Wellywood Woman

This month’s Power of Inclusion (POI) Summit, organised by the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC) and Women in Film and Television New Zealand (WIFT) with support from Disney, was widely criticised by local filmmakers for its cost, which excluded many of us (1), especially those outside Auckland and those affected by school holidays. Like the conditions for our writers outlined in Mandy Hager’s  Valuing Our Writers  article last week, this issue highlighted artist poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand, almost always more severe for those from groups who already experience the effects of the wage gap, often in association with unpaid work (2). I shared the general concern about the POI costs and signed a widely-circulated letter that outlined alternatives to promote more inclusion. So I was delighted last week when Anita Rossbach, a Wellington-based  film-maker  with a background in human rights, provided a detailed analysis of the NZFC/WIFT meeting she attended with...

Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir’s track record is pretty impressive. She has written, directed and produced over sixteen films. One of Filmmaker ’s 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema and Variety’s Arab New Wave , two of her films have premiered as Official Selections in Cannes, one in Venice and one in Berlin. Annemarie’s short film like twenty impossibles (2003) was the first Arab short film in history to be an official selection of the Cannes Film Festival and continued to break ground when it went on to be a finalist for the Academy Awards. Her second work to debut in Cannes, the critically acclaimed Salt of this Sea (2008), went on to win the FIPRESCI Critics Award, and garnered fourteen other international awards including Best Film in Milan. It was the first feature film directed by a Palestinian woman and Palestine’s 2008 Oscar Entry for Foreign Language Film. Her latest film When I Saw You won Best Asian Film at the Berlinale , Best Arab Film in Abu Dha...