Petals fell, poetry was spoken and honey tasted today in commemoration of the life and death of Wellington, New Zealand filmmaker and documentarist Costa Botes.
Costa was a decade older than I am, born in Turkey but raised from a young age in Wellington, as I was. We attended the same high school, ten years apart, and disliked it for much the same reasons; shared experiences and memories common to those who grow up in the same city and under roughly similar circumstances. We worked together a few times over the years, including during the production of the (in)famous mockumentary Forgotten Silver, which he co-created with Peter Jackson, and again when Costa was directing “behind the scenes” footage during the making of The Lord of the Rings.
He was kind of racing the clock to complete his memoir Remembering Forgotten Silver: The film that fooled a nation, which is an inspiring testament to his underdog creative ingenuity and that of the New Zealand film industry as a whole, back in those pre-Lord of the Rings days. Recommended reading …