Doctors Assisting In South-Pacific Islands

Documenting non-for-profit, NGO work

Doctors Assisting In South-Pacific Islands (DAISI®) is a not for profit organisation providing medical and surgical training and assistance to people of the South-Pacific.

https://daisi.com.au

The brief was to make an introduction film that captured the essence of the NGO and could be showed at any public event. The aim was to have a informative but powerful and emotional end product to rally as many faithful donors to DAISI.

Client feedback

Dr Gary McKay - DAISI Secretary

“Quentin really captured the essence of DAISI ‘s mission in PNG in the most succinct but powerful way. It was emotionally moving and gave me goose bumps watching it! Quentin’s short film was powerful and riveting from start to finish. It packs a powerful punch with interview snippets getting the message across in a succinct but non rushed way.”

Sam  Deylami - DAISI Finance Officer 

We have used Quentin’s video to help raise funds at the DAISI Ball ($30,000), and have linked it as a permanent feature on the the DAISI website home page, and have spread it on Social Media (Facebook, Twitter and Linken)  We have had so many positive reviews, donors and volunteers mention Quentin’s film as their inspiration for donating and volunteering. We will continue to use this film at future events, and our extreme thanks to Quentin Curzon!

Dr Sepehr Lajevardi - DAISI Chair 

”Quentin is a talented Filmaker, director choriographer, journalist, explorer and philanthropist all rolled in one!”

Nili Hali - DAISI Legal Officer 

”The short documentary film by Quentin Curzon on DAISI’s project at Sopas Hospital was shown at the DAISI Charity Ball with 300 attendees. I was fortunate to be one of them. The audience was completely silent throughout its screening glued to this masterpiece and the dialogue given by DAISI volunteer Professor Christophé Berney. Every word gave a beautiful message with the applaud and standing ovation at the end well deserved!”

TRIBAL WARS - Papua New Guinea | Feature Doc

A young peacemaker tries to put an end to the violent tribal wars between his clan and their enemies, which has been going on for generations.

A never seen before in depth look at the processes and negotiations of tribal peace ceremonies.

Context

The Enga province in the central highlands is one of the most remote areas of Papua New Guinea and stayed mostly isolated from outsiders until the 1950s.  The population is composed of tribes, which are themselves composed of 3 to 12 clans and sub clans of 300-400 members. 

Cycles of wars between neighboring tribes and clans have been an engrained part of Enga for centuries and are still an ongoing issue today with 600+ wars since the 1990’s. They can start with a simple brawl between two men and escalate to years of conflict with allied tribes joining in and hundreds of dead. 

The Story

After graduating, Ronald declines a dream job offer in the capital and goes back to his remote village in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. He can feel the tension between his clan and their enemies’ and needs to make sure the fragile peace holds. The 2 year old peace is threatened by tensions which go back generations. Ronald is surrounded by veteran warriors who are now left poor, uneducated and bored.Ronald does his best to cool down the clansmen who seek revenge, organising meetings where he educates his community on the benefits of peace.  Unfortunately a man form his tribe suddenly kills one of their enemies; In retaliation, the enemy clan burns down the village. Ronald is forced to run away back to the capital.  The clans are on the brink of war again and all hope might be lost. Will Ronald’s determination to bring peace to his community be enough?

ON MY TERMS | SHORT DOC 

A film by Jake Blackburn and Quentin Curzon.

Logline: When a passionate base-jumper has a terrifying accident, and his father pressures him to give up the sport, he searches for a way to fill the void and replace the exhilaration (or adrenalin rush) of base-jumping. 

Filmmakers’ statement: Quentin Curzon and Jake Blackburn

We met the subject of our documentary, Clinton Parker through our interest in sky-diving. Clinton Parker was a keen base-jumper, but had recently had a serious accident.   Base-jumping isn’t as widely known as sky-diving, so the challenge was to convey why someone would do this, and to find the universal themes in Clinton’s Journey. We wanted to lift the film beyond just promoting the base-jumping scene and allow viewers to empathize with an athlete and a sport that they might know very little about.

As we filmed, our relationship with Clinton evolved, and he changed his mind about how he was responding to his accident and his future, and we had to adapt the narrative and story accordingly. On my Terms isn’t a recovery film. We purposely skipped over that aspect of Clinton’s story, and concentrated on his dilemma and struggle to stay away from the sport. We followed, and occasionally became as lost and confused as he was, as he pursued his quest to fill the void that base-jumping had left in his life.

And then one day, he made a decision.  He was going to go back and do a base-jump one last time because his obsession, his itch, wasn’t about the sport itself, it was about the way he had left it. After months of filming and editing, it all suddenly made sense.

Human stories and experiences are immensely complex and our objective as filmmakers was to distil Clinton’s journey of self-discovery to its essence. It’s all in the title really, which came at the end. Once Clinton realized what he had been chasing all along, and we understood the film we were making.

 2017

Martineau’s - Branded Content

A touching, poetic portrait of a family business

Migrants account for 38 of all small businesses in australia, equating to over 500 thousands companies, employing 3 million people and generating 900 million in revenue per annum. The client’s brief for this branded content piece was to put a face to this statistic, to show a real example in a touching, human way.

THE MAN AND HIS ISLAND | SHORT DOC 

A film by Jake Blackburn and Quentin Curzon.

60km off the coast of Western Australia lay the Abrholos Islands.

A change in fishing registrations has pushed the small population of fishermen to abandon their homes on the islands. This is a nostalgic portrait on one of the few fisherman remaining and the community that once thrived in this surreal remote and now abandoned place. 

2018.

LAST MAN STANDING | SHORT DOC 

A film by Jake Blackburn and Quentin Curzon.

The story of Perth's oldest demolition derby racer and how the sport held him and his sons together through dark times.  CURRENTLY ON FESTIVAL RUN.

2019