Hayden Campbell

Hayden Campbell studied Film Making at the University of Canterbury Fine Arts Film School in New Zealand. The Zoo was filmed in 2004, but Hayden's journey to the Zoo started four years earlier, thousands of miles away at an intersection in the South Island town of Picton.... Hayden was helping his father deliver courier packages in Picton on Christmas Eve 2000. On their way out of town they were slowing down at an intersection when three Israeli hitch-hikers wearing Santa hats shouted at them to stop and give them a lift. Having nowhere to spend their first ever Christmas, Hayden's father invited the Jewish backpackers to spend Christmas Day at their house in Blenheim. This chance encounter inspired Hayden to travel to Israel and the Palestinian Territories to film a documentary. In 2002 he left film school halfway through his last year to pursue this goal. Hayden worked in South Korea for two years teaching English to over zealous ten-year-olds (which in hindsight was good preparation for being in a war zone) in order to completely self-fund his documentary. After returning to South Korea from Israel Hayden had no money left to pay for post-production costs, so he edited his entire documentary using Final Cut Pro on an Apple G4 iBook in the lounge of his apartment. Hayden now resides back home in New Zealand, and is currently working on his next documentary project.