Event 16 2006

Derek Pearson’s labour of love is Wellington’s first independent, digital-effects heavy sci-fi feature film. Matt is a young inventor who realises he has engineered access into the past and future. When he walks through the walls into colonial Wellington, he hasn’t bargained for anyone coming back the other way. Enter a Victorian era serial killer with a price on his head – pursued by two clearly nefarious government agents. Will Matt’s increasingly disenchanted girlfriend Paige be the 16th Event in the killer’s logbook? Pearson’s time-tripping characters run around Wellington as you have never seen it – 1893 and 2038 look extraordinary here, but so does 2006. City landmarks are reproduced and reconfigured; flat, sterile and slightly menacing: it’s a world at once instantly recognisable and surreal. Of the 15 digital features submitted by New Zealand filmmakers this year, this was the stand-out: the product of concerted industry and ingenuity, Event 16 plays like an indie film that doesn’t know it’s not a blockbuster. — John Matthewson