 | 2011 SHORTLISTED FILMS ANNOUNCED - go to Shortlist & Selection tab
When we saw the first moving pictures, the Lumiere Brothers’ footage of a train leaving a French station... When a small Maori girl stood in tears on a school stage... When a human eyeball was sliced open in Luis Buniel’s extreme close-up... When De Niro stared straight at us asking, “You looking at me?”… When we watched Meg Ryan orgasming in the middle of a busy New York diner…
There was a collective intake of breath.
The experience of cinema is a very human experience. It’s visceral. It’s emotional. It’s physical. It’s a group of strangers in a dark room having the exact same reaction at the exact same moment to the 60 ft high celluloid images projected in front of them. It’s a sob. It’s a laugh. It’s a gasp. It’s - A Collective Intake of Breath.
A Collective Intake of Breath is an Executive Producer group contracted by the New Zealand Film Commission to fund two high-end dramatic short films to be produced and delivered in 2011 under the new Premiere Shorts initiative.
A Collective Intake of Breath has a simple philosophy. Cinema is about the sob, the gasp, the laugh, the cry. We challenge filmmakers to make short films that give the audience the profound experiences only cinema can provide.
We have one overriding criterion for the films we fund. “Stylish” isn’t enough. “Well-executed” isn’t enough. “Beautiful” isn’t enough. In a year’s time we want to sit in a dark cinema, we want to watch the films we’ve developed and funded, and we want to experience that collective intake of breath.
Our approach as Executive Producers is also dead simple, and born of our name. Cinema is a collective experience, in the watching and in the making. We will seek projects that live up to our philosophy, we will work with groups that show they can deliver the goods, we will support them at every stage of the process, and we will challenge the teams to deliver the cinematic experience the audience deserves. |
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