Exciting news for director Rebecca Tansley whose film The Strangest of Angels, is in competition at the upcoming 60th Golden Prague International Television Festival. Rebecca directed and produced the film for New Zealand Opera, and it recently screened in the Whānau Marama, New Zealand International Film Festival.
The Strangest of Angels takes us inside the crumbling walls of the mental institution where Janet Frame is a patient awaiting a lobotomy. We are caught up in the imagined relationship between Janet (Jayne Tankersley) and her (fictional) nurse Katherine Baillie (Anna Leese).
Nurse Baillie recognises Janet as a former classmate and is torn between duty (all starched superiority) and empathy, eventually revealing her own inner torment and we question who is the patient and who is the carer.
Featuring New Zealand sopranos Jayne Tankersley and Anna Leese alongside the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Young, this NZ Opera film was filmed on location with Jess Charlton as DOP, in the former Kingseat psychiatric hospital in Auckland.