Finding Precious

Tauranga-based filmmakers Lance and James Morcan are searching for the best person to take on the role of four-foot-nine power-lifting champion Precious McKenzie. Ranked the best weightlifter in South Africa, McKenzie, now 71, was barred from representing his country because he was classified as coloured under the apartheid regime. After competing at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, he decided to settle in New Zealand, winning gold wearing the silver fern at the age of 42. The father-and-son team believe McKenzie’s story deserves to be told. “It’s not a weightlifting story, it’s a human drama of one guy overcoming the odds,” Lance Morcan told the Dominion Post. Morcan said he hoped Precious would begin shooting on location in South Africa by early November. Lance Morcan is a former journalist who has also written three novels: Land of the Long, White Cloud, Fiji and The Ninth Orphan, the latter two co-written with James.