1nite

From dusk til’ dawn on K Road, debut director Amarbir Singh’s digital feature captures the woozy horror of a best-forgotten night out.

1nite, New Zealand, 2004

Director/Screenplay/Producer: Amarbir Singh
Production co: Rice Digital
Photography/Editor: Cristobal Araus Lobos
Sound: Allan Kidd
Music: Adnan Khan

With: Karlos Drinkwater (Carlos), Jon Brazier (Ex-cop), Nial Greenstock (Neil), Bruce Hopkins (Bruce), Rajeev Varma (Rajender), Anna Hewlett (Prostitute 1), David Van Horn (Boyfriend of Prostitute 1), Genevieve Bowers (Prostitute 2), Lauren Jackson (Jasmine)

DV, M-violence, sexual reference, offensive language, 80 minutes

"From dusk til’ dawn on K Road, debut director Amarbir Singh’s digital feature captures the woozy horror of a best-forgotten night out. Production company Rice Digital describe themselves as a ‘creative team of filmmakers from various backgrounds’ who favour digital media as a form of expression ‘as it can treat the camera as a roaming audience member capturing a scene, as opposed to actors performing for a camera setup’. So we’re roaming the bars, takeaways and brothels, encountering several night-lifers, none of whom turns out to be what they first appear or pretend to be. The most fully explored character, an amiable young Sikh taxi driver, begins the film expressing his optimistic view of the opportunities New Zealand provides. He spends the rest of the night demonstrating just how wishful those views are. His excursion away from the strip, to a home in the suburbs, is the film’s most original foray into pseudo-documentary revelation. Meanwhile two old mates get together for a drink and a few rounds of pool. As the beers flow they peel back layers of betrayal, hostility and sexual one-upmanship. A woman in the bar mistakes the intensity of their interaction for enviable closeness and sidles up. A good samaritan, recovering from a recent break-up, offers to help out a crippled and bitter ex-cop. A prostitute’s bad night is made that much worse by her obsessively watchful boyfriend. The semi-improvised nature of the project encourages conflict not resolution and gives the talented cast ample opportunity for charged performances. The female characters generally have it together in 1nite, while the men, sorry bastards, all head for melt-down. Cristobal Araus Lobos’s superb camerawork pulls the disparate strands together, and provides the ultimate, democratic sense of detachment from the diversity of personal disintegration on display. He dogs the characters, keeping close, in agile verite style, pausing occasionally to draw back and admire the glowing miasma of wet streets, headlights and neon. As 1nite becomes 2day, and the characters crawl off into the dawn, the camera, immobilised, like the last lonely sign of intelligent life, waits for a subject." — MM/BG, NZ Film Festival

“1nite exposes the Big City Life; its story based around one of the country’s most infamous inner-city streets… the film gathers New Zealand locations, producers and artists together to tackle the urban milieu in an honest and forthright manner. Amarbir Singh’s film is of relatively simple design – a character study open to revelations and stories of the past. However, it is the multilayered narrative of 1nite that proves most challenging, handled well enough by a director making his feature debut. Singh employs a fluid editing style that brings the film together in its closing scenes – a technique that lends itself to the organic growth of the film’s dialogue and settings, something that might’ve otherwise gotten away from the filmmaker… Observing the film on a superficial level and bearing in mind the possible influences that abound, 1Nite could be considered a NZ-version of a Paul Thomas Anderson or Robert Altman film, but without the narrative complexity and sureness of direction... There’s also a John Cassavetes feel to the film that is hard to overlook when dealing with the low-budget, close group collaboration evident in a production of this sort... The film boasts a mixture of experienced actors and newcomers. It’s great to see Bruce Hopkins – fresh from the massive Lord of the Rings films – playing a Kiwi “bloke”, the sort one is likely to bump into, or even know personally.... What’s most refreshing though is to see a film made in New Zealand, almost entirely by New Zealanders, with New Zealand financing. Check out the producer’s website below – it is rare to see people put their money where their mouth is, no matter how small or large the production is. Needless to say, it is not unknown for smaller features to grow in reputation with strong word of mouth, and potentially, for subsequent projects to follow… I say congratulations to Bruce, Amarbir and everyone else involved in the film, and for making a feature that promises much. I look forward to your future projects. — John Spry, http://www.lumiere.net.nz/reader/item/357

Screenings: 1nite screened on 5 September 2007 as part of the Desktop Cinema: 8 recent NZ digital features season.