THE SHORT FILM THAT SAVED JANE CAMPION.

For Oscar-winning filmmaker Jane Campion, the environment in which her key protagonists exist is as crucial to her narratives as her characters and the actors who play them.

Her latest project, the highly-anticipated TV mini-series Top of the Lake (pictured, above), features breathtaking South Island locations from her native New Zealand. The city of Queenstown and several vivid, remote wilderness regions of the Otago district are utilised to stunning effect. At the other end of her homeland you will find the majestic cliffs and fierce seas of Karekare Beach, in the Waitakere district of Auckland on the North Island, used to symbolic perfection in her breakout film, 1993s The Piano.

But it is in The Water Diary, a little-seen short film that was part of the 2006 portmanteau film 8, that Campion most directly addresses her landscape. The project, which also featured directorial efforts from Gael Garcia Bernal, Gus Van Sant, Mira Nair, Wim Wenders and Gaspar Noe, came to fruition under the guidance of French producer Marc Oberon. It was Oberon’s aim to provide artistic support to United Nation’s Millenium Development Goals, a vast humanitarian endeavour designed to eradicate such dire social ills as poverty, hunger and child mortality by 2015.

Campion immersed herself in an Australian outback scorched by drought and the tensions it brings to a young family living on the land. Seen largely through the eyes of two early-teen daughters, The Water Diary puts a stark, honest face on the social impact on the rural sector of extended dry periods. Filmed at Nimmitabel in the New South Wales southern highlands with a beautifully detailed visual acuity courtesy of DOP Greig Fraser (Bright Star; Zero Dark Thirty), it is heartbreaking study in the consequences on real people of our leaders refusal to address the changing climate.

Jane Campion had undertaken a self-imposed exile after the troubled shoot and subsequent commercial failure of her American effort, In The Cut. The 8 project would inspire her to write again and return to the director’s chair. Proving to be a turning point in her career, she would go on to receive some of the best notices of her career for 2009s Bright Star, a Palme d’Or nominee. That film's success afforded her the confidence and artistic freedom to write (with longtime collaborator Gerard Lee) and direct (with Garth Davis) the 300 minute-long Top of the Lake (pictured, right; Campion directing star Elisabeth Moss). Following it’s jubilant Sundance premiere, trade paper The Hollywood Reporter called Top of the Lake, “…an edgy, disturbing and altogether first-rate crime drama.”

Tellingly, one Top of the Lake review noted in particular Campion’s use of the setting to convey mystery and foreboding. “The landscape,” wrote Robert Lloyd in the Los Angeles Times, “which is huge and powerful and makes mites of men, does much of the work for her.” It suggests that Campion, reunited with the creative energy she draws from her picturesque settings, is back on solid ground as one of world cinema’s most compelling directors.

Following a screening of the first two episodes of Top of the Lake, Jan Campion and Gerard Lee will front a Q&A session at the Cremorne Orpheum Cinema this Wednesday, March 20. Tickets available via the Popcorn Taxi website and at the venue.