Interview: Sumner Burstyn (This Way of Life)

Canadian cinematographer Thomas Burstyn makes his feature debut as a director along with his wife Sumner as his writer and producer with this lush documentary set in New Zealand’s rugged Ruahine Mountains. This Way of Life is about the Karena family — a family that would make plenty others envious. They have no material wealth but what they do have is a unique lifestyle with their six beautiful children and an entourage of wild horses that brings them so close to the nature that it’s as far from materialistic world as you can get. While the parents suffer from the pressures of family and the society, the kids live a happy existence close to the nature and close to another. The Burstyns choose the right family and story to tell how much we’ve lost over the past century — a direct connection with nature.

Yama Rahimi: How did this project came about?
Sumner Burstyn: Well the Karena’s were our neighbours. We lived in the same area. We would see Peter riding and eve from a distance he was just so charismatic. So we engineered a meeting and discovered his wonderful wife and amazing kids and it went from there. However for the first year we thought we were making an instructional dvd about how to break in a horse. We were a little slow to realise how great this family were – but we are so happy we did.

Rahimi: What was the time frame of production and post-production?
Burstyn: Four years filming and one year post-production.

Rahimi: What was the specific tasks between you and Thomas?
Burstyn: We are a very compatible team and tend to nterfere with each others roles but accord each other the final say in our specific areas.

Rahimi: What were the challenges?
Burstyn: Well money was not really an issue while we were filming (that problem came later in post-production) but weather was an issue. It’s not a lot of fun filming in the rain. Time was never a problem as we committed ourselves to follow the story no matter how long it took and we would just go back whenever we could. Of primary importance was our relationship with the Karena’s – it still is – and that’s why the film has such an intimate quality. You can’t get that is you have three weeks to shoot. We made the film with no money, one camera, one tripod, one microphone and just the two of us – Tom and Sumner – so if we go from Oscar short-listed to nominated it will be totally amazing. Perhaps the lowest budget doc ever to go all the way – fingers crossed.

Rahimi: What did you leave out for the sake of the story?
Burstyn: Ah that is an excellent question. About 80 hours worth of material – and also some personal details that we felt would harm the kids as they grew older. While they would have made the film more dramatic we wanted to protect the kids.

Rahimi: Where did the film premiere?
Burstyn: It premiered in NZ at the NZ Film Festival in August last year (2009) and then at the Berlin International Film Festival (we won a Jury Prize).

Rahimi: How did it get to the Oscar shortlist?
Burstyn: Well that’s a long story – we have extensively used social media to build our fan base as we have never had money for marketing and we’ve always held the Oscars in our mind so just worked towards it every day. We also were accepted into DocuWeeks. This was a huge gamble for us as it’s expensive and we had to increase our mortgage even further – but we feel it was worth it.

Rahimi: What films and filmmakers inspired you to become a filmmaker?
Burstyn: Image wise Bertolucci and David Lean and story wise Donald Britten and George Stoney – also all the not-so-good films out there. We watch a lot of docs and find we learn the most from the less-than-perfect.

Rahimi: What’s next if you have a project lined up?
Burstyn: There’s two in post-production, The Search for Gentleman Racer, about the search for identity and Yolanda’s Last Portrait is the relationship between an artist sister and her famous scientist brother.

This Way of Life is currently seeking distribution in the U.S.