Wellywood Woman

WARNING. As you know if you read Jane Campion's Workshops #1 , I went to her workshop day at Wellington's Circa Theatre as an eager, attentive eight year old, as a terrible note-taker with an unreliable memory and as a writer who sometimes directs and produces films. I was there to learn and I learned heaps. But this is NOT an authoritative account of the day. Nor of Jane Campion's views on anything. It's a chat over a cuppa, with you other practitioners who visit here regularly, in case there's something useful for you. An extended tweet feed that partially covers three sessions of about ninety minutes each: Starting Out; Writing & Directing Film; Performance. If you perceive a gap in what follows, just insert (Laughter) or (Thought).  Because there was lots of laughter, lots of thoughtful moments. And when I laugh or think or feel I don't take notes. Tomorrow, with much gratitude, I'll post comments from others who were there, whose perceptions we...

A record 76 countries submitted films to the Academy Awards Foreign Language category. Attached to these films are 79 directors, 17 of them women. That's 21.5%, which I believe is at the higher end of the proportion of feature films directed by women, globally . The three women in this list who are joint directors all share that credit with men. (WHY are there so rarely women who co-direct?).Any guesses about which of these will be among the few actually nominated? Or might win? I suspect that in this context Haifaa al-Mansour's  Wadjda  will be up there. I've seen so few of these films though. There's a fine opportunity for an enterprising person to set up an online festival (hello Indiereign , hello MUBI ) , so we can all share the delights of the very diverse directors' achievements! Images of the directors are on my Pinterest board, Oscars 2014 Women Directors . Hoping this board will flourish over the next few months-- Here's the list:

White Lies: Tuakiri Huna : the book White Lies|Tuakiri Huna premiered on 27 June. It's a story about three women. And (yes!) it's New Zealand's very own Bechdel Test film. Adapted – from Witi Ihimaera's Medicine Woman novella – and directed by Dana Rotberg, a Mexican director living in New Zealand, it's doing well. Here in Wellington, it's towards the end of its theatrical release. The producer, South Pacific Pictures, is "very pleased", because it "continues to have terrific word-of-mouth which we know has contributed to its extended run at cinemas, both in New Zealand’s main centres and regionally." And  White Lies|Tuakiri Huna is off to the Toronto International Film Festival's Contemporary World Cinema programme soon, where it will screen alongside some other interesting women-directed films. Dana Rotberg (Dana, although I've met her only once, very briefly) will travel to Toronto for Q & As following screenings on 9, 11...

Dana Rotberg Cushla Parekowhai and I went to previews for Dana Rotberg's new feature White Lies/Tuakiri Huna –  Cush in Auckland and me down here in Wellington. And the film excited us. White Lies/Tuakiri Huna,  described as 'a story about the nature of identity: those who deny it and those who strive to protect it', comes from  Medicine Woman , a novella by Witi Ihimaera, who also wrote Whale Rider. ( Witi is Cushla's cousin. Witi's father, Tom Smiler, and Cush's grandmother, Pani Turangi, were raised in the same household in Manutuke.) Dana wrote, in the book that accompanies the film, that after she read  Medicine Woman – ...Paraiti, the medicine woman, was a stubborn presence who refused to leave. I felt that was a clear sign that the story...was speaking to me from places other than where the original work had come from. Places that belonged to my intimate family history and my most unresolved conflicts as a person in the world. It was a call from th...

Helen Mirren's making a habit of it. When she accepted a lifetime achievement award last year at the Czech Karlovy Vary Festival she said "I don’t know how many female directors are presenting their films in this festival. I very much doubt that it’s 50%" and added that, should she return to Karlovy Vary in five years, she’d want to see at least 50% of the films at the festival being presented by women directors. Now she's done it again, at Britain's Empire Awards , after fellow award-winner Sam Mendes acknowledged a group of directors who'd influenced him, all men. Like other veteran actors – Judi Dench, Meryl Streep – she's uniquely placed to identify changes in the industry and like Meryl Streep, she's happy to speak out. The last little while I've been working on one piece about women directors in New Zealand, for the Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand and another for Women Screenwriters: An International Guide , edit...

Dana Rotberg I wanted to go to the Christchurch Writers Festival this weekend, where there's an extraordinary line-up. And I wanted to go to the Big Screen Symposium in Auckland, where there's also an extraordinary line-up. But no, spring's here and I'm focused on the garden and other projects. But imagine my delight when I saw filmmaker Amit Tripuraneni (@unkreative)'s tweets from writer/ director  Dana Rotberg 's session Getting to the Heart of the Story, at the Big Screen Symposium-- What an unexpected treat-- I can't remember when I've read a tweet stream that captures the essence of a talk so elegantly. And that essence is so beautiful-- Many thanks, Amit - I wanted to retweet all of these but putting them here seemed a better idea. And many thanks, Dana. I don't know either of you, but together you made my morning!

I agreed to write 4000 words about New Zealand women directors, for a book. And I delayed researching the  New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC)   statistics, although I needed to know whether it practises gender equity in its investments. And I delayed comparing its investment in women writers and directors with New Zealand On Air's funding of women who write and direct feature-length television drama (there's some crossover). I knew I had to do the stats, to compare them with those I researched for my PhD (2009, link in sidebar), for  a report for Women in Film & Television (late 2010), and intermittently for some of these blog posts, like the one where I celebrated  gender balance in the NZFC's short film programme. But I'm a bit dysnumeric and counting's a chore, like hanging out the laundry. Now I've done some of the work. I didn't go in to the NZFC to search its files and analyse the genders of people attached to funding applications, as I used...

Dana Rotberg shooting  Otilia Rauda (2001)   In New Zealand, we're used to the mobility of our women filmmakers. Some of them have lived out of New Zealand for years. Jane Campion is in Queenstown shooting Top of the Lake , a six-part television series she wrote with Gerard Lee, her co-writer on Sweetie , a film I love. I think it's the first project she's shot here since The Piano . Niki Caro is to write and direct  a film about opera legend Maria Callas. Last year, Simone Horrocks  became the first New Zealand film maker to work with a full Chinese crew and a Mandarin script, when she joined China's Wang Lin as co-director on the film Unforgettable Love .  Alison Maclean was last year one of three directors of the Canadian sitcom Tuesdays and Thursdays . Miro Bilbrough's Venice is in post-production in Australia. Some recent announcements provide other examples of our mobility and one of them made me think afresh about it....