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A scriptwriter living on Kawau Island in the Hauraki Gulf may provide a New Zealand footnote to the Bafta film awards to be announced in London on February 8.
Alan Sharp, 74, is in the running for a Bafta award for a low-profile New Zealand film about a dog who is re-incarnated as a clergyman, Glasgow's Sunday Herald newspaper reported.
Dean Spanley - directed by New Zealander Toa Fraser - Sharp's first feature film for 14 years, opened in Britain last month and grossed just A3;43,000 ($112,600) in its first weekend, showing in only 55 cinemas.
But GQ magazine called it "the film of the year", and it has clearly impressed members of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta), who received DVDs direct from the film's British distributors Icon.
Though Dean Spanley arrived with none of the publicity or hype of other Bafta contenders, it has secured a spot on the Bafta long list of 15 - one stage ahead of the final nominations - for both best-adapted screenplay and best supporting actor (for British actor Peter O'Toole).
Both the Observer newspaper and the Mirror singled the feature out as their Film of the Week, with Observer critic Philip French commending it for being "immaculately acted, carefully skirting whimsy, and nicely located within its period".
Funded in part by the New Zealand Film Commission, the film cost $15 million to produce, and debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, where it received a standing ovation during the gala premiere.
It will open here on February 26.
"I've already had such a good time with the development of the script and the way it came out that anything else would be like jam on your pudding," Sharp told the newspaper from his home.
Based on an obscure 1936 novella by Lord Dunsany, the film tells the story of two gentlemen who dine together, one of whom appears to have been a dog in a previous life.
"One day, when I had nothing else to do, I decided to have a little pass at converting it into a screenplay," said Sharp. He wrote the original script about 20 years ago, but it was too short for a feature film and nothing came of it.
But producer Matthew Metcalfe saw it, tracked Sharp down in New Zealand and persuaded him to turn it into a full-length cinema film.
In the United States, New Zealand actress and former Oscar winner Anna Paquin today won a Golden Globe for new TV drama, a vampire series, True Blood.
- NZPA
