Wellywood Woman

Steven Joyce (Minister of Many Things), Jane Campion, Maggie Barry (Minister for Arts & Culture), James Cameron, Peter Jackson, Jon Landau New Zealand has a heavyweight Screen Advisory Board, appointed by the government just over a year ago: Jane Campion, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, James Cameron, Jon Landau, Andrew Adamson. The board was appointed to help the New Zealand screen sector create the skills and connections to be able to generate their own intellectual property, compete internationally, attract overseas finance and to assist the New Zealand Film Commission, Film New Zealand, and the New Zealand screen sector to market and promote the New Zealand screen industry overseas. A huge ask. But something these imaginative, generous and enterprising board members can deliver on. Last September, Dave Gibson, CEO of the New Zealand Film Commission, announced that the board members would each follow particular interests – Sir Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh have identified ...

Just over a month ago, Pledgeme and Snowball Effect became New Zealand’s first equity crowd funders , licensed to act as intermediaries between entrepreneurial companies wanting to sell shares and investors wanting to buy them. This week, The Patriarch , through Snowball, became the first feature film to seek equity crowdfunding in New Zealand. It may not be the first feature in the world to be equity crowd funded but it’s close. New Zealanders have engaged with equity crowdfunding before, when Spanner Films, led by New Zealander Lizzie Gillett, produced Franny Armstrong’s The Age of Stupid in the United Kingdom and later provided a step-by-step guide to their model. Also in the United Kingdom, Simon West ( Tomb Raider , Con Air ) is using equity crowdfunding to raise money for his Salty . The Patriarch , from the novel Bulibasha , is the fourth feature from a Witi Ihimaera story. It follows Whale Rider (2002, wr/dir Niki Caro), Kawa (2010, from Nights in the Garden of...

The New Zealand Writers Guild has announced the Finalists for the Script Writer Awards NZ 2014. Fantastic to see so many women's names. Warm congratulations to you all! BEST FEATURE FILM SCRIPT Max Currie – Everything We Loved James Napier Robertson – Dark Horse Gerard Johnstone – Housebound Sophie Henderson – Fantail BEST TELEVISION ONE-OFF DRAMA Fiona Samuel –  Consent: The Louise Nicholas Stor y  Donna Malane & Paula Boock –  Field Punishment No.1   Donna Malane & Paula Boock –  Pirates of the Airwaves UNPRODUCED FEATURE FILM SCRIPT COMPETITION Gillian Ashurst –  Gnats   Dianne Taylor –  The Last Hippie Trail   Tania Wheeler –  Umbrella Man Richard Goodwin –  Immortal Diamond Jackie Owens –  Three Gardens

Fantail opens in New Zealand cinemas this Thursday, 5 June. It’s the story of service station worker Tania, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman who identifies as M a ori, working to take her little bro Pi to Surfer’s to find their Dad. But flitting Pi causes plans to go awry. (The Maori myth of Hine-Nui-Te-Po, Maui and the fantail/p i wakawaka is its starting point,  see links below if you're unfamiliar with the story.) Fantail  was made through the New Zealand Film Commission’s low-budget Escalator scheme and it's been very successful. It premiered at the New Zealand International Film Festival last year and screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where Level K snapped up the global rights (Curious Film has the Australian and New Zealand distribution rights). It received eight nominations at the New Zealand Film Awards 2013, including a nomination for Best Film. And the reviews are very enthusiastic, too, look at all those stars! I'm excited because...

Recently I participated (from my bed, distracted by itchy shingles) in an excellent  Blackboard forum  discussion on under-representation in scriptwriting, inspired by the news that the prestigious  Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting  are tracking gender among its applicants. (They have a wonderful ongoing commentary on their  Facebook page .) Alas, so far, only a quarter of the applicants are women. According to the Fellowships' Facebook page, for years, the male-female split hovered near 70-30. Recently, however, it has dropped towards 75-25 and they are not sure why that has happened (so they must have been tracking gender for a while, but I think this may be the first year the figures have been public). You have three days left to enter!!! from Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Facebook page  (26 April 2013)

lisa gornick i am singing on a large stage Lisa Gornick’s seduced me again-- When I saw this drawing, I thought There’s Me! Thin and Alone and Exposed and Worried about my Voice and my Song! There’s the outcome of This-Harshest-Winter-Ever at Our Place! And then I laughed. Settle Down, Drama Queen! There are Freesias on the Kitchen Table! Put down your Tiny Violin! & Step Up! Lisa's drawing’s inspired me to round up this week’s news about New Zealand’s women directors. They're pretty special. First, Kathy Dudding . At the New Zealand Film Archive there’s a series of evenings commemorating her death a year ago and celebrating her life and work. Wednesday’s, which I missed, was called Bathe in The Light of the Pale Blue Moon. Still to come, this evening and tomorrow, screenings of Asylum Pieces , Kathy's final film, which I found very moving. Still from Kathy Dudding's Asylum Pieces Then, Gaylene Preston . Mary Wiles at Canterbury University, ...

Something I enjoy about working on the Development project is that it is transmedial, part of a new storytelling world where fiction mixes with non-fiction and where For the first time since ancient cultures, where stories were passed down from generation to generation through verbal communication…the world has now found a new, communal space to share and grow its stories that represent humanity. … In other words, stories are no longer simply stories, they are world views that will evolve with discussion, creation, and review In that communal space, here on the internet, Development is linked with an informal, global, transmedial project to increase the numbers of feature films that women write and direct, and that tell stories about women's lives. (I hope that New Zealand will be the first country in the world where women write and direct half of all features. But I’m not holding my breath.) This blog, and Kyna Morgan’s sister blog over at HerFilm , are as essential to the De...

Last month, Jane Campion spoke out again about women’s participation in filmmaking. This is what she said: I think women should be given 50% of the films to make. I'm not kidding! It'll change the world overnight. Women see things differently so it'll be better for everyone...it's not fair. It's about human rights...I want equality. I thought of her statement as I read the latest New Zealand Film Commission newsletter. The best news is that of three feature writers chosen to work with Alan Sharp ( Dean Spanley ), two—Pip Hall and Fiona Samuel ( Piece of My Heart )—are women. But, of the six NZFC-funded features currently in post-production, only one has a woman writer/director, Simone Horrocks’ After the Waterfall . Expressed as a percentage, this project represents 16% of films produced this year, exactly the same as the NZFC’s overall record for the previous six years. Then I read about the Short Film Fund, where the NZFC invests in short films by up-and-...