Cup of Dreams
Courtesy of the Director.
Beginning with the haka and ending with a valedictory on the merits of tribe, Shaw’s very personal ode to rugby—and his beloved All Blacks—will resonate with every sports fan, regardless of code or allegiance. Shaw is a New Zealander, unashamedly an All Blacks fanatic and from the first scene he sets out the terms of his wide-ranging film—it’s a story about home, heroes, obsession, the upcoming World Cup (the September 2011 games in New Zealand), the pain of the 2007 loss to France and about Shaw himself. Far from the more conventional stand-back objective approach to documentary filmmaking, Shaw puts himself full square and centre in the middle of his film, lacing it with an intimate, compulsive essence—and inadvertently a strange sadness. Interviews with everyone from his dad “15 Buddhas on the field, I don’t need another religion”, to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, paint a picture of a people and an individual so meshed into rugby that it’s impossible to tell where one stops and the other begins. As a French journalist suggests “we have 64 million people who don’t like rugby, but New Zealand has four million who live for it”.
Shaw is a Guest of the Festival and will attend a Q&A in Cape Town (Sunday 19, 6pm).
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