Director Craig Boreham pulls no punches with his directorial feature debut Teenage Kicks. The film follows seventeen year old Miklós Varga (Miles Szanto) as his world is turned upside down with the death of his older brother forcing him to confront grief, family, friendships and his sexuality. Boreham brings to the screen a courageous coming-of-age story (based on his 2009 short Drowning) that is brimming with a talented young cast. We chatted to Craig in the lead up to the Teenage Kicks world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival.
The film explores a few emotional themes, how did this affect you and the cast during the filming?
It was tough on the cast – they really had to go there. We were very lucky we had an amazing cast who up for the challenge. When were casting we were thinking about who gets the film and understands all that subtext and can bring it to the screen. They all worked hard and were amazing actors in their own right. I kept on running on nervous energy but it was great five week shoot.
One of the toughest things was shooting a summer film in the dead of winter. There were a lot of poor teenage actors having to jump into ocean and swimming pools freezing their arses off making it look a warm Sydney sunny day.
Where did you film within Sydney?
We shot all over Sydney really but our main story areas were around Kurnell and the suburbs around Botany Bay, Kings Cross and Newtown and then over in Clovelly. We covered a lot of ground and had quite a few moves to fit into the schedule.
Will you revisit your characters in future films?
Maybe not for a little while. But I have spent a lot of time with these characters and I would love to know what happens down the track for them.
You have been making shorts since 1997 and this is your first feature film. What made you make the move to feature length?
I quite enjoy short film and making them for arts sake. But it got to the point where I thought I needed to explore a longer form and I went to the feature script. And it is difficult to get a queer story out.
Why do you think that is?
I think there is a perception that queer stories are for a niche audience and the returns on investment are harder so it when you break all down in terms of productions costs versus bums on seats there is a bit of fear around that for investors. I’m not really sure this is actually the case here and I don’t think it’s really giving the cinema audiences here the credit they deserve for embracing different kinds of stories and we’ve seen films like Holding The Man speak to an audience that is not just the gay community and a fantastic wave of indigenous stories captivating non-indigenous audiences.
I think audiences here are actually excited to see stories that give them a chance to understand and experience different story worlds. We didn’t really encounter that same attitude when we were meeting with distributors and investors in Europe where the attitude is more an acceptance that maybe even if it is niche there is definitely a dedicated and hungry audience for these stories and our international sales agents have been supportive of the story and themes from the beginning.
What films resonated with you as a teen?
I grew up with John Hughes films and the soundtrack to Teenage Kicks is a homage to those types of films but it definitely isn’t that type of film. It’s a little bit grittier and darker.
How do you feel about the upcoming world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival?
Super excited and terrified. I’m looking forward to watching the audience respond to the film. It’s great to be doing it at Sydney Film Festival – It’s a festival that I have been going to for years so it’s exciting to have our work up on the screen this year. My producer was in Cannes when it was announced that we would be screening in the festival, she was there shopping around our next project and that was extremely helpful as it opened doors that weren’t there before.
What was your biggest learning curve going from short film to feature length?
With a short it’s a lot easier to explore an idea succinctly but with a longer film you have to know where its starting and ending and having those emotions and pace play out. Instead of telling a story in seven minutes, its 90 minutes, so the learning curve was sustaining that length of story.
What advice from would you give filmmakers moving from short to feature?
Keep the story down, trust it and stick with it. It’s like a house of cards getting a film made. It can all collapse on you, so stay resilient through the dark times. Just keep swimming.
You raised $67,000 towards your budget via crowd funding. Tell me about your crowd funding experience?
That was probably harder than making the film. Crowd-funding is a gruelling experience, it’s a real campaign for a period of time and you really have to be on it and keep people motivated without annoying the hell out everyone. It was great we did it but I wouldn’t want to do it too often. My advice would be to sit down and write the plan from beginning to end because you can’t wing it.
You have released a book to accompany the film with photographer Samuel Hodge – How did this collaboration come about?
Sam and I have been friends for a long while and we have always been fans of each other’s work. We often explore similar ideas and themes in our work. Sam had often come along to some of our short film shoots and photographed the behind the scenes drama. We’d often talked about doing a collaboration but had never been quite able to figure out how to do it. So when Teenage Kicks started coming together we just had this idea to create an exhibition of photographs around the film production. Once we started looking at them we immediately thought they would make a great book and we included some script elements and some of the notes and writing that the cast were creating in their process and created a really beautiful photographic monograph called Right Through The Night.
We’ll be launching the monograph during the Sydney Film Festival at Alaska Gallery with an exhibition of prints and a projection piece and of course the book!
Where will the film be screening after the SFF?
Teenage Kicks will be part of the Travelling Film Festival, which is the national tour of the Sydney Film Festival and will show around the country. The dates and locations will be out soon. First up we are headed to Newcastle on the 25 June at the Tower Cinemas and we’ll be there to introduce the film. Newcastle details.
What you are working on next?
Can’t say too much about it at this early stage other than it is a pretty dark crime drama based on real life events.