NZ short film wins award at US festival

The New Zealand short film Boy has won an award at a film festival in the United States.

Boy won the Best Short Narrative Film award at the 2005 Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, qualifying it for consideration for next year's Academy Awards.

Directed by Auckland's Welby Ings and produced by Nic Finlayson for Room 8 Productions, the non-dialogue short film tells the story of a young male prostitute living in small-town New Zealand, who tries to expose the truth behind a fatal hit-and-run accident.

The Cinequest Film Festival, which featured films from 40 countries, included 1202 short films in its programme.

Premiered at the New Zealand Film Festival in July 2004, Boy has since screened at the New York, Montreal and Clermont-Ferrand festivals. It has also screened widely on the lesbian and gay film festival circuit.

"I approached Boy as a typographer and illustrator, not as a filmmaker. That in itself was unconventional," Ings said.

"The result is a visually intense film that deals with an aspect of New Zealand society seldom discussed."

Filmmaker Magazine in New York described Boy as "a haunting, visually inventive tale about coming of age and into sexuality"; La Press Montreal commented on its "brilliant storyline"; and Rozefilm, Holland described it as "visually stunning".

Meanwhile, another New Zealand short film, Nothing Special, has been selected for competition in the short film section at the Cannes Film Festival next month.

Nothing Special, directed by Helena Brooks from a script by Brooks and television personality Jaquie Brown, is a black comedy about a boy whose mother decides he is Jesus Christ reincarnate.

- NZPA