Polly Green just released the trailer for 'Game', a film documentary about winning in freestyle competitions. At the moment Polly is doing the final sound edit and she was happy to take a break and answer our questions below. Sportscene also supported the making of Game with footage from the 2011 World Chamionships Freestyle in Plattling, Germany. 

Why did you decide to make 'Game'? Did you already have the idea in Plattling?
"I decided to make 'Game'  one year before the Worlds. I had been away from kayaking for 4 years and was focusing on surfing, and living at the beach in Gisborne, New Zealand. A kayaking friend (Arnd Shaeftlein) came to visit me and casually said he thought I could make the top ten at the next Worlds if I started training again. I decided to take the challenge and document the journey. It started out originally as a self discovery project. Putting myself under the camera (microscope) for a year and trying to be the best I could be. When I got to Plattling I met Claire O'hara and saw how well the women were paddling and realized that my focus suddenly shifted over to them and that was really exciting. How much the women's paddling and the sport had evolved since I had been gone really blew my mind and I really wanted people to see it."

The topic is winning, only one can win...
"The topic is winning, and ultimately that winning doesn't really matter. This is something I learned myself through making the film. The women in the film, who are all World Champions, had such a grounded approach to winning. Of course they are competitive but it wasn't going to make or break them if they didn't win. I personally had always struggled with tying my identity to my performance.  Hearing the attitudes of the women in the film really helped me to gain a healthy perspective on winning and in the end that it is just a game.
I don't really have an answer to whether it is different than the men, because I only focused on the women's perspective in the film."

Making these kind of documentary films often takes a lot of time and determination without any funding. How was the road to the final result that will follow soon?
"It has been a very long road and has been entirely self funded with some help from my family. I had to get another job to survive while I made the film, and worked on the film on my days off. It has been a lot of work and time and you are right determination and at times I felt very alone with it all. I luckily got a mentorship through Women In Film and Television. My mentor, Kirsty MacDonald helped me to stay on track all the way through from before I left for Germany to going to her house with a really really rough cut back in December 2012. I had some serious creative blocks that happened after I got back from Germany and had to put the project aside for awhile. I was struggling with the ending as I didn't just want it to end after the competition. Claire O'hara came here to New Zealand in March and I was able to get the ending I was after.  I also really needed time to explore for myself what it was all about for me and what I wanted to say with the film. I came to the conclusion that even though I lost the competition in Germany, I gained back my love of the river and the knowledge of what it means to truly win. So I am pretty stoked with how it has come together."

Are you going to submit it for a contest?
"My dream is that it gets into the Banff Film Festival in Canada, so I am submitting it there first. I am also submitting it to X-Dance and Telluride Mountain Film Festival and really hoping it gets on the whole festival circuit."

To be continued...

Website Flair Films from Polly Green: www.flairfilms.com