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When Sima Urale sets her heart on a creative idea she has the confidence of three people.
"I'm not confident 80 per cent of the time but when I get a creative idea, I go the full hog - 120 per cent," she says. Take, for instance, the feature film script she'll be working on as the inaugural recipient of the $40,000 Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writers' Residency at the University of Hawai'i. "I've only written the first draft and I know the script's still got flaws but also know I'll see it to the end. Once I get an idea in my head, I won't give up. "I find that when I have confidence in a project, it rubs on others and before you know it, there's a whole team working with you. With my friends and family, it's like a whirlpool. Someone has an idea and then suddenly, you're making a music video or a short film. It's wonderful." Urale credits her success in film to determination and dealing with social issues close to her heart. "I always strive to make a film that says what I want it to say. If didn't have anything to say, I wouldn't make films." Her first film, O Tamaiti, came about because she wanted people to take notice of children. Released 1996, the 15-minute film went on to win eight international awards. Another of her films, Still Life, is about an elderly couple and won Best Short Film at the 2001 Montreal Film Festival. So what does she want to say with her current film project? "That's one of the things the residency will help me sort out. It's the most important question of all. I'm wanting to say several things but I need to define the one thread that matters above all else." The idea for the film came to Urale about eight months ago and she's been working on the first draft, off and on, since then. Drawing on her family and cultural experiences, it's the story of a young girl striving to keep alive the traditions of the forgotten gods of Polynesian myths and legends. Urale, who lives in Wellington, was born in Samoa in 1967 and immigrated to New Zealand with her family in 1974. Her five siblings are all artists and her mother, now living back in Samoa, took up painting at the age of 55. Ask Urale what it's like working on projects with sister Makerita and brother Bill (aka King Kapisi) and she laughs, saying: "It's funny but not always fun. We're all headstrong. We're like three lions at loggerheads and one us has to give way." A 1989 graduate of Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School, Urale eatured in Makerita Urale's play, Frangipani Perfume, in 1998. The play was heralded by The New Zealand Listener as one of its top ten plays of the decade. And her first music video, Sub-cranium Feeling, made in 1997 for King Kapisi, won Best Music Video at the BFM, Mai Time and Flying Fish Awards. Lest the siblings get swollen heads about their achievements, Urale says her dad's always there to keep their feet on the ground. "Dad'll go, 'That's good but always remember to be nice to the people you work with'." Growing up, the Urale siblings were instilled with three things: pride, independence and confidence. They also are also fluent in the Samoan language. Actor Cliff Curtis, who first met Urale as a fellow acting student at Toi Whakaari, says Urale's clarity of vision and determination prompted her to pursue a career in film despite a promising career as an actor. "I remember there was a fundraising effort, aptly named Cyclone Sima, to help her sustain another three years of study," he says. In 1994, Urale graduated with a bachelors degree in arts, film and television at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne. "I love theatre but I knew I'd have to choose film and television if I wanted to express the stories and opinions that I think are relevant to society," she says. "The awesome thing about film is that it can travel to the other side of the world and it has a long life. "Rather than make the audience come to me I decided to go to the audience with film and television." |
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