Daniel Drageset | Pacific Scoop
Six years after starting his Cap Bocage documentary project in New Caledonia, New Zealand filmmaker Jim Marbrook will be ready to release the film mid-2014.
The documentary details an environmental dispute at a nickel mine on the eastern coast of Grand Terre, the main island of New Caledonia.
“The documentary is kind of a chronicle of that conflict,” Marbrook told Pacific Scoop in a recent interview.
“Of course underneath that there are some deeper themes about how miners and how people involved in exploiting minerals relate to local populations – specifically indigenous populations,” Marbrook said.
A 15 minute part of the documentary was screened in 2010, but two other film projects, Mental Notes and Genesis, had delayed Marbrook in the work with Cap Bocage.
In total, Marbrook visited New Caledonia eight times in 2008, 2010 and 2011 in the process of making the documentary that he estimated would be 70-80 minutes long.
In the Pacific Scoop interview, Marbrook also spoke about the differences of doing journalism in New Caledonia and New Zealand, the political future of New Caledonia, and how Cap Bocage related to his recent documentary, Mental Notes, which detailed the troubling history of New Zealand mental health care institutions.