Kiwi film into New York festival

AMY MAAS

A Kiwi short film is set to premiere at a prestigious New York film festival next week.

The film, 43,000 Feet, will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on Thursday - the same day scriptwriter Matthew Harris receives his PhD in English at Massey University's Albany graduation.

The film is about a statistician who gets sucked out of a plane. He calculates he has exactly three minutes and 48 seconds before he hits the ground and rehearses what he will say to the media on the off chance he survives.

The idea for the film came after Harris heard about the miraculous survival of a New York window washer who fell 47 storeys from an apartment building.

Harris' 43,000 Feet, which received $90,000 in funding from the New Zealand Film Commission, is one of two short NZ films selected from more than 2800 submissions from 25 countries. The other film is Whakatiki, written by Bernadette Murphy.

Central Auckland was used as the backdrop for most of the live action scenes and a training fuselage was used for the interior aircraft shots.

Harris is a tutor at the School of English and Media Studies at Massey University's Albany campus. His second short film, Snooze:Time has gone into production.

43,000 Feet will screen in New Zealand later this year.

- © Fairfax NZ News