His Worship, Mayor Tim Shadbolt

Well, screenwriting this week took an interesting turn with a visit from Invercargill's Mayor, Tim Shadbolt about a feature film. Initially, Mr. Shadbolt had the idea of making the first New Zealand and China collaborative feature film. Our tutor pitched Mr. Shadbolt's ideas of what he wanted and to me it sounded like what he wanted was a tourist promotional video of Southland. Mr. Shadbolt presented us with a different proposal during his visit.

Le Quesnoy ex-mayoral residence

Le Quesnoy (Lay Keen-wah) is a small town in France that has a special connection to New Zealand. During World War 1, the New Zealand army crept into Le Quesnoy and liberated the town without civilian casualty. They did this by climbing up ladders top the town, in the middle of the night with pistols and shooting every enemy soldier while they slept. Le Quesnoy are trying to sell their mayoral residence which is three floors tall and is a very grand looking house. This residence has recently been offered to the New Zealand government to be purchased but the government have turned down the offer to buy it.

So..... good old Tim wants to purchase the residence because he feels that the battle that was fought by the New Zealand army at Le Quesnoy is an important piece of New Zealand's history. This all comes back to the idea of a feature film. Mr. Shadbolt thinks that if he made a film as well as some promotional videos, that he may be able to use these to try and get people interested in helping to put money towards purchasing the Le Quesnoy mayoral house to turn into a war memorial and hotel.

First of all, we found out what the imperatives were for the film - these were things that the film had to have. The imperatives were:

1. Promote Southland filmmaking
2. Showcase Southland - Tourism
3. Anzac Heritage (Western Front WW1)
4. Chinese interests

Somehow, we had to try and formulate a story idea that included all four of these imperatives. Mr. Shadbolt told us a story about Rewi Alley, who was a soldier in World War 1 and resided in Southland on a farm at Castlerock, near Dipton. Rewi fought in World War 1 and was awarded a bravery medal after being shot through the hips. After the war, he moved to China and became somewhat famous over there. Once he moved to China, he adopted a couple of sons and bought them up as his own. It is unclear whether or not he fought in Le Quesnoy but he has living relatives in Canterbury that may have his war records which would tell us if he fought in Le Quesnoy or not.

Anyway, there are a few angles and ideas for a story that we could possibly go with for this film and they are:

1. The story of Le Quesnoy
2. The story of Rewi Alley
3. Historical/Period drama
4. Contemporary drama with flashbacks

The story ideas that were generated from all of these ideas and imperatives are as follows:

- Rewi's two children (China?), bookend device - Relatives visit France
                                                                             - Flashback to historical drama
- SIT Chinese student researching Rewi - Researching around Southland
                                                                             - Link to flashback of Rewi's life
- Rewi's grandchildren come to Invercargill to reconnect with his past - Links to French by boy/girl romance

We just need to figure out which story would be the best choice for this particular project and hopefully this week in screenwriting class, we get the opportunity to explore these ideas further. All things considered, I think that this could be an interesting process and project. I enjoyed the new things that I have learned as I enjoy learning new things about history and especially New Zealand history. I look forward to seeing where all of this goes!