November / 2009

This Way of Life:
The Burstyns Film a Family Living on the
Edge of Paradise

by Don Angus

It has been said that New Zealand is the most beautiful country in the world, and Thomas Burstyn csc and his wife have quite possibly proved it with their heart-tugging new documentary This Way of Life. The scenic land and seascapes captured by Tom's HD lens are breathtaking, and the sympathetic script crafted by writer/producer Barbara Sumner Burstyn fits perfectly into the rustic, hard-scrabble environment of a remarkable family.

The 84-minute feature documentary, a five-year labour of love for the husband/wife Burstyn team, was screened at the Vancouver International Film Festival on Oct. 3, 5 and 10, following packed houses at New Zealand International Film Festival theatres in Auckland, Wellington and in other city and small-town cinemas across the Pacific nation.

This Way of Life, directed by Tom, is an unvarnished, close-up look at 30-something Peter Karena, his wife Colleen and their six children, who all live on the thin edge between freedom and disaster. Peter is a horse-whisperer, hunter and builder, as well as a caring husband and father. He was born of European parents, but was adopted into a Maori family and is Maori in all but skin.

Burstyn says the Karenas were neighbours in the Hawke's Bay area on New Zealand's North Island, at the base of the rugged and beautiful Ruahine Mountains. The Montreal-born DOP says he and Barbara, a native of and prominent journalist in New Zealand, moved his primary residence to the picturesque town of Napier six years ago to cut down on the lengthy separations of cross-ocean commuting between Canada and New Zealand. The couple has five daughters, and the travel back and forth was wearisome and taking its toll on the family.

He has worked in Montreal, Toronto, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Montreal again, and now New Zealand. "Most of my paid work is in Canada, however," he laughs. This Way of Life was completely funded by the Burstyns themselves, not counting a pre-sale to Knowledge Network and a post-production grant from the New Zealand Film Commission which provided much needed injections of funds to help finish the project. His most recent drama shoot, in Vancouver earlier this year, was the television feature Riverworld for the U.S. Sci-Fi Channel.

The award-winning cinematographer says he got to know charismatic horse trainer Peter Karena as he rode past their house, and since the Burstyns were looking for ways of working together, they decided to make a short "how-to" film on horse-whispering. Tom and Barbara had completed two other how-to DVDs - on natural home remedies and on how to make a compost heap - which sold well. Their company, Cloud South Films, also produced a well-regarded DVD last year called One Man, One Cow, One Planet, the story of the battle for organic agricultural control in India.The idea is to make enough money from how-to DVDs to help finance bigger projects, like One Man, One Cow, One Planet and This Way of Life.

Courtesy of the filmmaker

Burstyn says it was not long before he and Barbara realized the Karena family inspired a much bigger film than a simple how-to short. "It was supposed to be a story about breaking in horses," Barbara told the New Zealand magazine Idealog, "but became an epic about a man's family and the profound philosophy they were living. … We experienced a family that has created happiness through their relationships with each other, their land and their horses."

The director/shooter says he shot more than 60 hours of footage on his Sony HD Z1U compact camera, much of it following Peter on treks up into the Ruahines to hunt and to check on some of his horses that were grazing on Maori land. "So on two occasions I went up with him on three-day horse rides, across raging rivers and up impossible mountains. I am not a horse guy; I learned how to ride with Peter. It was terrifying. There is one scene in the film where a pack horse falls off a cliff and because they were tied head to tail, he dragged two other horses with him. Just by chance, I had gotten off my horse to shoot a scenic of the horse train passing by. I got the shot of the accident. And it's in focus!"

The cinematographer says the quality of the Z1U images was "amazing." He took the final cut to Technicolor in Vancouver where Gary Shaw did the colour correct. "With some tweaking, noise reduction, sweetening and sharpening, he transformed this barely HD medium into something that can be projected on to a huge cinema screen - an HD-SR 5.1 Dolby mix, a proper film."

He adds that when the film gets a big distribution deal, it will be transferred to film, a cost of up to $120,000. Meanwhile, the picture, finished in June, will do the rounds of world festivals, entered in competitions such as Sundance, Berlin, Rotterdam and South-by-Southwest.

Will success as an independent New Zealand filmmaker mean fewer projects in Canada? "Obviously, our style of filmmaking is incredibly frugal - one light, a tripod and one little camera - and being one's own producer/director has a huge cachet - but there is a romance to shooting dramatic cinematography and working on a big team. I don't want to give that up; it's too much fun."

Burstyn got his start at age 15 at the National Film Board as an apprentice, working under the mentorship of Denis Gillson csc, one of the founders of the CSC. His credits go back to the television miniseries Tales of the Klondike in 1981. Since then he has been DOP of about 70 movies and television shows. He won the best cinematography Genie Award in 1996 for Rick Stevenson's Magic in the Water, a tale of a girl's adventures with a British Columbia lake monster called Orky. He won the CSC best dramatic short cinematography award in 2002 for La Première fois.

He was Genie nominated in 1993 for his photography on Paul Shapiro's The Lotus Eaters and in 1987 for Jean-Claude Lord's Tadpole and the Whale. In 1998, he received an ASC Award nomination for When Trumpets Fade in the category of outstanding achievement in cinematography in movies of the week/miniseries. He was also nominated for an Emmy Award in 2005 for his work on The 4400. CSC Awards nominations include: Magic in the Water, Theatrical Feature, 1995; Liar, Liar, Feature, and The Lotus Eaters, TV Drama, 1993; The Hitchhiker, TV Series, 1985, 1986 & 1987.

Selected film and television credits include: Heavenly Bodies (1984), Toy Soldiers (1991), Crying Freeman (1995), Where the Money Is (2000) and The Boys from County Clare (2003). Television: Terminal City (series), Millennium (series), Liberace (1988, movie) Criminal Behaviour (1992, movie), Leap of Faith (1998, movie) and The Last Templar (2009, miniseries).

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