Alex Galvin: Difference between revisions

Alex Galvin (born 1976) is a Wellington, New Zealand film director.

Early life

Galvin, whose father, Badih, was part Lebanese and mother, Noël is a New Zealander, was born in New Zealand and has lived in Wellington from an early age. He received his secondary education at St Patrick's College and attended Victoria University. He graduated Bachelor of Arts in linguistics and music history. He trained as an opera singer and has been a member of the Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus since 1998. After working as a public servant, Galvin commenced study at the New Zealand Film School in 2003. He is presently employed as a policy manager at Victoria University.

Film career

Galvin has directed two feature films "When Night Falls" and "Eternity".

=When Night Falls (2007)

"When Night Falls" is a taut psychological thriller in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock. It is set in Wairarapa, New Zealand in 1932. One evening, two nurses are caring for an invalid patient at his large isolated country home. Over hte previous two weeks, a killer had been on the loose and three nurses had been found strangled. Conscious of the potential danger, both nurses make sure the house is locked and secure. However, as the night progresses, strange things begin to happen. Objects appear to have been moved without explanation and noises are heard where all should be still. Are the nurses so on edge that their minds are playing tricks on them? Or could their worst fears be true, and someone else is in the house? The film is characterised by Galvin's close attention to period detail. One prominent location was the Gear Homestead in Porirua. The film was shot in ten days on location around Wellington, at a cost of around $NZ50,000.<ref name="Dom">

"Eternity" (2013)

Galvin's second feature, "Eternity" is a murder-mystery/sci-fi hybrid set in the near future, filmed in Wellington, Hong Kong and Hawke's Bay, where the movie had its New Zealand premiere in November 2012. Detective Richard Manning (played by Elliot Travers) is transported into a virtual-reality computer game and tasked with solving a seemingly implausible murder. Galvin has said that the idea for Eternity was born out of childhood summers in Christchurch ploughing through his grandmother's Agatha Christie collection, and a fascination with intelligent sci-fi, from 70s classics Soylent Green and Omega Man to more modern interpretations such as The Matrix and Inception. Galvin wanted to explore perceptions of reality - hence the idea of a distinct world within a computer game. In Eternity, New Zealand provides the empty, green, expansive, clean-aired world that by then no longer exists in reality, while the sensory explosion of the Hong Kong streetscape describes the polluted world of the future. The Wellington scenes utilize local buildings and interiors such as the Town Hall, Wellesley Hotel's spiral staircase, Parliamentary Library and (particularly) the splendid art deco Dominion Museum (now the Wellington campus of Massey University along with Hawke's Bay art deco buildings. In the absence of any New Zealand Film Commission funding, actors and crew worked either for free or vastly reduced salaries and cash was scrounged from private investors. Generous organisations opened up locations and closed streets for free. Apart from Elliot Travers, the film's actors include cGeraldine Brophy and Amy Usherwood. The producer was Eric Stark of Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers Studios. The film has been selected for festivals in Boston and St Tropez, winning the Special Jury Prize at the California Film Awards and being nominated for four awards at the 2013 Madrid International Film Festival. The film will screen at Cinema des Antipodes at Cannes in May 2013. The film cost about $NZ100,000 to make but has the production values of a hig-budget feature.