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Our small yet not-quite perfectly formed team is looking for a new member. We need someone to keep our site content updated, to make connections between titles and people, to research and update details, and sometimes to get coffee.
You will be (once we get you on board) a frequent forum poster, with many personalities, willing to prostitute your online persona(s) for the sake of your job. You will know about Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and whatever else comes along next.
Our ideal person will be someone who can write, spell, and is quite anal about details. Someone who ‘gets’ online, works with macs, is motivated, has initiative and yet is quite happy to spend a day updating links or tweaking text.
Hopefully you love NZ television and film, can spot the connection between Kaikohe Demolition and Jubilee, between River Queen and Broken English, or between The Marching Girls and Someone Else’s Country.
If you’re looking for a challenging, career-driven, exciting and demanding job – look somewhere else. If you’re looking for something you can do for about 20-24 hours a week where you can be part of a wonderful project that is creating a cultural taonga for all New Zealanders, get in touch.
Email your CV, and a cover letter, to brenda @ nzonscreen.com.
October 31 is Peter Jackson’s birthday, and, as has been noted before, it seems pretty fitting that the man who began his film career as the king of low-budget splatter should have been born on Halloween.
Of course Peter Jackson is now a lot more than the king of NZ splatter – he’s a globally-known filmmaking genius who has had both phenomenal commercial success and critical acclaim.
New Zealanders love him for putting our country on the world map, for creating work for our film industry, for making films that we love to watch, and for providing such a shining display of the Kiwi ingenuity that we pride ourselves in.
Peter is understandably protective of his early work, and his later blockbuster films are bound up in international distribution rules, so he is not as represented on our site as his stature in the NZ film industry would dictate – but he and his team have been helpful and supportive to NZ On Screen, and we do have some material available to view.
We have the trailers for his trio of early splatter films – Bad Taste (1988), Meet the Feebles (1990), and Braindead (1992); as well as The Frighteners (1996), which marked an early landmark in the growth of special effects company Weta.
We also have excerpts from the Tony Hiles documentary short Good Taste Made Bad Taste (1988). In this documentary about the making of Peter’s first feature, he talks about – and demonstrates – some of the ingenious special effects and camera equipment he created for the film.
The part of Sam Neill’s Cinema of Unease documentary (1995) that is on our site features excerpts from Heavenly Creatures (one of the many scripts that Peter has worked on over the years with partner Fran Walsh), including Peter’s own brief cameo in the film.
The trailer for Tony Hiles’ 1995 feature film Jack Brown Genius (which Peter helped write) is also on the site, as is the trailer for Peter and Costa Botes’ much-loved mockumentary Forgotten Silver.
Another treat for Peter Jackson fans is the Grant Lahood short film Bogans – which is about a bunch of bogans trying to get roles in Lord of the Rings, and features a cameo role by Peter himself.
We’re all eagerly awaiting the release of Lovely Bones at the end of the year. When Peter is doing press for the film, we will attempt to score a ScreenTalk interview with him for the NZ On Screen website. In the meantime, we do have a full written profile of him, and all of the above mentioned footage.
So why not use Peter’s birthday to take a look at what we have of him on the site so far – hopefully we’ll have more material for you in the months ahead.
Happy Birthday Peter – NZ On Screen salutes you!
Today saw the release of our Labour Day collection – below is the media release we put out that went to all our subscribers. If you’d like to be on the mailing list – you can check the “keep me informed” box on your profile or when you add a comment – or you can email us.
Workers of New Zealand unite!
While you’re relaxing this long weekend, take some time out to reflect on the reason you’re enjoying a holiday and check out NZ On Screen’s collection of Labour Day related titles.
Labour Day commemorates the struggle for an eight-hour working day. In 1840, carpenter Samuel Parnell won a world-leading eight-hour day for workers in the Wellington settlement: “It must be on these terms or none at all!”
The Labour Day collection brings together 11 titles that relate to Kiwi working life, from economic revolutions and industrial disputes to Gliding On. It includes several award-winning titles and some distinguished political documentaries.
The collection includes the John Bates documentary 1951 (about the 1951 waterside workers strike), which won Best Documentary and Best Director at the 2002 NZ Television Awards.
1997 TV Awards winner Revolution is also included. Produced by Marcia Russell, this four part series about the sweeping economic and social changes of the 1980s is available in full.
Campaigning filmmaker Alister Barry’s two highly-acclaimed political documentaries Someone Else’s Country (The Dominion: “alarmingly enlightening”) and In a Land of Plenty offer critical perspectives on the same era.
In the famous 1970 Gallery episode Brian Edwards resolves a long-running Post Office industrial dispute live on air.
The collection also shows classic National Film Unit titles – To Live in the City (1967), Railway Worker (1948), The Coaster (1950) and Coal From Westland (1943). To Live in the City follows four young Māori – Ripeka, Moana, Grace and Phillip – as they transition from school, whānau and rural life to the city.
Railway Worker covers 24 hours of work on the railways and was made by New Zealand’s first female director, Margaret Thomson. The Coaster was written by the poet Denis Glover and narrated by Selwyn Toogood and became famous as the film which led to Cecil Holmes losing his job, after its content riled unionist Fintan Patrick Walsh.
At the lighter end of the spectrum, the Labour Day Collection includes an episode of the 1981 comedy Gliding On (set in the classic public service workplace of the time), an episode from the 1987 drama series The Marching Girls (which features an industrial dispute), and cult 80s glitter soap Gloss – which was set in and around the office of a glossy magazine (definitely not a West Coast coal mine).
The Greenstone Pictures documentary “Charlotte: A Life Without Limbs” is due to screen tomorrow night (Wed Oct 21) at 9.30 on TV3. The documentary is an update on the story of now five-year-old Charlotte Cleverley-Bisman, who created national headlines when she was just a few months old and had all four of her limbs amputated due to meningitis.
Herald on Sunday TV reviewer Deborah Hill Cone gave the doco a very good review at the weekend, but warned that it is a real tear-jerker. Greenstone are very good at making these heart-warming types of docos, and Charlotte herself is an amazing child, who seems to cope with her difficulties with extraordinary grace and charm.
So support Greenstone and TV3 by tuning in and checking it out, and if you want something of a preview, check out this excerpt from a previous Greenstone documentary on Baby Charlotte on NZ On Screen.
Fashion Week is on in Auckland this week, and if it’s got you thinking about matters sartorial, here are a few titles you might like to check out on NZ On Screen.
Where better to start than the first episode of the iconic 1980s drama Gloss – it was made in 1987 and the shoulder pads are so big you’d never have thought anything like them would come back in fashion again, but, lo and behold, they have, and are walking down the catwalk at Fashion Week as we speak.
The costume designer for Gloss was Liz Mitchell, and you can see an interview with Liz in our ScreenTalk section.
Other great NZ examples of costume design for the screen include 1993’s Desperate Remedies (costume designer Glenis Foster), and the Kiwi music video Philosophy by Hollie Smith (2007).
If shoes are your fashion favourite, take a look at Footage from 1996 – an award-winning excursion into documentary from feature director Niki Caro, about the cult of the shoe.
Another documentary (also from 96) worth checking out is Shirley Horrocks’ Kiwiana – about the fashion, art, architecture, attitudes and icons we call our own.
And from 2006, we have Mark Albiston’s award-winning doco The Magical World of Misery, about artist and designer Tanya Misery’s art, fashion and toy empire.
Frock on!
Last chance to see this on the big screen!
Fresh from the recent International Film Festival Graeme Tuckett’s documentary about Barry Barclay is screening in Auckland for one week only.
Where: The Academy Cinema. Auckland
When: 11.10am Thursday Sept 24th (+all week)
GO see it!
The Qantas Film and Television Awards ceremony took place at the mighty Civic Theatre over the weekend, and NZ On Screen Content Director Irene Gardiner donned her glad rags to represent us.
Visitor from Hawkes Bay and Irene Gardiner on the red carpet
In the feature film category, Dean Spanley proved the big winner on the day, taking away seven of its 12 nominations. These included best movie with a budget of more than $1 million, best director for Toa Fraser, and best supporting actor for British acting legend Peter O’Toole. You can watch nominated actor Sam Neill talking about the film here.
Best low-budget feature went to the hit Topp Twins documentary Untouchable Girls (NZ On Screen has a nine-minute excerpt from the film). Sima Urale’s debut feature Apron Strings also featured strongly, with awards for lead actors Jennifer Ludlam, Scott Wills, cinematographer Rewa Harre, and production designer Johnny Hawkins.
On the short film front, the team of Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland scored big again with their Cannes-awarded short The Six Dollar Fifty Man, which won best short, best screenplay, and best performance (Oscar Vandy-Connor).
When it came to television, the big drama awards went largely to Until Proven Innocent, the TV movie based on the conviction of Kiwi David Dougherty. Until Proven Innocent won best drama programme, acting gongs for Cohen Holloway (who played Dougherty) and Peter Elliott, plus a camera award for David Paul. Paul Sutorius, currently working down the hall from our offices on new series Kaitangata Twitch, took away another editing gong.
Fiona Samuel’s adoption drama Piece of My Heart scored awards for young actors Emily Barclay and Keisha Castle-Hughes. Other winners included Jason Gunn and Dancing with the Stars, The Jaquie Brown Diaries, Hunger for the Wild and Play it Strange.
The news and current affairs awards were dominated by TV One.
You can find more details of those nominated – and the winners – here.
NZ On Screen would like to congratulate everyone who worked on any of the nominated productions.
NZ On Screen has put forward two presentations for the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas 2010.
We need your vote – help us get selected to be part of the programme. Voting closes 4 September.
Kim Baker – SXSW Film – talking about how online video helps drive offline sales
Brenda Leeuwenberg – SXSW Interactive – talking about putting our culture online – using NZ On Screen as a case study
We’re also supporting
Sandy Mamoli – SXSW Interactive – user experience design and agile – clash or opportunity
Please sign up and click the thumbs-up!
