That sinking feeling

Briar March's ambitious new documentary, which will screen in this year's International Film Festival, should launch her as a film-maker to watch. She tells Rebecca Barry, of the NZ Herald, of the sacrifices she's made for her craft - and why not everyone wanted her to make her latest movie.

Most film-makers had given up trying to get to Takuu. The remote atoll, also known as the Mortlock Islands, is 250km northeast of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.

It has no airport; visitors must travel from Port Moresby on the service boat, which you could call unreliable if it actually had a schedule. Those who do manage to get there would have a hard time shooting anyway. There is no electricity in this endangered island paradise.

That wasn't about to stop Kiwi documentary-maker Briar March. Armed with solar panels, a generator and her film camera, the 29-year-old was determined to capture the unique plight of the Takuu people.

Their place in the world - both geographically and culturally is in danger of being swallowed by climate change.

As March's poignant eco-documentary There Once Was An Island: Te Henua E Noho shows, waves routinely flood the locals' homes, and the protective sea walls the islanders erected some years ago to protect them have only short-changed the island's natural ability to build itself up.

The once-abundant taro crops have become sodden with salt water. The fine white sands known fondly to those who grew up there have almost completely washed away.

The Takuu film is one of three of March's documentaries screening at the upcoming New Zealand International Film Festival.

The others are Michael and His Dragon, and Sick Wid It, short films she made while studying for a masters' degree in documentary film at California's Stanford University.

Her first feature film, Allie Eagle and Me, in which she followed the pioneering feminist artist as she made the transition from lesbian separatism to pentecostal Christianity, screened at the festival in 2004. Then, March was the youngest director with a feature film in the running. So it's no surprise she's back, says festival director Bill Gosden.