BOXING DAY
Director: Kriv Stenders Stars: Richard Green, Misty Sparrow, Syd Brisbane
Reviewed by PETER KRAUSZ
Boxing Day is Kriv Stenders latest film (funded by the Adelaide FF) after Illustrated Family Doctor and the low budget digital success of Blacktown.
Working with ex-prison offender Richard Green, he and Kriv have fashioned a fictional story outline/treatment, that was shot in one week after a two week rehearsal period. The film has been shot in real time with a single hand-held digital camera (yet including 12 unnoticeable edit points, although the film appears to have been shot in one complete take).
The story centres on an ex-prisoner, on home detention, whose life is infiltrated by a drug-dealing friend who tries to inveigle him back to deal more drugs, and his family, including an aboriginal niece (first time actor Misty Sparrow) who may have suffered at the hands of her stepfather (Syd Brisbane). That the whole thing is played out as an 82 minute extended drama which grows into a compelling piece of cinema verite, gives credit to Stenders and Green who have turned this story into a piece of fine filmmaking art. This final version of the film, interestingly enough, is the third run through of the story after they discarded the first two efforts.
Boxing Day demonstrates yet again that budgets do not craft good films, ideas do. Highly recommended.