Screen Dreams: Harry Oram and the Future of Third Culture Film

Multi-hyphenate Harry Oram aims to create a next-gen Cannes and expand the concept of both film events and Third Culture.

Calling Harry Oram ambitious is an understatement. He’s an actor (Stanley Tong’s Vanguard), producer and director (of shorts Black Ice, Screen Test), author (of culture theory book Living the Bridge: The Power of Third Culture to Transform Divides) and political scion (as grandson of New Zealand parliamentarian Sir Matthew Henry Oram). He’s also relaxed and approachable on a video call one midsummer New Zealand afternoon discussing his path to world domination, largely through the Third Culture Film Festival (TCFF, www.tcff.online, 9-15 March), of which he is founder and director. He laughs, but he clearly has big plans for how to grow the event and spread the message.

Oram is dialled in from Tauranga, on the North Island’s Bay of Plenty, his home since 2020 and possessed of incredible potential to be the Croisette (Cannes) of the South Pacific. “Tauranga is quintessential New Zealand,” he explains of the city’s perfect position for morphing into a premium culture destination; Māori heritage, dolphin swims, and wine tours all contributing to a bigger picture. “Third Culture has a lot to contribute… and it’s become so much more timely. The politics of New Zealand is really primed for Third Culture.” The country’s progressive, if imperfect, evolving engagement with identity and diversity on social, educational and political levels mean, “Tauranga’s got legs, but the brand itself is really timely for New Zealand. We could have an impact on the rest of the world.”

Born in Hong Kong to a Filipino mother and a Kiwi father, Oram took a circuitous route back to Tauranga after London, Edinburgh (for school), New York, Los Angeles (to act) and finally back to Hong Kong in 2016 (more acting). But the remoteness of Tauranga took him there during COVID, and it’s become a permanent move. Three children under six will do that to you. “We could never afford five of us in a Hong Kong flat.”

Sourcing Oram’s inspiration is simple: his fluently Cantonese Filipino mother identifies as a Hongkonger, where she was born and is more “Comfortable than in the Philippines. Unless there’s a stand of taxis outside she freaks,” he begins with a partially serious chuckle. His father is English Kiwi. Ask who his people are and Oram says he doesn’t really have any. “I was educated in the United Kingdom. I’m a fifth-generation New Zealander, but in England I was treated like a foreigner, which is really frustrating.”

That lingering frustration was the genesis for the first iteration of TCFF in Hong Kong in 2017, custom-engineered to spotlight filmmakers and stories that embody cultural inter-sectionalism and explore identity. The festival grew from its original website and YouTube channel after Oram decided Hong Kong’s then-fragmented community needed a flagship event. The city is one of the world’s greats in terms of Third Culture, but the community was decentralised and disconnected from itself. Film, as one of the most effective forms of communication, was the logical solution to that disconnection.

On top of that, Oram was fortunate that F&B mogul Allan Zeman’s Lan Kwai Fong Group offered him space in one of its premium properties as a host venue. “Mr Zeman loved the concept of Third Culture, identified with it, and got behind us.”

Oram has no issues with Zeman’s identification as Third Culture; the German-Jewish, Montréal-raised transplant made Hong Kong his home in 1975 and almost single-handedly reinvented its nightlife. At a time when rigid definitions are increasingly subject to revision or simply dismissal, Oram brushes aside retrograde prerequisites tied to ethnicity or nationality. Should someone suggest that terms and conditions apply, “I’d say, ‘Who are those people to gate-keep and what authority do they have?’ Third Culture isn’t a tribe that’s connected to ethnicity or some other label. It’s more like a mindset and a movement.” And it’s one that Oram is confident is stepping off the sidelines. TCIs have always been with us; they’re just starting to openly demand a seat at the cultural table.

Which is not to say TCFF isn’t cleaving to its mandate to highlight Third Culture topics identity, belonging, dislocation and amplify voices in its international, universal, indie-forward programming. Now in its third (no pun intended) edition after two in Hong Kong, Oram hopes the films will stimulate more filmmaking and more communication. “We can’t just live in multicultural silos,” he says, pointing out that conversations about the very nature of multiculturalism, immigration and integration challenges are happening around the world in step with spiking xenophobia, suddenly and worryingly stylish again.

He wrestled with those ideas in his first book last year, Living the Bridge, and established the Third Culture Foundation to complement the festival and tap other aspects of culture for added exchange.

“We need to learn about each other’s cultures more…and I think one of the best [ways to have conversations] is through film, but we need spaces where we can integrate music, food, fashion. [The Foundation] talks with fashion designers, for example, about how to engage with other cultures respectfully and avoid appropriation. That’s where Third Culture has a place to shine, to show a middle way.”

Oram isn’t playing arbiter or advocating for elimination of traditions though let’s face it, some need to end. “How can you educate without being a coloniser? That’s why I love film, because you can just share and let it simmer.”

To the best of Oram’s knowledge, TCFF is the world’s only event dedicated to the in-between space that is Third Culture, and it is agnostic in its programming: all artistic expressions are welcome. And if Oram has his way, as the festival gains traction there will be satellite events in Hong Kong (in April), London, Austin, the Philippines and Ghana, the latter for its demonstrated filmmaking ingenuity and as home to what Oram says is “another culture of futurism. No one thinks of that as a Third Culture but again, it’s another way forward. If Cannes is the king of tradition, we want to be a pioneer of the future.”

Harry Oram’s Third Culture philosophy is diverse, as are his recent film picks: Rochelle, The Sex Slave, L’ile, Rules of Living, Indefinitely and Stranded Pearl.