Shooting success for all involved

Niamh Peren is used to appreciative audiences in Arrowtown, and those who attended the private screening of her new documentary, The Great Bunny Hunt, there last weekend were no exception.

Niamh, whose parents, Adam and Kristin, live at Gibbston, was tipped as a budding actress when, as an Arrowtown Primary School pupil, she played Miss Daisy in a school production.

But Niamh, now 21, did not choose acting as a profession and instead is a first-class honours student at the University of Auckland's Elam School of Fine Art.

She made The Great Bunny Hunt, about the Central Otago rabbit problem and the very Central Otago way of dealing with it, as her application for the honours programme.

The Alexandra Lions Foundation's Great Easter Bunny Hunt happens each Easter.

Hugely popular and heavily oversubscribed, it gives teams of shooters different shooting areas around the district and the teams have 24 hours to cause maximum damage to the rabbit population.

This year, more than 23,000 rabbits were disposed of.

By a "merry coincidence", the Alexandra team, dubbed "Swat", that Ms Peren chose to follow was the winner, chalking up 2306 "kills".

Perhaps the pressure of being filmed throughout kept them shooting straight and fast.

Ms Peren organised a special screening for the cast and crew at Dorothy Browns Cinema last Saturday.

She thought the pink brocade ceilings and chandeliers would make the stars - the Swat shooters - feel at home. And it worked.

The audience and their family and friends were delighted to see themselves on the big screen and there was constant banter and laughter throughout the screening.

Watching the film, viewers discover that Ms Peren is far better at shooting film than guns when it is her turn to be filmed.

Or else she was just very good at acting nervous when put in charge of a gun.