The Pleasures of Unbelonging

The Pleasures of Unbelonging, filmed in Hanmer Spring, a resort town in the Canterbury region of New Zealand’s South Island, unfolds through a series of dreamlike tableaux poised at the fringes of mystery and disquiet. With reference to James Baldwin’s Stranger in a Village, and leaning gently into the heady noir of Vertigo and Twin Peaks, Christopher Ulutupu’s new work stages a drama of encounter with the white gaze.