Concrete Playground Meets Film Director Mark Albiston

Mark Albiston (left) and Louis Sutherland have been mates since primary school. In recent years they have put their film making talents together to create widely acclaimed short films based on their experiences of growing up on the Kapiti Coast. Their first feature film Shopping has taken out the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival Grand Prix award and will have it's New Zealand premiere on May 30.

In the film it's 1981 and Willy; a half Samoan, half Pakeha teenager is trying to find his way in the world while at the same time looking out for his sensitive younger brother Soloman and trying to avoid getting beaten by his heavy-handed father. Soon after meeting a charismatic local thief, a world of possibilities opens up for Willy and eventually he is faced with making a choice.

Concrete Playground caught up with Mark to find out why the co-directors chose Louis' family life as the inspiration for the film.

First of all congratulations on receiving such a lot of recognition for your short films Run and Six Dollar Fifty Man. I imagine they would have provided great training for making this feature film?

Definitely. We had always aimed to make a feature pretty much after our first short film Run and both shorts were inspired by our life experiences. The first one, Run, was like the younger sibling to Shopping. Now I'm just writing a another feature based on the same sort of character as in The Six Dollar Fifty Man which is about the experiences I had growing up.

How did it feel to win the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival Grand Prix award for Shopping?

It was fantastic. On our opening night we had 1200 people in the cinema. It was like playing the film for a stadium of people. Watching the masses of people jockeying to get in the door was amazing.

You and Louis are the co-directors and writers of Shopping but do you have different strengths that you bring together on the projects you work on?

Yeah, Louis went to drama school and has come through the acting road to film making although he did make documentaries as well. I came through more the production route. I have a production company called Sticky Pictures which used to make art shows and documentaries, things like that.

We've come from different places to wind up working together but we've been mates since we were eight years old. We know all the same people and neighbourhoods so when we create characters we can base them on people that we've known in our past.

That definitely comes through in Shopping. It's obviously set in a place and time you know intimately. Is that why you chose the Kapiti Coast?

Yeah. It's a pretty unique place, particularly Paekakariki. We always imagined Willy back in that world that we grew up in. It seemed like a real natural fit.

Why did you decide to base Willy's character on Louis' experience?

Sharing our stories of growing up gives the drama depth because that's us on screen. When I was at school I gravitated towards Louis and a couple of other Samoan kids who were a couple of years older than me. They were the fun guys to hang out with because they were always laughing. He was my brother's friend but I would always tag along. One day he fell out with his dad and got involved in a shoplifting gang.

Really? Just like in the film? I didn't realise it was quite that autobiographical.

Yeah. There was a notorious criminal in Wellington back in the day and the character Bennie is based on that guy. He took Louis and a few teenagers under his wing. Louis disappeared from my group of friends. I bumped into him one day and asked him where he'd gone and what had happened, that's how we got to talking about this story.

It's set in 1981 during the time of the dawn raids but that's not something that directly affects the family. Why did you choose to make this more of a background feature?

Growing up on the coast it was kind of interesting. We were sheltered in many ways from that although it still had a big effect. The [Springbok] tour was also on but it was all happening on television and not in people's backyards. No-one was getting taken away in Kapiti and sent back to the islands. It wasn't till Louis and the others were teenagers that they started to figure out what was happening around them.

In many ways what we wanted to represent in the film was that affect which comes through in the father's fears. In our community it wasn't just Pacific Islanders who were affected in that way. I had a Maori friend who had similar experiences. It's something that I suppose unless you are in that family you don't really understand.

Do you think that theme of racial prejudice is as relevant today as it was then?

I think so and maybe more now for other nationalities. I have to catch a lot of taxis to and from the airport and I always talk to the cab drivers. More often than not they can't get other work because their qualifications don't cross over or because there are stereotypes about their langauge and culture.

I suppose that provides a little bit of an insight into how the Polynesian community were treated back then. They couldn't speak English when they arrived and they struggled to be accepted into communitites because there was a lot of prejudice.

This film has already been compared a lot to Boy, was that something you expected?

We are a little bit surprised about that. It's funny because our script took six years to finish so we started writing it a long time before Taika [Waititi] did. I think the fact it features two brown brothers may be the biggest similarity but other than that I think they are quite different films. Shopping is about a Samoan family, not a Maori one. It's also quite a lot darker but there are a few laughs in there too.

Tell me more about the next film you are writing, you said the character is similar to the boy in Six Dollar Fifty Man?

I suppose it's a little bit like the Six Dollar Fifty Man. That film was based on a day that I ran away from school when I was a kid. The new film Hell's Teeth is about a relationship that the main character forms with someone who teaches him more about life than anything he could learn at school. They get expelled together and go on a journey and we will hopefully be shooting it towards the end of next year.

Click here to read the Concrete Playground review of Shopping.