One of the signs of a healthy screen production scene is the number of equipment rental companies in the market. New Zealand is well-served with a range of competing offerings — but only one can boast an owner with nearly 60 years unbroken experience behind a camera.

Andy Roelants, from Metro Film, first got his hands on a movie camera in 1965, and immediately fell in love: "As soon as they opened that camera box, I knew instantly that this was what I wanted to do in my life."

Roelants left school at age 15; he was eager to escape the "grinding mediocrity" of New Zealand in the mid 60s, and seek his fortune overseas. Working as a day labourer in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory, he was approached by a man from the Commonwealth Employment Bureau with an offer of a job that no one seemed to want...a "dogsbody" for an outfit working in remote Arnhem Land.

Getting off the small plane the next day, Roelants discovered that he was working on a film for the Institute of Aboriginal Studies, as they made anthropological records of local customs and culture. He was instantly besotted with the camera. "It had the ability to tell a story, because the images were moving".

That experience would lead to Roelants working as a camera operator on some of New Zealand’s most important news stories, and eventually making an important contribution to the growth of the local feature film industry in the 1970s and 80s.

Roelants' family were post-war European migrants. He was born in an RAF hospital in Germany, but his parents were English. They came to New Zealand for a new life. "We wanted a different world."

He still remembers that 1950s ocean voyage, and the quality of his observations would stand him in good stead when it came time to hoist a camera on to his shoulder. "I remember coming down through Panama and past Pitcairn Island, delivering the mail. And strangely, I can still hear the language of those guys in Pitcairn Island back in the day, as the tenders were heaving up and down beside the vessel."

His father gave him his first experience with still cameras, so he was intrigued by image-making from an early age. And, like almost every Kiwi in the 1950s, he was a regular at the flicks. "We all went to the matinee theatre on Saturday afternoon. One of my favourite films at the time was West Side Story; images like that lit me up like a Christmas tree."

Fired up by his experiences in Australia, Roelants returned home in 1965 to become a trainee cameraman at the NZ Broadcasting Corporation, in the early days of television news. “I've always smiled to this very day at their idea of training — on my first day at the NZBC, they gave me a 16mm ST Arriflex, a Weston light meter and a 100 foot roll of film. And they said 'have a good day'. So you really had to learn for yourself!”

News could be a serious business though, as Roelants learned when he and his colleagues got an early morning call on 10 April 1968. In atrocious weather, the interisland steamer Wahine had lost power while approaching Wellington Harbour. Roelants was assigned to the suburb of Seatoun. From there, he could see the ship on its side and the lifeboats slowly making their way to shore.

"It was a very emotional day. Seeing the faces of the people all togged up in their life preservers...they were passing little babies down the line like footballs to get them ashore. And at the time, I'm probably standing waist or chest deep in water with my camera, trying to get the most dramatic pictures."

"We were filming non-stop all day long, magazine after magazine after magazine of film. And because the conditions were so adverse, all the film had to be taken to the National Film Unit and strung up in the darkrooms, just to dry it before they could process it."

Fifty-one people died in the tragedy. Roelants and his NZBC colleagues won a World Newsfilm Award that year for their coverage.

As the 60s turned into the 70s, many young New Zealanders became ambitious to tell more local stories on-screen. But opportunities (and funding) were hard to come by. Budding filmmakers like Geoff Murphy, Ian Mune and Roger Donaldson would beg, steal or borrow equipment and short ends of film from sympathetic friends working at the NZBC or the National Film Unit.

"Because we were working at the NZBC, we had access to cameras", Roelants says. "We were very popular!" In 1969 he left the NZBC to go back to Australia, working for the ABC on documentaries for shows like Four Corners and This Day Tonight. Returning to New Zealand in 1973 as a freelancer, he often worked on commercials with Donaldson at Aaadrvark Films. At this time, like so many of his colleagues, the ultimate aim was to tell New Zealand stories.

Roelants assisted on early New Zealand projects like Murphy’s Tank Busters (shot by Alun Bollinger). After the success of Roger Donaldson and Ian Mune’s anthology series Winners and Losers, it looked like there was a chance for the pair to make the country's first theatrical feature film in five years. Sleeping Dogs already had a cinematographer, Michael Seresin, and Seresin had a preferred camera assistant (David Burr); so Roelants put his hand up to be the boom operator in the sound department. "And they said 'great'. It was that simple. We didn't care less what part we played on the film. We just wanted one to happen."

Roelants was never ambitious to join the likes of Seresin, Cowley and Bollinger in the lead camera role, as cinematographer on a feature film. He was happiest as a camera operator and focus puller, feeling those roles were closer to the story. "When you're pulling focus from one subject to another subject, you are helping to tell the story that's written in words. You're absolutely right there — part of the action."

Roelants was a camera assistant on the features Angel Mine, Battletruck, and Came a Hot Friday He was personally chosen as focus puller on Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence by Japanese director Nagisa Ōshima and cinematographer Tôichirô Narushima. Roelants describes the film "as a transformative experience — not just for me, but for many of the crew. Plus we had the added bonus of David Bowie performing at the wrap party!"

Roelants was ambitious to improve the technical quality of New Zealand cinematography — and to do that he had to have more control over the equipment. "In the early days, a lot of the cameras that were bought into New Zealand were secondhand. They were well used. It always used to piss me off — excuse the term — that I was using an instrument that was less than what I wanted in terms of perfection."

Roelants applied for an import licence to bring equipment in from overseas, which meant he needed personal approval from the Minister of Customs, Lance Adams-Schneider. "He had to think of you as being a good individual, as somebody who was worthwhile", says Roelants. "Lord only knows — I have no idea to this very day what they were protecting."

Those first camera imports were the beginning of what was to become Metro Film, a successful business despite the boom-bust cycles of the New Zealand film industry. "I don't feel it was ever for me", he says. "It was always for what we were involved in. We were making films. And I wanted our films to be absolutely exquisitely done and technically interesting. We were driven by our passion." Metro Film is proud to have trained and supported dozens of camera operators and cinematographers across the decades.

Nowadays Metro is a family business, with three of Roelants' sons involved. "When you're in the movie business it doesn't matter who you are; your children are in the movie business as well!"

Ryan Roelants runs Auckland operations for Metro Films, together with his brother Archer. Finn Roelants works for The Rebel Fleet. Andy Roelants co-founded the company in 2015 and is currently one of the directors. The Rebel Fleet provides digital support services to major productions in New Zealand and Australia.

After nearly 60 years in the business, Andy Roelants still gets up each morning excited about image-making and storytelling: "We've got some of the most incredible cameramen in the whole world. we really have. And I'm very proud of those people. So the local film industry, I think, has got a good future."

Profile written by Dan Slevin; published on 30 June 2024

Sources include
Andy Roelants
Metro Film website. Accessed 30 June 2024

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