Wellywood Woman

Afia Nathaniel I love the Raising Films site and the women who created it. Raising Films is visionary and absolutely necessary, building a frank-and-fearless community discussion around Family vs Film and developing a rich archive of illuminating and useful information for women filmmakers everywhere. Among other synergies, Raising Films is now associated with the European Women's Audiovisual Network and the Parents in Performing Arts campaign.  And  the makers – some of them mothers – provide an excellent model of being activists while also getting on with their individual work. The women who run Raising Films are– Hope Dickson Leach, now shooting her first feature, The Levelling , funded by the iFeature programme (BBC Films, BFI and Creative England); Line Langebek, co-writer of  I'll Come Running among other credits and a screenwriting teacher at Regent's University; prolific producers Nicky Bentham and Jessica Levick; writer Sophie Mayer whose Political...

Merata Mita Aotearoa New Zealand (mostly 'Aotearoa' in this post) held its annual Big Screen Symposium in Auckland last weekend, focusing on 'strengthening our collaborative spirit'. It's run by Script to Screen, a trust whose mandate is to develop 'the craft and culture of storytelling for the screen in Aotearoa New Zealand'. Many women participated on panels. Jane Campion took a masterclass and spoke with her Top of the Lake producer Philippa Campbell in the final session. I was catching up at home, so followed as well as I could via tweets and tumblr posts. ( If I've missed something vital, please let me know?) In his 'state of the nation' address, Dave Gibson, the chief executive of the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC) referred to the NZFC's gender policy. Big sigh. According to the latest figures I've seen, women are already in Aotearoa's industry: 44% of those who work there. The 'female' issue is ...

Mary Dore and Nancy Kennedy's feature about the birth of the American women's movement, She's Beautiful When She's Angry , screened at the New Zealand International Film Festival this year. Afterwards, I got a group email from someone who wrote– The younger ones wanted to know if there is a similar account of the NZ second wave of feminism.... can anyone give us a reference? Since then, I've become aware of Australian women's filmmaking in the 1970s and 1980s  and I've kept my eye out for films from and about the women's movement in New Zealand in those years. But the woman-made moving image record of New Zealand activities of those times, from those times, seems to be tiny. I’ve searched in the Nga Taonga Sound & Vision collections and I now know, for instance, that there were at least three films made in 1975: Meanwhile with a crew that included Annie Collins, Deidre McCartin’s Some of My Best Friends Are Women ; and You Wanna Talk Fe...

Chantal Akerman (image: Liberation ) Chantal Akerman's Death I tried to write about why I felt so deeply sad about Chantal Akerman's death, then read a post from poet Ana Božičević , who got it just right for me– No one knows for sure why a woman takes her life but that Chantal A might have done so in part because her No Home Movie – about her mother Natalia an Auschwitz survivor, which was grueling to make – was booed...really breaks my heart this morning. I wonder always, who cares, as in provides care, for the women artists who go to deep dark uncommercial places? Which intimate understands the skill, of craft and emotion, necessary for the work that they do? I wrote in some napkin or tweet once 'they only love the Sylvias after they are dead'. Give care to the woman artist in your life even and especially when she does the hard depth work that challenges the mind and body, yours and hers. And if you are that woman, thank you today & every day. Thank yo...

Ghazaleh Golbakhsh  with  cinematographer Jarod Murray It's been thrilling to observe some new trends among New Zealand women who write and direct film. Over the last few years, more of them (us) are also actors. More are or have been part of various diasporas into and out of New Zealand and are global citizens. And, most recently, some have begun to form collectives. These trends profoundly enrich our filmmaking. And Ghazaleh Golbakhsh, like Anita Ross , is a filmmaker who embodies all three. Ghazaleh’s thesis film Iran in Transit , made for her Masters in Documentary at the University of Auckland, premiered at the International Student Film Festival in Tel Aviv after winning the festival’s Alternative Competition and in 2013 won the Outstanding Student Film award at the Beijing Student Film Festival. She used a Fulbright General Graduate award for further post-graduate studies in film production and screenwriting at the University of Southern California (USC)...

I 'met' Anita Ross five years ago, through her blog,  Ophelia Thinks Hard . This is how she introduces herself there– I'm an actress, a writer, mum to a gorgeous, funny and exceedingly clever little boy, and a proud Wellingtonian. I am inching my way closer to being a working actress. This is my journey. Soon, she'll take her feature project about climber Freda Du Faur,  Cloud Piercer , to the Stowe Story Labs, where mentors include Amy Hobby, Anne Hubbell and Elizabeth Kaiden of Tangerine Entertainment, casting director Ellen Parks and Anne Rosellini, co-writer of  Winter's Bone . And she's just founded Wellington's Film Fatales, modelled on the New York Film Fatales. So I asked her: And. And. And. How did you come so far so fast? You have a masters law degree, in human rights. When and why did you shift from law to acting and then to writing?  Pure stubbornness? I had spent about six years studying law but I was never pa...

Pro Quote Regie  at the Berlinale The first part of this series delighted in the roar of the collective, global Activist Complex Female Protagonist who works to improve representation of women in front of and behind the camera. (It was a limited record because I can only access information in English and – sometimes – in French.) The second celebrated a recent surge in this protagonist's work, in Australia.   This post focuses on  gender equity in New Zealand feature film funding. Like other  European and British Commonwealth countries we have taxpayer-funded systems to support local screen production– feature filmmaking, short films, webseries, transmedia work and television. And like theirs, our  hard  data demonstrates that fewer producers apply for development and production funding of women-written and -directed features than for features that men write and direct.  One suggestion for New Zealand is that among other taxp...

Another in my series about the  Activist Complex Female Protagonist.   To me, she's all those who work towards increased and more diverse representation of women in front of and behind the camera, globally.  I'm intrigued. It feels as though a sleeping giant is waking. Back in the 70s and 80s there were many activist women filmmakers in Australia, often making films by, about women and  for women. I've been reading about them (again) this week. There was even a state-funded Women's Film Fund that I'll write about soon, in a post about New Zealand's tentative new gender initiatives. But in the last decade or so, it's seemed very quiet over in Aussie. As the Screen Australia gender stats show , the situation's as bad there as it is anywhere. And similar to New Zealand's. These are very recent infographics. Yes, Sydney's  WOW is an annual festival, in its 21st year (no parallel event here in New Zealand). Yes, there's the Tasma...

Linda Niccol at Newport Beach I love New Zealand-based films about 'us'. And I love the diasporic elements in New Zealand women’s filmmaking: the contributions of women writers and directors who – like me – come to live here as children or adults and contribute differently than those from families who've lived here for generations; and the contributions of the women – some of them the same women – who move in and out of New Zealand to work. Our global reach. Best known are Jane Campion, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, Christine Jeffs, Niki Caro (in pre-production on Callas , starring Noomi Rapace!) and Dana Rotberg, whose White Lies/Tuakiri Huna is currently attracting acclaim and audiences in Mexico. And there are others. Dianne Taylor wrote the first NZ-India co-production, Pan Nalin’s  Beyond The Known World , now in post-production. Writers and producers Donna Malane and Paula Boock define their Lippy Pictures as a production company ‘making quality film and te...

Introducing The Complex Female Protagonist Roars This year, I got a stall at the local queer fair  Out in The Park , to sell my neonics-free bee-loved flowering plants , another artist's beautiful work and this cap, which I had made in New Zealand from a design by the Bluestocking Film Series , thanks to its director, Kate Kaminski. The fair was postponed – Wellington wind – so I distributed some caps to family and Facebook friends. I’m delighted that the new owners tell me stories about when they choose to wear the caps, how they feel wearing them, the responses of those they meet when wearing them. Wearing a cap with the Complex Female Protagonist slogan has many effects. I love it. Last year, when I wrote Get Your Hopes Up , near International Women’s Day, I recalled what David Mamet wrote, about drama being about the creation and deferment of hope. This year, because of those caps and the stories their owners tell me, my mind and heart are on the Complex Female P...