CULTURE
STREET POWER
FROM POL AND WITH LOVE
Graeme James Crehan, aka Graeme James, is glad Wellington’s a pedestrian city. In 2012, the Palmerston North lad spent weekends busking here: singing covers, playing electric violin, and tapping his loop pedal on Cuba Street, the waterfront, the railway-station underpass. “Sometimes I slept in my car.” Moving towns, he gained loyal fans, got bar gigs locally then countrywide, and released two covers albums, with help from crowd-funder Kickstarter. He’s raised $11,000 that way for his first original album News From Nowhere, released independently, last month, with 10 “danceable-folk” tracks blending his playing of violin, guitar, bass, ukulele, piano, percussion, and his beatboxing. Four tracks featured on the NZ-Australian TV series 800 Words, while pre-released single Alive has been streamed 130,000 times, and nabbed him a 2016 finalist spot in international songwriting competition Unsigned Only. The track When You Look At Me is a duet with musician wife Zoe Crehan. “I met her busking when she stopped to jam.” The Berhampore local, 30, made the One+One music video busking on Cuba Street, where passersby young and old stopped to jam and shimmy. “It’s a tribute to the best fans in the world.” He’ll play at Meow (14 October) during a 10-centre album-release tour.
In November 1944, 733 Polish children – mostly orphans – arrived in Wellington on a troop ship with 105 caregivers. Among them were the three orphaned Lepionka brothers, who’d survived a Siberian labour camp. They settled into the Polish Children’s Camp at Pahiatua and most accepted New Zealand’s invitation to stay post-war. Zdzislaw Lepionka, who also goes by Eric, met Halina Melgies at a dance and discovered she arrived on the same boat aged 13 months (with her mother). The couple still live in Seatoun, where their four children went to “Polish school” on Saturdays to learn their home country’s language and traditions. Now their daughter Wanda Lepionka, a filmmaker who holds Polish culture dear, has set up the inaugural Wellington Polish Film Festival. Thirty films, from features and documentaries to shorts, screen at the Paramount from 30 September to 9 October. “The time was right,” Lepionka says. “Polish cinema’s come to the world’s attention, and in Poland it’s the ‘Year of Krzysztof Kieślowski' – the late, great filmmaker – so we’re screening his work.” Lepionka, once Avatar’s costume co-ordinator, co-owns CraftInc. Films with writer-director partner David Strong. The Island Bay parents-of-three, who’ve made two festival-hopping short films, write films and TV series for overseas markets.
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