Florian Habicht: A filmmaker with a light and quirky touch...

Interview – 2008

Director Florian Habicht is responsible for some of New Zealand's quirkiest films. Habicht made his breakthrough in 2003 with the surreal Woodenhead. Since then, his features have blurred the boundaries between documentary and drama.

In this ScreenTalk, Habicht talks about:

Studying photography at Elam Art School and his drive to push the boundaries of the medium
Making short films at Elam and learning by doing, breaking rules, and embracing mistakes
How a planned tourism film morphed into demolition derby documentary Kaikohe Demolition
Mixing fact and fiction in the surreal Liebesträume - The Absurd Dreams of Killer Ray
Working with theatre director Warwick Broadhead on "grim musical fairytale" Woodenhead
Teaming up with Broadhead again for 2008 documentary Rubbings From a Live Man, where Broadhead plays all characters
Preparing to roam New York City on a Harriet Friedlander Arts Foundation Arts Residency (where he would film his movie Love Story)

This video was first uploaded on 22 August 2008, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Direction and Interview - Clare O'Leary, Camera and Editing - Leo Guerchmann

...when I came out of Elam, I’d been making at Elam films really intimately with just small crews, and with people that I’m close to . . . I just realised that I wanted to keep making films like that.
– Florian on continuing making films in the way he had at the Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland

Florian's Full Profile