impersonation of its original deliverer, Uncle Bimm, one of the many unforgettable hard cases that populate Habicht's documentary Kaikohe Demolition.

He remembers the quip because he and his director of photography/editor Chris Pryor have been subtitling KD for overseas markets, including English ones where Ngapuhi inflections might baffle audiences.

What's mystifying is how an hour-long study of the Northland town's folk - well, those ones who spend a fair bit of time down at the local demolition derby - can be so utterly charming.

The tall Habicht's gangly enthusiasm and engaging manner probably helped.

Oh, and that he's local. His family migrated from Berlin when he was 8 and he grew up in the Bay of Islands. He graduated from the Elam School of Fine Arts in 1998.

He shot his previous film Woodenhead - his DIY "surreal Grimm musical fairytale" - in and around Kaikohe and he had thoughts of making a tourist documentary about the area to make some money.

"I wanted the tourism doco to have a few parts where the tourist buses don't go. Have the real side of Northland in it."

Only he became distracted by the colour, destruction and surreal possibilities of the Kaikohe Car Club's regular meets.

Every couple of months he and his minimal crew would drive up at weekends to film the last rites of the decorated cars and yarn with the locals.

"The only thing is the film took so long to make, every year I decided to come back and get more footage and after three years no one ever said it to me, but I think lots of them thought this film was never going to happen."

The resulting film interweaves action from the track with interviews with the drivers as they hang out with their families, prepare for race day, or soak away any bruises at the Ngawha Springs hot pools while musing about life on and off track.

Despite all the crunch factor of the automotive fight to the death, Habicht's film stands back from the action.

He admits he was too scared to get into one of the cars with or without his digital video camera.

The start of the film refers to the infamous incident when, during a Christmas Parade in the town years back, the kids took on Santa for his lollies before he could scramble them. Given the town's less than illustrious reputation, was he nervous about making fun of the place?

"Before the film was ever shown and because I'm white and not Maori I was expecting some people to be like, 'What are you doing trying to represent us?"'

But a substantial section of the town's population, complete with Ratana brass band, came to Auckland for its world premiere at the Film Festival earlier this year.

"They were all really proud of how their town was represented and that it's got the Christmas parade in and Ngawha, they're sick of their town appearing on the news for murders."

It also screened at festivals around the country and at the Melbourne Festival. Now it's getting a local cinematic release. Meanwhile Habicht is submitting it everywhere he can internationally and hopes the influential Sundance Film Festival might pick it up.

He is preparing to attend the Maurits Binger Film Institute in Amsterdam next year where he's taking early drafts of his next project - "It's a true story like a biopic but it will seem like fantasy" - for development into a feature.

Meanwhile, the Kaikohe Car Club will be still pranging in style.

And the film that started life as a tourist doco might already be having just that effect.

"I know that tourism has gone up not by big numbers but the locals have met people who have said they wanted to come and check out Kaikohe after seeing the film and that's only from the festival."

* Kaikohe Demolition is screening at the Academy Cinema, Auckland, from Thursday. More info