GROWING up in Wellington, Jackie van Beek’s family home was littered with huge, disabled puppets. The actress’s mother was a puppeteer for the Crippled Children’s Society and toured the puppets in schools to educate kids about special needs. Each had a different disability: Mark was in a wheelchair. Johnny was blind. Mandy was deaf.
A young Jackie van Beek, then at Onslow College, used to enjoy playing with the puppets and observing her mother busily writing scripts.
The disabled puppets appear to have had an influence: van Beek has just written and directed a 15 minute film about a young teenage girl with autism who follows a dog and unwittingly embarks on a strange adventure. It’s about to screen in Wellington at the Show Me Shorts national short film festival, competing with the other final selections from hundreds of entries. The festival has been running since 2006 and screens every November.
Van Beek’s usually on the other side of the camera, having got involved with acting at school, through drama class and productions. She began performing as soon as she left school; as a school leaver she took her seventh form production to Bats Theatre.
“It was quite clear my future would be in the arts,” says van Beek, who majored in English at Victoria, doing a BA that took five years because she kept dropping out to do theatre. She now lives in Auckland but has spent time in Australia, where she met Jesse Griffin and moved in with him after one day. He’s now her husband.
“I brought a show called My Brother and I Are Porn Stars to the Melbourne comedy festival and met Jesse,” says van Beek, “A day later I got my stuff and moved in.”
The couple now has two children and a third on the way.
During her four years in Australia, van Beek stepped behind the camera, writing and directing her own films. She did “random teaching jobs,” one of which was running a clowning workshop for young indigenous children living in a town camp in Alice Springs.
Van Beek was inspired to make a film about a story that the children used to tell her.
“In Alice Springs several schools don’t let you in if you don’t have shoes on but that’s a problem because it’s a poor area and there aren’t enough shoes and clothes to go around,” she explains.
Her film is about two friends. One boy can’t find any shoes so the other gives him one by throwing it to him out the window of the classroom. Next they both get thrown out of class for wearing only one shoe each.
“It’s a light-hearted tale with an undertone of ridicule at such a white man’s law,” says van Beek, whose film won awards in Australia and was picked up by the London Film Festival.
Her new film, Go the Dogs, was also inspired by one of her teaching jobs, this time when she worked as a drama teacher at a school for children with special needs – Sunshine Development school in Melbourne. It was there that she met Brittany, a high functioning young teenager with special needs, who was chatty and friendly.
“Brittany’s not autistic but I wrote the script about an autistic character,” explains van Beek, “I had a relationship with Brittany already and she was an absolute fanatic of the Melbourne Bulldogs league team, so the story kind of developed around her.”
Van Beek was driving with her sister through the Australian countryside when she saw a derelict farmhouse with trees growing out the windows.
“We pulled over, jumped the fence and went inside. It was covered in hay and dead rabbits, it was a bizarre fairytale setting,” she says, “I had to film something in that place.”
With Brittany in mind, she wrote the script – about a young, autistic Bulldogs fan who sees a real bulldog out the window and follows it - and secured some funding from the local council, Autism Victoria and her dad.
Brittany stepped up to the challenge of long days, and van Beek didn’t give her a script to learn, preferring to give simple instructions, to which she would always answer, “Yup.”
“They were little challenges. Stand up in the hay. Go over to the boy. Put the snake on his legs,” says van Beek, who also cast Graham Candy, a young Kiwi actor she taught at drama school back in New Zealand, to play alongside Brittany.
“Brittany began calling him her boyfriend from day one and covering him in kisses and hugging him,” she laughs, “He’s gentle, which is why I picked him, I knew he could cope with it.”
Van Beek hopes to make a documentary about Brittany’s family, as they all have special needs, but in the meantime she’s concentrating on the success of Go the Dogs.
Show Me Shorts film festival, assorted cinemas, November 10-20.