Film director Nays Baghai has taken his art to the depths of the ocean – and now one of his astounding films will premiere at the Orpheum this month
Cave diver and North Shore film director Nays Baghai has been to the depths of the ocean in many parts of the world for his new documentary Diving into The
Darkness, taking his camera to places none of his filmmaking peers have been
before.
“When you actually enter the caves it’s like entering another planet,” he says. “It’s the closest I’ve ever been to feeling like an earthbound astronaut.”
His film journeys the life of Canadian cave diving icon Jill Heinerth, an underwater explorer who travelled three kilometres on a single dive into an underwater cave, which is more than any other woman in history. Nays’s film is an adaptation of Jill’s autobiography, Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver.
The pair met at a dive conference in Sydney, where Nays attended Jill’s presentation. “I was so astounded by what she was capable of as a cave explorer and I went up to her afterwards and introduced myself,” he explains. “Little did I know that would mark the beginning of what is currently a seven-year friendship.”
The pair kept in contact but it wasn’t until Nays had released his first film Descent, a story about Dutch ice freediver Kiki Bosch, that he finally ‘got the nerve’ to ask if Jill would allow him to adapt her book to film. “To my surprise, her answer was pretty much an instant ‘yes,’” Nays says.
Like Jill, Nays, 26, has always had an affinity with the water, particularly the beaches of the Lower North Shore, as he spent many of his younger days swimming at Balmoral. He completed his first scuba diving course at age 12 at Clifton Gardens, and had a fascination with both marine biology and filmmaking when growing up, visiting the Hayden Orpheum theatre in Cremorne regularly.
On seeing the documentary series, Blue Planet, Nays ‘pretty much fell in love with the art of underwater cinematography and what they were doing to get such astonishing images.’
He completed an arts degree at the Australian Film and Television Radio School, and by 2016 he was working as an underwater photographer.
For his latest film, Nays, Jill and their large team, including four other divers, travelled to Mexico, New Zealand and Canada, exploring the underwater caves that Jill herself once pioneered in her explorations. The filming took 40 days, while the editing was a 15-month long process.
An accomplished and certified scuba diver and freediver, Nays became a DiveRAID certified JJ-CCR rebreather diver prior to making this film so he could use ‘complex closed circuit diving equipment to go well beyond where normal scuba divers go.’
“No one had really done what we were trying to do, which was a series of dramatic re-enactments underwater in caves where you were doing it far below the reach of the sun,” Nays says. “None of my peers had ever attempted that before, even though there were other cave divers who had made films. That was pretty much the only source of information that I had to draw on from. And we were figuring out the best way of making it run smoothly in the water as we go.
“It was a herculean effort in terms of logistics, but I’m very proud of what the team accomplished over the four weeks we spent in Mexico.
“Working with her (Jill) to bring that film to life is possibly the one thing I’m most proud of in my career.”
Nays’s feature-length documentary will have its Sydney premiere at the Orpheum on 1 October, and he hopes the audience develops an appreciation for both cave diving and the beautiful places on the planet on seeing the film.
“I really hope that viewers walk away feeling inspired and enthralled,” he says.
Diving Into The Darkness will be showing at the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace from 1 to 7 October.