Matthew Sunderland
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Matthew "Matt" Sunderland (born c.1972) is a New Zealand actor. He performed the lead role of David Gray in the feature film Out of the Blue, based on the events of the Aramoana Massacre. At the New Zealand Screen Awards in 2008 he won Best Actor Award for this role.
Sunderland was also nominated for a Best Actor Award in the 2006 NZ Screen Awards for Natures Way, which screened In Competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006.
His other feature film roles include A Song of Good, Christmas, Stringer and Woodenhead as well as more than twenty short films.
Sunderland graduated from The New Zealand Drama School Toi Whakaari in 1997 and has concentrated on New Zealand film work with numerous theatre excursions also. He has appeared at the Silo Theatre (Fool for Love, Blasted), and the Herald Theatre (Trainspotting) in Auckland, and the Court Theatre in Christchurch (Peninsula) .
Sunderland appeared in the New Zealand soap opera Shortland Streets first official 90 minute episode as White Dragon in a storyline concluding the 3 year Kieran Mitchell story arc.
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A collection of sci-fi short films connected by an Armageddon theme, including an engineer circling a black hole in a pod, a 14-year-old girl and her father on the return journey to earth when an explosion cripples their aircraft, and a self-conscious Artificial Intelligence goes to the 4th dimension to fix humans future.
Controller / Cleaner
Two strangers strike up a conversation on a long journey. One is a suspect in an unsolved missing person’s case and the other an undercover operative on his trail. Their uneasy friendship becomes the core of this tightly wrought thriller, which is based on the true story of one of the largest investigations and undercover operations in Australia.
Father
Trapped on her family’s isolated farm, Pearl must tend to her ailing father under the bitter and overbearing watch of her devout mother. Lusting for a glamorous life like she’s seen in the movies, Pearl’s ambitions, temptations, and repressions collide.
Father
A man with a mysterious past flees the country to escape his own personal hell... only to arrive somewhere much worse. In an effort to survive this new horror, he turns to his personified conscience.
Marlon
A miserable fishing enthusiast must overcome the darker creature that lives inside him to reconnect with his wife.
Davey
In 1825, Clare, a 21-year-old Irish convict, chases a British soldier through the rugged Tasmanian wilderness, bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence he committed against her family. She enlists the services of an Aboriginal tracker who is also marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past.
Tom Lovett
London, England, April 1980. Six terrorists assault the Embassy of Iran and take hostages. For six days, tense negotiations are held while the authorities decide whether a military squad should intervene.
Dan
A true-life drama in the 1920s, centering on British explorer Col. Percy Fawcett, who discovered evidence of a previously unknown, advanced civilization in the Amazon and disappeared whilst searching for it.
Mark
Eade is a fourteen year old girl who has spent her entire life on the spaceship Cradle. Eade and her dad are on the return journey to Earth when an explosion cripples the craft and seriously injures her father. As the clock counts down to self-destruction Cradle’s computer, System, assumes control of the ship and refuses to perform the life saving medical procedure that her father desperately needs. Whilst trying to outwit System to save her dad, Eade discovers the shocking truth of her existence and must face her uncertain future armed with the knowledge that her life in space is not as it seems.
Steve, Barry's Brother
Troubled psychotherapist Peter Bowers is suffering from nightmares and eerie visions. When he uncovers a horrifying secret that all of his patients share, he is put on a course that takes him back to the small hometown he fled years ago. There he confronts his demons and unravels a mystery 20 years in the making.
Wiry Man
A comedy film that looks into the loosely connected lives of people with strange sexual fantasies.
Uncle Rory
Adrian is a classic outsider. His playful, dreamy imagination distracts him from everyday life, for the reality he lives in could not be more different. Neither his chronically depressed uncle nor his overworked grandmother understand the ten-year-old’s games. His mother abandoned him when he was very young and he is bullied at school. Just as news arrives that three children are missing, a new family moves in next door. Adrian develops a close relationship to their tomboyish, ten-year-old daughter Nicole and believes he is getting close to solving the mys- tery of the missing children. New Zealand forms the backdrop for this universal story for adults and those who have never wanted to grow up. It is a story about friendship and loneliness, emotions which Adrian already feels so poignantly as a child. The Danish first-time director’s expressive visual language dramatically merges water and air, reality and a hint of fantasy.
Rider
Trapped behind the Boundary Fence, Freya dreams of escape and pursues a dangerous outsider who can free her.
Col Klaus Meyer
Set in the Channel Islands on the eve of D Day, two Kiwi commandos, sent to destroy German gun emplacements to distract Hitler's forces away from Normandy, discover a Nazi occult plot to unleash demonic forces to win the war.
Paddy
Poppy is a Performance-Captured CGI drama set on France's western front in World War One. Two New Zealand soldiers are trapped behind enemy lines and are trying to find their way to safety. They find an orphaned baby under it's dead parents in a ditch. One of the men wants to save it, the other does not.
Vigo
Settled into a cozy home life in Milan with his boyfriend Paolo and his daughter Julia, photographer and ex-spy Jacob Keane is suddenly drawn back into the espionage world when his old partner Marta reappears with her memory erased.
Lemuel
An emotionally traumatized stage magician has "escaped" into a fantasy world where he has real magical powers, but his career has taken him to performing at childrens' birthday parties. However, if he can find another stage assistant, his sleezy manager will give him another stage opportunity. Mostly he needs to find his way out of his mental state and that path is guided by some unexpected people he meets.
David Gray
Ordinary people find extraordinary courage in the face of madness. On 13–14 November 1990 that madness came to Aramoana, a small New Zealand seaside town, in the form of a lone gunman with a high-powered semi-automatic rifle. As he stalked his victims the terrified and confused residents were trapped for 24 hours while a handful of under-resourced and under-armed local policemen risked their lives trying to find him and save the survivors. Based on true events.
Tramp's vocals
An innocent rubbish tip assistant, Gert, is given the task of escorting a beautiful mute "princess", Plum, on a perilous journey to meet her prospective husband. Their journey is fraught with danger, challenges, romance and discovery. In surreal action, they encounter a menagerie of characters and animals in far-flung corners of New Zealand.
Gustav the Strongman
An innocent rubbish tip assistant, Gert, is given the task of escorting a beautiful mute "princess", Plum, on a perilous journey to meet her prospective husband. Their journey is fraught with danger, challenges, romance and discovery. In surreal action, they encounter a menagerie of characters and animals in far-flung corners of New Zealand.
Brett
"This singular, bleakly funny, R-rated vision of Kiwi life clinches King's position as the most distinctive new voice in NZ film, as insistent and inescapable as The Warehouse jingle." - New Zealand International Film Festival director Bill Godsen. Made at the beginning of the digital revolution, this micro-budget feature went on to win several awards and be selected for major Fests incl. Toronto, Locarno, Edinburgh, and Melbourne.
Brother
In this alarming early short from Gregory King a 13-year-old boy's shoplifting escapade is narrated brilliantly by actress Madeleine Sami who performs the teenage boy incarnation of the Adult Man whose account of domestic abuse this is, while adult actors play the kids in the remembered story. What starts out as teen shenanigans (a porn stash is accrued with the five-finger discount) turns unsettling as a beating is doled out by Dad as punishment. The contrast between the naive voice and what is seen on screen - shot in hand-held close ups - is something unforgettable.
MAN
An experimental twist on the "fly on the wall" film. Here a handheld camera becomes the fly and the connection between three groups of modern city dwellers. Gregory King's first film won ‘Most Outstanding Achievement in a Video Production’ at the Melbourne International Film Festival. The festival hailed POP as ‘Possibly the most extraordinary film at MIFF this year…As we stand before the precipice of the next century, the film poignantly throws into question the definition of cinema itself.’
