News of New Zealanders via Global Media

Meet Theia Our New Alt-Pop Artist on the Rise

Meet Theia Our New Alt-Pop Artist on the Rise

After Lorde and Kimbra conquered the world music scene, there is another New Zealander who’s making waves, according to Manila Times correspondent, Mark Bonifacio. Introducing Christchurch-born, Theia (real name Em-Haley Walker). Theia first emerged…

Sam Neill Locked in the Kitchen

Sam Neill Locked in the Kitchen

New Zealand actor Sam Neill talks to the UK’s Observer about shunning fame, putting his latest movie on hold, online cooking … and playing Radiohead’s Creep on the ukulele. Neill, star of Jurassic Park, The…

Cogs Begin to Turn on Avatar Sequel Set

Cogs Begin to Turn on Avatar Sequel Set

Leave it to James Cameron to find a way to work through a pandemic, Yohana Desta writes for Vanity Fair. Like every other major film production, the Avatar sequel – which has been in…

Photographer Amos Chapple’s Love Letter to Prague

Photographer Amos Chapple’s Love Letter to Prague

High above street level, scores of magnificent statues gaze down over the historical centre of Prague. These rooftop figures – which normally go virtually unnoticed – are now the focus of a project by…

Cheil CCO Martyn Poynton Takes Two Minutes

Cheil CCO Martyn Poynton Takes Two Minutes

New Zealander Malcolm Poynton joined ad agency Cheil Worldwide at the beginning of 2015 as the network’s first global chief creative officer, following celebrated stints at SapientNitro, Ogilvy and Saatchi & Saatchi, Tim Nudd…

Capturing Copeisolation on Rakiura/Stewart Island

Capturing Copeisolation on Rakiura/Stewart Island

Originally from Estonia, Laire Purik is documenting the life of the residents of Rakiura “through windows, through the gates” as they cope with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. The BBC reports on her…

Twenty-Somethings Trio Helping Us Give a Sh*t

Twenty-Somethings Trio Helping Us Give a Sh*t

Most of us get at least a small percentage of our daily news from Instagram, according to lifestyle site, POPSUGAR. But there’s one account, the site says, that manages to cut through the noise…

Rosé One Fourth of the Biggest K-Pop Band on Earth

Rosé One Fourth of the Biggest K-Pop Band on Earth

With their new album just around the corner, Jennie, Jisoo, Auckland-born Rosé, and Lisa are on the periphery of global success. Vogue’s Taylor Glasby examines how in just four years BLACKPINK became one of…

Russell Crowe’s Gladiator Marks Two Decades

Russell Crowe’s Gladiator Marks Two Decades

As the Russell Crowe/Ridley Scott epic, Gladiator marks two decades since it first hit cinemas, UAE English-language daily newspaper, The National looks back at how Ait Benhaddou in Morocco formed the backdrop to some…

Multi-Talented Producer Yuki Releases Debut Album

Multi-Talented Producer Yuki Releases Debut Album

Yuki’s goal in life is to avoid staying dormant creatively, according to Ryan Feyre writing for online music news platform, Atwood Magazine. Homogeneity in music is never a good thing when there’s too much…

Mata Aho Collective in Conversation with Contemporary Hum about Dhaka Art Summit

Mata Aho Collective in Conversation with Contemporary Hum about Dhaka Art Summit

Mata Aho Collective is a collaboration between four Māori women who produce large scale fiber based works, commenting on the complexity of Māori lives. In the last of their series focusing on the…

Katherine Mansfield and Another Edge of the World

Katherine Mansfield and Another Edge of the World

“What does it take to decide to up sticks and live abroad? More than just a name, although I confess I liked the idea of living on the Avenue Katherine Mansfield – named in…

Jemaine Clement Prefers to See the World by Bike

Jemaine Clement Prefers to See the World by Bike

New Zealand actor Jemaine Clement, 46, has spent the last two decades or so travelling from his homeland to Los Angeles and beyond for his career, and has come up with some pretty good…

Xenia Pestova Bennett Makes Best of Bandcamp

Xenia Pestova Bennett Makes Best of Bandcamp

Every two months, Bandcamp will feature some of the best composer-driven music to surface on the online music site, music that “makes room for electronic experimentation, improvisation, and powerful takes on old classics”. In…

Benee’s Hit Supalonely Gets Lockdowners Dancing

Benee’s Hit Supalonely Gets Lockdowners Dancing

The irony of a song she wrote about loneliness going viral during a global lockdown is not lost on Auckland pop singer Stella Bennett, aka Benee, George Fenwick reports for London’s Evening Standard. Benee…

New York-Based Jess Johnson Finds Solace in Art

New York-Based Jess Johnson Finds Solace in Art

Some artists embrace chance and whimsy, but New Zealander Jess Johnson’s painstaking focus puts her into a space entirely under her command, John Bailey writes for WA Today. Right now, the contrast to the…

Behind the Board with Music Producer Joel Little

Behind the Board with Music Producer Joel Little

Grammy-winning producer/songwriter Auckland-born Joel Little, 37, tells The Recording Academy’s website about his path of starting a band, a record label and a successful studio career. A guitar player since the age of 13, Little’s…

Endangered Kea Image a Shot of the 2000s

Endangered Kea Image a Shot of the 2000s

Photographers working for UK newspapers The Guardian and The Observer pick their favourite moments from over two decades reporting around the world. A fleeting moment, captured by Murdo MacLeod, in the South Island features. “The…

Sixty Seconds With Anna Paquin

Sixty Seconds With Anna Paquin

New Zealand-Canadian actress Anna Paquin, 37, speaks with UK newspaper Metro about season two of television series, Flack, being a child star, and living under lockdown. “Nobody wants to hear actors complaining about anything ever…

Tips for Virtual Travel From an Agoraphobic

Tips for Virtual Travel From an Agoraphobic

While the coronavirus crisis has restricted most global travel, a typical day sees New Zealander Jacqui Kenny spend the morning in Arizonian desert, lunch in Kyrgyzstan and the evening wandering streets in Mongolia, Francesca…

Rhys Darby Stands up on Stage in Washington

Rhys Darby Stands up on Stage in Washington

“New Zealand comic Rhys Darby is perhaps best known to American audiences from the two recent Jumanji films and his show-stealing role on Flight of the Conchords as the eponymous band’s well-meaning but hapless manager Murray Hewitt,” Jibran Khan…

Artist Zac Langdon-Pole Travels Time and Space

Artist Zac Langdon-Pole Travels Time and Space

In 2018, Berlin-based New Zealander Zac Langdon-Pole, 32, won the BMW Art Journey prize at Art Basel Hong Kong, an award he used to fund a trip from Europe to his homeland, via several…

Singer Shirley Setia Debuts in Netflix Film Maska

Singer Shirley Setia Debuts in Netflix Film Maska

Aucklander Shirley Setia, who has made her acting debut with the Netflix film, Maska, recently spoke with India’s Bollywood Life. The actress, who began her career as a musician, hopes that the film will…

Arts Can Foster Resilience Says Blair French

Arts Can Foster Resilience Says Blair French

The crisis and the economic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic will test New Zealander Blair French’s management strengths as much as his curatorial abilities, Sydney Morning Herald journalist Linda Morris writes. But the chief executive of…

Contemporary HUM: Sharmini Aphrodite on André Hemer Singapore show ‘Images Cast by the Sun’

Contemporary HUM: Sharmini Aphrodite on André Hemer Singapore show ‘Images Cast by the Sun’

Online publishing platform Contemporary HUM is excited to announce a new series focusing on New Zealand arts activity in the Asia region. In the first essay of the series, produced in collaboration with our guest…

Country Singer Tami Neilson Pulls Out the Big Guns

Country Singer Tami Neilson Pulls Out the Big Guns

The seven women who are “leading the charge” in country music in 2020, according to Kath Devaney reporting for the ABC include New Zealand-based performer, Tami Neilson. “It has been said that women in country…

Designer Kristian Fredrikson a Force of the Stage

Designer Kristian Fredrikson a Force of the Stage

Wellington-born stage and costume designer Kristian Fredrikson is celebrated in a new book by renowned Melbourne dance writer, curator and historian Michelle Potter. Fredrikson, who was born in 1940, took art classes at Wellington Polytechnic…

NPR Excited About Folk Singer Holly Arrowsmith

NPR Excited About Folk Singer Holly Arrowsmith

New Zealander Holly Arrowsmith has made NPR’s Austin 100 list, compiled of musicians who would otherwise be performing at the annual SXSW music festival, now shutdown owing to the coronavirus pandemic. “Arrowsmith writes languid, yearning…

Yumi Zouma’s Latest Is Album of the Week

Yumi Zouma’s Latest Is Album of the Week

Earlier this month, the New Zealand band Yumi Zouma “who splits their time between Wellington, London and New York, unleashed their third full length album Truth Or Consequences, into the world”, Poppy Reid writes…

Photographer Amos Chapple Shoots Cold on an iPhone

Photographer Amos Chapple Shoots Cold on an iPhone

From December to January, the sun never rises in Murmansk, Russia. Amateur Photographer journalist Peter Dench chats to the New Zealand-born photographer Amos Chapple about his recent reportage, Forty Days Of Darkness, shot on…

Stacey Lee’s Doco Underplayed to Show at TriBeCa

Stacey Lee’s Doco Underplayed to Show at TriBeCa

Among the documentaries premiering at this year’s TriBeCa Film Festival in April is New Zealand-born, Los Angeles-based Stacey Lee’s debut feature-length project, Underplayed, about the gender inequality in electronic music, Lily Moayeri reports for…

Death Metal Band Ulcerate Warp Time in New Track

Death Metal Band Ulcerate Warp Time in New Track

New Zealand extreme-metal outfit Ulcerate, which formed in Auckland in 2000, “privileges atmosphere over speed in one of its grandest, most unsettling tracks to date,” Rolling Stone magazine correspondent Hank Shteamer writes. “Fifty years on…

Taika Waititi Takes on the Chocolate Factory

Taika Waititi Takes on the Chocolate Factory

Academy Award-winning director New Zealander Taika Waititi has signed a deal with Netflix to write, direct and produce two animated series based on the works of the children’s author, Roald Dahl, The Guardian reports. The…

Art is at the Frontline of Cathy Fitzgerald’s Fight

Art is at the Frontline of Cathy Fitzgerald’s Fight

The Hollywood Forest in County Carlow, Ireland is a source of quality timber and an inspiration for an artistic couple and their network of collaborators. “We are discipline-jumpers,” New Zealand-born Cathy Fitzgerald says of…

Dream Catchers Charts 32 Remarkable New Zealanders Making an Impact in the UK

Dream Catchers Charts 32 Remarkable New Zealanders Making an Impact in the UK

Dream Catchers is on YouTube! Produced by Hilary Timmins, the full eight episodes celebrating 32 New Zealand innovators and cultural pioneers in the UK has posted online as well as on Air…

Simon Denny Exhibits Amazon Cage in San Francisco

Simon Denny Exhibits Amazon Cage in San Francisco

A new exhibit at San Francisco’s de Young Museum explores what it means to be human in an AI-saturated world with pieces like New Zealand artist Simon Denny’s work, “Amazon worker cage patent drawing…

Why Niki Caro Was Right Choice for Disney Remake

Why Niki Caro Was Right Choice for Disney Remake

Mulan director New Zealand-born Niki Caro, 53, has a message for those who take issue with the fact that Disney’s latest live-action remake was not helmed by an Asian filmmaker, Christopher Rosen writes for…

On the Road With Singer-Songwriter Tami Neilson

On the Road With Singer-Songwriter Tami Neilson

Born and raised in Canada and currently based out of New Zealand, Tami Neilson has been on the road for three decades. “From the age of 12, I was on tour all across North…

Composer Annea Lockwood at Chicago Festival

Composer Annea Lockwood at Chicago Festival

Chicago’s Frequency Festival has become a crucial showcase for the movement of “new music”, according to Aaron Cohen reporting for Chicago Tribune. New Zealand-born and New York-based composer Annea Lockwood exemplifies the festival’s idiomatic…

Nadia Reid Would Like to Go to Canada With You

Nadia Reid Would Like to Go to Canada With You

Nadia Reid’s “Oh Canada” isn’t a cover of the country’s national anthem, but that doesn’t stop the Dunedin-born musician from honouring some of her favourite Canadian singer-songwriters on her new song, Kevin Rutherford writes…

J.Lo’s Choreographer Parris Goebel Hidden MVP at the Super Bowl

J.Lo’s Choreographer Parris Goebel Hidden MVP at the Super Bowl

Parris Goebel is no stranger to being on a global stage. So she dived right in when given the assignment of a lifetime: choreographing for Jennifer Lopez, at the Super Bowl halftime show, Talya…

Katherine Mansfield Book Inspired Legendary British Agent in German Concentration Camp

Katherine Mansfield Book Inspired Legendary British Agent in German Concentration Camp

Passages from a book of Katherine Mansfield’s letters published in 1918 helped a condemned British operative survive her death watch in the German concentration camp Ravensbrück. Odette Sansom, the most highly decorated spy of the…

Elizabeth Knox’s Masterpiece Lands US Publisher

Elizabeth Knox’s Masterpiece Lands US Publisher

Following a glowing review on Washington Post-owned online magazine, Slate, Wellington author Elizabeth Knox, 60, closed a deal for American and Canadian publication with Viking Penguin for her novel, The Absolute Book. “Every once in…

The Luminaries TV Adaptation Coming Soon

The Luminaries TV Adaptation Coming Soon

Lead produced by Working Title Television, distributed internationally by Fremantle and coming soon to BBC Two, period thriller The Luminaries, adapted from New Zealand author Eleanor Catton’s prize-winning novel, has initiated a global roll-out,…

“Favorite Weirdo” Taika Waititi Wins Oscar Glory for Jojo Rabbit

“Favorite Weirdo” Taika Waititi Wins Oscar Glory for Jojo Rabbit

The multi-talented Taika Waititi – writer, director, lead actor – took out the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay at the 2020 Oscars on Sunday evening in Los Angeles. Adapted from Christine Leunens book “

Permanent Migration

Permanent Migration

Newly published on online art platform Contemporary HUM, artist Signe Rose writes a letter to her husband sculptor Martyn Reynolds on their life in Vienna as parents and artists, having moved to Austria from…

Ant Timpson’s Tribute to Father Stars Elijah Wood

Ant Timpson’s Tribute to Father Stars Elijah Wood

The death of his father led New Zealand producer Ant Timpson to decide it was time to direct. His new film and directorial debut, Come to Daddy, stars Lord of the Rings favourite, Elijah…

Screenwriter Anthony McCarten Talks Two Popes

Screenwriter Anthony McCarten Talks Two Popes

For the Oscar-nominated film The Two Popes, New Zealand-born screenwriter Anthony McCarten had to imagine what took place between Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Jorge Bergolio in the weeks before the latter became Pope…

Sun Journalist Dan Wootton to Host UK Radio Show

Sun Journalist Dan Wootton to Host UK Radio Show

Executive editor and columnist at The Sun, New Zealander Dan Wootton, 36, will take over from Eamonn Holmes on the UK’s TalkRadio’s drivetime radio show in late February, the Belfast Telegraph reports. Wootton, who currently…

Newfound Lightness in Sarah Mary Chadwick Sound

Newfound Lightness in Sarah Mary Chadwick Sound

“ singer-songwriter has discussed the immense pain of grief, the weight of…

Royal New Zealand Ballet Has an All-Female Line-Up

Royal New Zealand Ballet Has an All-Female Line-Up

It’s fitting that New Zealand, the first country to give women the right to vote, should also be the place where, for the first time, a major ballet company will pre­sent an entire 12-month…

Behind Security Through Obscurity is Simon Denny

Behind Security Through Obscurity is Simon Denny

The death knell of the Patagonia vest, at least as a symbol of utopianism co-opted by the tech and venture capital world and transformed into shorthand for a certain kind of unbridled corporate power,…

What’s for – Decolonial – Dinner?

What’s for – Decolonial – Dinner?

Online art platform Contemporary HUM’s last publication of 2019 sees Indigenous Canadian artist and curator Tania Willard explore the work of New Zealand artists BC Collective and Louisa Afoa, currently on display in the…

On The Road With Tama Muru, BBC Hardtalk Producer

On The Road With Tama Muru, BBC Hardtalk Producer

For a lifelong news and sports nut who loves to travel, a job that requires meeting the world’s top newsmakers and athletes is a dream for BBC TV producer, New Zealander Tama Muru who grew…

Filmmaker Sasha Rainbow Inspired in India

Filmmaker Sasha Rainbow Inspired in India

New Zealand-born filmmaker and director Sasha Rainbow explains what a six-year-old Indian skateboarder taught her about life in a story for HuffPost UK. “Kamali’s defiance of gender boundaries showed me we all have the power…

Lorde’s Smash Hit Royals Defines a Decade

Lorde’s Smash Hit Royals Defines a Decade

American magazine Billboard celebrated the 2010s with essays on the 100 songs that they felt most defined the decade that was, including Lorde’s hit single, “Royals”. “When ‘Royals’ arrived in June 2013, not many listeners…