Movie turns 20

Sarkies admits, however, that the freewheeling, ‘‘open to anything’’ student culture that he portrayed in Scarfies was probably on its way out even as the film hit theatres (indeed, student loans had been introduced in 1992).

The banging, Flying Nun-heavy soundtrack features the likes of Straitjacket Fits, The Chills, JPS Experience and The Verlaines, all acts that had peaked a decade or so earlier.

‘‘In the same way that New Zealand went though this sort of Kiwiana phase through the late 90s, early 2000s, Dunedin did the same thing,’’ says Sarkies.

‘‘Actually, the Dunedin music scene had been and passed by the time we made that film in 1999 and it had become almost mythologised. What I was really doing as a film-maker was sort of hooking into the nostalgia of that.’’

That being, of course, also Sarkies’ own youth. Among his standout memories of the shoot is The Clean playing live at Dunedin’s iconic venue The Empire – ‘‘topped only by The Clean continuing to play after we wrapped that night, and then only topped by The Clean coming to play at The Empire during our wrap party’’.

Student culture wasn’t the only area in which New Zealand was changing when Scarfies came out.

‘‘While we were putting together Scarfies, Peter Jackson was putting together his little film Lord of the Rings,’’ Sarkies chuckles, ‘‘and really, within a year or so, everything had changed.

‘‘Suddenly, New Zealand was Middle Earth and the international film industry was looking to this place in a way that probably only Peter Jackson and Richard Taylor could ever have tangibly dreamed.’’

Sarkies’ film featured a young actor who went by the name Taika Cohen. He was working on his first film, and he wasn’t the only one.

‘‘Taika’s by far the most well-known, but there’s a whole bunch of people who were in that crew and, in some cases, cast as well, who have become quite important figures in the New Zealand film industry,’’ Sarkies says.

‘‘It started a journey for a whole bunch of us.’’ Sarkies, who has gone on to direct numerous TV and movie projects, including the acclaimed feature film Out of the Blue about the Aramoana massacre, is concerned the film industry could now go the same corporate way as university education.

‘‘My greatest fear for the film industry would be that it gets gradually culturally subsumed by a much bigger machine – the machine of the demands of international distributors and international sales agents – that can, if we’re not careful, gradually turn our films into something less New Zealand and more the world.’’