“HE’LL make you wet your pants,” said someone at the Film Archive when Capital Times organised an interview with Kiwi filmmaker Florian Habicht.
He didn’t succeed, however snippets from his documentary Land of the Long White Cloud elicited laughter as well as sadness in this reporter.
The movie sees Habicht interview fishermen participating in the five-day Snapper Fishing contest on 90 Mile Beach – a part of New Zealand he holds dear to his heart.
“Living in Auckland I had to go to the West Coast every weekend just to stay sane,” says Habicht who moved to New Zealand from Berlin when he was eight years old.
“There is something revitalising – that energy from the sea – when looking at the vast ocean. It’s like letting your imagination go.”
These feelings inspired the philosophical questions he put to the fishermen, which he says revealed more about them than if he simply asked about catching fish and the perfect bait to use. “Do you believe in an afterlife?”  is one such question.
Many of the men he filmed were prepared to give really personal stories about themselves and their love-life. The unique characters and their talk is endearing, and gives the viewer an authentic look at the kind of folk who live in the far north.
One sums up his philosophy on fishing as: “A fish only thinks about eating, reproduction and staying alive – a bit like the Kiwi male probably.”
Later he says:  “They definitely look like they’re having a good time until we kill them... if you don’t eat you die, simple as that.”
Habicht and his crew capture characters – one has participated in the competition for 19 years, in eight of which he didn’t catch a single snapper, and another dances on a chilly bin. In one scene a small fish’s heart (freshly extracted) beats on without a body.
Land of the Long White Cloud, which premiered at the International Film Festival last year, screens at the Film Archive this week. It follows on from Habicht’s successful documentary Kaikohe Demolition about Northland’s Kaikohe Demolition Derby which shares a similar feel to Land of the Long White Cloud.
“[Kaikohe Demolition] was a real pleasure to make and it was really well received. I always wanted to make a sequel to it. Then I came up with the idea of making a film with the same spirit and Mum suggested a fishing contest on 90 Mile beach.”
Habicht was recently awarded The Harriet Friedlander Residency. Supported by the Arts Foundation, the residency sends an artist to New York for as long as $80,000 will last.
“The only requirement being that they are inspired by the city.”
And Habicht was.
He is now working on a third documentary, “so I can make a trilogy”, which he hopes to release next year.
Land of the Long White Cloud, Film Archive, 7pm, February 10-27.