Wellywood Woman

In a lovely bit of serendipity, just after I admired this Lisa Gornick drawing, A conundrum on knowing your audience , I read a Sally Potter post about her relationships with audiences . Today's treats, from directors who are far far away from here,  the ninth floor of the Rutherford Building by Wellington's railway station. I hate coming to this building, worry always that the big earthquake (well overdue) will come as I am in the lift. I hope it comes when I am digging the garden at home, and able to enjoy nature shaking her tail (which is what some little earthquakes feel like). And am envious today of Sally Potter working away in her hut in the snow, pictured in her post, smoke twirling out the chimney. She also writes about volcano ash, and seeing that smoke plume as I read makes me think: What would it be like here if one of those volcanoes up the road erupted as intensely as Eyjafjallajokull: Ngaruahoe; Ruapehu; Tongariro; Tara...

Christine Vachon's giving a one-day seminar in Auckland tomorrow, thanks to Script to Screen . I want want want to go. Asked to interview her.  But the washing machine died. And then my laptop died. Not just another of its recent small deaths. Dead beyond resuscitation. I love Christine Vachon's books.  In Shooting to Kill   published twelve years ago, she identified financing entities’ gender—and image-oriented—beliefs as problematic: [They scrutinize] your project for marketable elements that will distinguish it from the morass of independent films…they want a director about whom good copy can be written… It helps if they’re attractive. And it helps if they’re male. I’m usually reluctant to spout stuff like: “If you’re a female it’s so much harder, if you’re a male it’s so much easier” —I hope it’s a little more complicated than that. But I do think that the machine works better with boys. People are more familiar with the whole idea of a male direct...

Ah, I love Lisa Gornick's  film drawing  site, and some of her recent drawings about making her new film Dip especially, as well as one about an  Helene Cixous lecture . But today,  have to shake my body out  really hits the spot. Longing to have full scale shake out but have to stay hunched over this keyboard. A bit like  the person in this other Lisa Gornick drawing,  the monotony of logging. Even the most interesting work in the world has tedious bits-- And it looks like the Easter weekend will be fine enough for a barbie, featuring a neighbour's amazing beetroot in the salada-- A shake out among the tomato plants and the little black beetles that are feeding on them (& reproducing at speed). Thanks Lisa, for the pleasure your drawings give me.

Development -the-movie’s being made for a global audience (see here and here ). It’s for women who want to make movies, and for the people who love them. But it’s a local film. All its locations are within easy walking distance from where I’m writing this, in my room overlooking Oriental Bay, in central Wellington. (The room’s walls have been brownish purple since January because it’s also a studio now, to come back to for filming interiors.) There’s the Oriental Bay beach. The band rotunda at one end. The New World supermarket just beyond its other end. And the wooden houses of Oriental Bay and their gardens, tucked around little apartment blocks.There's Courtenay Place nearby, with its movie theatres and bars: party central by night and a village by day. It’s visually stunning, and I love it all.

1. I love the ideas and invitations that come through Facebook and Twitter. So when shazbennett tweeted “I hope at least one girl wears a tux on the red carpet tomorrow”, I re-found an old newspaper clipping of me in a tux (thanks, Sue, for that clippings book) and replaced the blue-for-Derek-Jarman image on my Facebook page. Arranged a big vase of sweet peas. I wanted to dress up somehow, somewhere, for Kathryn Bigelow, whether she won or not. (I felt so nervous during the Oscar ceremony. And after Jeff Bridges won his Oscar for Crazy Heart , I ran down the hill to see his movie rather than endure more waiting.) And this morning I’m imagining Kathryn Bigelow using her two statues for a little post-party weight training (I’ve read that she likes to be ‘strong’, no surprise). What a stunning International Women's Day for women filmmakers, as we celebrate her achievement.

Sometimes, people ask me: Why haven’t you taken the Film Commission route with Development ? Usually, I give a short, quick, answer: Because the Film Commission route takes too long. Give a little shrug. Move on. Because the longer answer is complicated. And I don’t really think about it now my PhD is handed in and I’m waiting for the examiners’ responses. But after a conversation with a filmmaker the other day I thought: It’s time to write a post about the origins of Development .

1. This is Ken Duncum , walking past the window next to my computer, as he often does. Under the cherry tree. He's the Michael Hirschfeld Director of Scriptwriting at Victoria University's International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML)—what a mouthful. And last month he won the 2010 New Zealand Post Mansfield Prize . Some of his eighty MA students—ten a year for eight years—may have been at the ceremony where NZ Post announced the award. Others, like me, were ghosts there, clapping as hard as we could. And whistling. Stamping our feet. Ken’s supervised my work for two and a half years now, for my MA and—as his first PhD candidate—for the second half of my PhD. So I guess I’m the luckiest student of all, to date. At law school, I encountered something called the ‘Socratic’ teaching method. I remember it as being brutal sometimes, and never particularly helpful for my learning. But with Ken I participated in another kind of Socratic teaching, a generous practice that e...

I'm learning lots as I work on Development . About the availability—and unavailability—of actors, for instance. My head pops as I organise lists of days and times & dates when this one is here and that one is there and nearly everyone else is somewhere else: I'm a little dysnumeric in relation to time and dates and days of the week, & my usual strategies are sometimes not quite enough to cope with information about other people's timetables. (Fortunately, I can do sums in my head pretty well). I'm also learning that there's a lot of help, often unexpected. Close to hand (thank you all) and in cyberspace (thank you all). Just before Christmas I sent a slightly crazed message to Lisa Gornick, a filmmaker who makes beautiful drawings (have included her drawings here before), someone I met via a tweet that led me to a blog that linked to her blog . I wrote about my fears, and how curiosity keeps me going. Did any of my experience resonate with her? Here's ...

The New Zealand film industry's been waiting for the results of the review of the New Zealand Film Commission , due 30 November. And we know—we hope we know—that the review will reflect the concerns of Peter Jackson, who heads the review, assisted by David Court, Head of Screen Business at the Australian Film, Television & Radio School. So I was excited when I read Peter Jackson's recent comments to Michael Bodey, in the Australian : My only advice to anybody is that it's about individuals. The strength of a film industry is based totally on the strength of the individuals, the creative individuals working within it, the writers especially, the directors and the producers and whatever can be done to talent hunt, to find those people and then train them and support them. We're not talking about many people because in an environment where a lot of people want to be a filmmaker or think they can write a screenplay, not many people can, quite honestly, and it's a ca...

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-...