12 Questions
Ant Timpson’s 40 Hour film competition is now in its 15th year. The Incredibly Strange Film Festival founder has the largest collection of 35mm films in the southern hemisphere stored in the vault of his brother’s Avondale cinema
1 How many budding film-makers participate in the HP48HOURS competition each year?
We usually have between 8-10,000 people competing in around 600 teams nationwide. New Zealand has the most successful version of this event internationally, partly because the films are played in cinemas instead of pubs and it’s a great talent incubator. Peter Jackson has been a judge since the third year. He watches a selection of finalists and chooses a few wildcards. The NZ Film Commission keeps a close eye on the talent coming through so it’s a great avenue for people in the ’burbs or small towns to connect with the industry. We also have lots of professionals wanting to upskill, eg editors who want to give directing a go.
2 Does New Zealand have more filmmakers than other countries?
No, it’s not that special to create content now because anyone can use a phone app to create something phenomenal and post it instantly on social media. To me, it’s all wallpaper and noise. You can really see a unique voice amongst all that waffle. People like Taika Waititi, who won the first 48 Hour competition, obviously stand out.
3 You’ve also run the Incredibly Strange Film Festival in various guises since being kicked out of Otago University in 1984. How has that evolved over the years?
Now it’s nearly all new films. In the early years it was completely retro. Everyone involved was young and there was a wild, party atmosphere. We became part of the New Zealand International Film Festival in 2004. The hardest thing now is getting
young people along. There’s a huge youth audience out there who’d love this stuff but they don’t know the festival exists or they think it’s only for the elite. Entertainment is really diverse now — Netflix, games — in my day it was just sport or movies.
4 You were once accused of being a “smut peddler”. Have you managed to shake that label off?
That was hard to shake off. We had some high-profile court battles with the Society for Promotion of Community Standards over films with the word “sex” in the title. It took them four years to realise that all the fuss just drove more people to see the films. It was good PR for us but it was frustrating and expensive to have to find a replacement film at the last minute just because one person had taken out an injunction. That loophole is no longer an issue and it hasn’t happened since.
5 By watching 70s “Sexploitation” and “Blaxploitation” films are you participating in discrimination?
I find it fascinating to see how life was back then. You only have to go back to mid-80s TV to realise it’s another world now. Disney used to try to pretend cigarette smoking never existed by erasing it from cartoons. To me that’s a really dangerous, revisionist way of going about things. It’s more educational to show it in context.
6 You’re 51 now. What do you get most excited about careerwise?
Producing films. Getting people on board a project I’m excited about. A big part of it is finding people that are on the cusp and taking their work to the next level. I did that with the ABCs of Death anthologies and before that with the film funding initiatives Headstrong and Make My Horror Movie. Being there at the start and launching a new voice is exciting.
7 Which was the most successful feature film you’ve produced
out of The Devil Dared Me To, the ABCs of Death, Deathgasm, Turbo Kid, Housebound and The Greasy Strangler?
Turbo Kid won the Saturn award for best international film of 2015 and the ABCs of Death made the most money but The Greasy Strangler is the one I’m most proud of. I got Elijah Wood on board early with funding. It ended up playing at nearly 100 festivals worldwide and was Empire Magazine’s Comedy of the Year, which you won’t believe if you ever see it. It’s outrageous and mad in all the best ways. It’s like if Steptoe and Son was made by naughty children who thought willies and awkward people having uncomfortable sex was funny. It’s polarising and I love that. I’ll never be involved with a film which people say was just okay.
8 What do you think of mainstream Hollywood films at the moment?
I’ve got a real aversion to comicbook superhero movies. I just think they’re garbage. I know that’s elitist but to me they’re like McDonald’s movies — a billion-dollar business run by massive corporations. I’d much rather see a small, character drama.
9 Growing up in Auckland was film a big part of your life?
From the age of 8 I used to go up the road to Crystal Palace theatre in Mt Eden nearly every weekend. By the age of 10 I’d go by myself. I loved slapstick Spaghetti Westerns with juvenile humour, you can’t beat a good fart joke, and men-in-suits movies like Godzilla. The Towering Inferno terrified me. After the first burning person fell out of the high-rise, Mum asked if I wanted to leave and I said yes. I’ve been chasing that rush ever since. The most depressing thing about getting older is losing the ability to be scared in films. As a father, seeing kids in peril has me on the edge of my seat. The dark comic side of me quite likes that.
10 How did you end up with the largest collection of 35mm film in the southern hemisphere?
I was a young collector and as the older ones shuffle off, their families either dump their collections or donated them. I keep half in the vault here at the Hollywood Cinema, about 1500 films. Most weigh between 18 and 25kg so you run out of space pretty quickly. The other half’s in Austin with my friend Tim League, who owns the Alamo Drafthouse cinema chain. He started a genre film archive, AGFA, that provides a non-profit service worldwide. There’s a lot of cool venues now that screen 35mm films, like Quentin Tarantino’s theatre in LA.
11 Do you watch films from your own collection?
Yes, once a week we come and watch late at night with a few wines. There’s a huge back-catalogue we haven’t even checked and we have found films that are the only surviving copy worldwide. I prefer to see films on the medium they were created on. There’s an underlying difference between analogue and digital that no one can put their finger on.
12 Why is your collection stored at the 102-year-old Hollywood Theatre in Avondale?
My brother Matt Timpson bought the theatre and has been restoring it. He’s turned it into a multi-purpose venue and has been doing a lot of music gigs like Tiny Ruins, Aldous Harding and Nadia Reid. I used it as a venue for the 24 Hour Movie Marathon and Incredibly Strange films. It seats 400 people so we’ll do the HP48HOURS heats here before moving to the Civic for the grand final. This year Massey University is offering secondary school students four scholarships to its Bachelor of Creative Media Production. There’s also $1000 cash for best female director and $1000 cash for innovation and risk-taking.