Wellywood Woman

I’m going to stop posting here. I’ll abandon a few part-written posts, finish one more–which may take a while–and tidy-up the sidebar. Keep the Development project FAQs page updated now and then. And that’s it. Lately I’ve struggled to manage everything I love and everything I need to do. I’ve been making too many errors during simple processes, making foolish assumptions, asking unnecessary and inappropriate questions. (Once, I believed that no question was unnecessary or inappropriate, but I've changed.) My dysnumeracy bites in winter, too. Tax return. This year, the necessary analysis for Grow Wellington’s wonderful Activate course, almost done. AND the New Zealand International Film Festival (#nzff) gender stats. And GUESS WHAT? This year, the #nzff Wellington catalogue has a Genre Guide which includes a Women Make Features sections, so I could cross-check my counting. (Women wrote and directed 12.5% of the features selected, down from 13% last year .) I’ve noticed that th...

Merata Mita 's Mana Waka (1937-40/1990) will be a high point of the New Zealand International Film Festival this year. In 1937, the Waikato leader Te Puea Herangi engaged cameraman RGH Manley to record the building of two waka taua (canoes), for the 1940 Waitangi centennial commemorations. Manley's footage was not printed. In 1983 Te Arikinui Dame Atairangikahu gave Nga Kaitiaki o Nga Taonga/The New Zealand Film Archive (NZFA) permission to repair and restore the nitrate negatives. Merata Mita (1942-2010) was appointed to construct a new film, and she, editor Annie Collins and NZFA founder and director the late Jonathan Dennis moved to Turangawaewae Marae to edit it. The festival will show a new print, courtesy of the Te Puea Foundation, and made possible through the Saving Frames Project, a partnership between the NZFA, Park Road Post Production and the Government of New Zealand. There's no trailer for Mana Waka as far as I know. But this morning, as I looked for on...