Wellywood Woman

Eleven Disappointment It's New Zealand International Film Festival (#nziff) Time! Again. I've asked if the festival will follow Cannes' example and release details about how many women-directed works were submitted this year. My request was passed on to the programmers. No response yet. And now the New Zealand feature-length selections have been announced , plus a doco by Florian Habicht which was not on the initial list (perhaps there are more to come). Five narrative features. Not one has a woman writer or director. Only one, Gerard Johnstone's Housebound , has a woman protagonist.

I'm thrilled. All these responses. Two quince-related requests. I'll drop the paste in town when I'm passing, carry some jam up the coast to Otaki on the bus, soon, on a sunny day .  An experimental tweet from a non-Twitterer: My turnips are like white balls of black pepper. Wilt the greens too, gloss with extra virgin and taste the time of year. alexmackay.com 137 Characters, he said. Do the spaces count? (Yes.) And someone's asked me: What do I think about the review of the New Zealand Film Commission, being done by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage?  There's lots I have no idea about, and I haven't read much about what others think since John Barnett's piece in OnFilm. But I have some ideas—of course—about how the Film Commission could improve women writers' and directors' participation in feature making.  The present 'pathways' to making a Film Commission-funded feature are not working for women. We're ...