Teen up for green Oscar

KEVIN STENT/Sunday Star-Times

AWARD FINALIST: Eighteen-year-old Charlee Collins from Kaitaia.

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A teenage movie-maker who grew up in a town with no cinema is now competing for the top prize at the world's most prestigious environmental film competition.

Charlee Collins was a Year 13 student at Kaitaia College when she wrote and filmed The Break Up – a drama tackling the issue of climate change.

The film was last week judged a finalist in The Panda Awards, also known as the Green Oscars, which are sponsored by the BBC and held in Bristol every two years. The Break Up was one of four named in the judges' special selection category, making it eligible for the final jury's choice award at October's Wildscreen Festival.

At less than four minutes long, it's the shortest film on a programme which attracted entries from 45 countries and included works produced for the Discovery Channel and National Geographic.

Collins' film, put forward for a Panda after it won New Zealand's Outlook for Someday sustainability film challenge, started life as a back-up idea. It features five teenagers in a Dear John telephone conversation, "breaking up" with the things they do that are bad for the environment.

Collins, a movie addict, says with no cinema in Kaitaia she was a video store regular. "But we were also surrounded by so many beautiful beaches and bush. Places like that show us how much we have to lose."

The 18-year-old, who was at Wellington's Victoria University, is to train at the New Zealand Film and Television School. Two other New Zealand-made movies are also in contention for a Panda. Guy Ryan and Nick Holmes's Carving the Future and Carla Braun-Elwert and Jane Adcroft's Love in Cold Blood were both nominated for the BBC Newcomer Award.

- © Fairfax NZ News