by FilmInk staff
What got you initially interested in the topic of your documentary?
“In 1977 I read by chance in a Sydney newspaper that Sir Edmund Hillary was planning a journey by jetboat and foot up India’s river Ganges and was looking for a filmmaker. I wrote to him not expecting a reply or the job but I got both. And I made what in those days was a conventional action adventure narrator driven documentary for television.
“This new version is a totally different and more powerful film because the story is this time told by the participants including myself, and covers the emotional heart of the expedition, namely that it was really a pilgrimage to help Hillary recover from the recent death of his wife and youngest daughter, but in the process another drama unfolded that led to a desparate attempt to try to save Hillary’s life.”
What was the biggest challenge you faced while making your documentary?
“The biggest challenge in the original documentary was that 16mm film was so expensive in those days that we could only afford 30 hours of it to cover the entire three months expedition. The upside of this was that we ended up with 30 hours of 16mm neg that can these days be scanned so well to 4K resolution, and the images look so good on a big cinema screen that the audience feels they are actually there.”
What was an important story or scene or interview you had to leave out of your documentary and why?
“On the original expedition, when Hillary collapsed with mountain sickness, the film crew made the instant decision not to film as each one of us had an urgent task to do to save his life. In this new version I toyed with reenactments but realised that the seven of us just recounting on camera what happened, often with tears in our eyes, was more powerful, so that’s what we did.”
How has the reaction towards your documentary been so far?
“It won awards at many overseas Festivals last year, as well as at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. Someone at a preview screening came up to me and said ‘that’s the best film I have ever seen’. Of course I don’t know how many other films they have seen, but one other thing I liked about that is that they used the word ‘film’. The word Documentary, with its academic and thus sometimes negative connotations, is a burden that should be lifted by calling our films ‘real life films’ or just films, as most viewers call them. We all know they can sometimes be as powerful as scripted films.”
What are you most proud of about your film?
“Because, as mentioned before, people get as emotionally tied up in the story, as they would had this been a scripted drama.”
What aspect are you unhappy about your film and why?
“When I began I had in mind a TV documentary, whose normal structure is to outline and perhaps give away too much of the plot in the first minute or so, so the viewer stays seated and doesn’t change channels. As a cinema film this isnt necessary so ideally I should have different structures for each, but don’t.”
What is next for your film?
“Half way through the editing I showed it to a New Zealand based Distributor who brought cinema rights for New Zealand and we did have a good run there just before covid 19. They had brought Australian rights as well but I brought them back for $5000 just before covid-19 struck so I am starting the Australian marketing plan from a revenue negative position. Because the commercial cinema distribution model for independent low budget films is so unviable right now I will probably have to resort to the olden days model of hiring venues and showing it myself.”
What is the next project you are working on?
“During covid 19 I have been finishing some projects I had put aside over the years. One is about a 15 year old Australian boy I had filmed attempting Everest, another is a new angle on Gallipoli, and another is a film about the first climb of Australia’s highest mountain, Big Ben on Heard Island in the sub-Antarctic.”
