News of New Zealanders via Global Media

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…

Spinning Yarns With Beats 1 DJ Zane Lowe

Spinning Yarns With Beats 1 DJ Zane Lowe

New Zealander Zane Lowe, 46, has a healthy Cali glow, as you’d expect from a man who swapped the rainy gruel of London for the kale-flavoured, free-range chakras of LA four-and-a-half years ago, when…

Emerald McGlashan’s Photos Showing in Kansas

Emerald McGlashan’s Photos Showing in Kansas

The story of how New Zealander Emerald McGlashan’s artwork ended up in an art gallery in Lindsborg, United States is also the story of how she found a small college – Bethany – in…

Bret McKenzie Speaks on the Oddness of Fame

Bret McKenzie Speaks on the Oddness of Fame

The Flight of the Conchords star Bret McKenzie, 43, who is guest curating this year’s New Zealand Festival, speaks to The Guardian’s Charlotte Graham-McLay about his career thus far and the cost of compromise. Although…

Alien Weaponry Earns Finnish Accolades

Alien Weaponry Earns Finnish Accolades

Te Reo Māori heavy metal band Alien Weaponry’s debut LP has been named album of the decade by readers of online Finnish music publication, Tuonela Magazine. “In Tū, Alien Weaponry wield their crunchy thrash sound…

Next Stop Halifax for Conductor Holly Mathieson

Next Stop Halifax for Conductor Holly Mathieson

After an extensive search, Dunedin-born Holly Mathieson, 38, will head to Halifax, Canada in January 2020 to begin working with the 37-piece Symphony Nova Scotia, Victoria Walton reports for HalifaxToday. “Music’s been a part of…

LA-Based Eden Iris Shares New Soulful Single

LA-Based Eden Iris Shares New Soulful Single

Every six weeks, New Zealander Eden Iris will release a new single. Timed perfectly, when these tracks run dry it will be just in time for the release of the singer and songwriter’s debut…

New Zealand Theatre Showcase Presented By NYC’s SoHo Playhouse for 2020

New Zealand Theatre Showcase Presented By NYC’s SoHo Playhouse for 2020

A season of New Zealand theatre is set to hit New York stages next year. Showing at SoHo Playhouse, Wild Dogs Under My Skirt, Modern Māori Quartet: Two Worlds and The Contours of…

Remote Lindis Lodge Wins World Architecture Award

Remote Lindis Lodge Wins World Architecture Award

Spectacular Lindis Lodge in the Southern Alps, designed by Wellington-based Architecture Workshop, has taken out the top hotel award at the World Architecture Festival, Colleen Hawkes reports for Stuff. The lodge won the Hotel and…

Jojo Rabbit Star Thomasin McKenzie in Demand

Jojo Rabbit Star Thomasin McKenzie in Demand

After her stunning breakthrough in Leave No Trace, Wellington actor Thomasin McKenzie, 19, landed roles in four major films including awards contender Jojo Rabbit, directed by Taika Waititi. Screen talks to the fast-rising star. There…

Niki Caro’s Mulan a Timeless Re-Creation

Niki Caro’s Mulan a Timeless Re-Creation

Disney has been busy of late reviving our favourite childhood animation films into live-action remakes. Following in the footsteps of Dumbo, Aladdin and The Lion King (which were all released in 2019), New Zealander…

Jane Campion’s The Piano No 1 on BBC Poll

Jane Campion’s The Piano No 1 on BBC Poll

New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion’s stunning 1993 classic, The Piano has topped BBC Culture’s poll of 368 critics in 84 countries. The broadcaster’s Hannah Woodhead reveals why it’s a worthy winner. “In 1993, Campion made history…

First Ans Westra Exhibition In The USA Urban Drift: Aotearoa / New Zealand

First Ans Westra Exhibition In The USA Urban Drift: Aotearoa / New Zealand

The first U.S. exhibition by pioneering New Zealand documentary photographer Ans Westra opens at New York’s Anastasia Photo on the Lower East Side on December 5 ‘Urban Drift: Aotearoa / New Zealand’ centres around…

Major Len Lye Exhibition Motion Composer Opens In Europe

Major Len Lye Exhibition Motion Composer Opens In Europe

The most comprehensive exhibition of Len Lye’s art to be seen in Europe has opened at the Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland.  Featuring his kinetic sculptures, paintings, photograms, drawings, models and films, the exhibition occupies…

Teen Harry Sills Performs on West End Stage

Teen Harry Sills Performs on West End Stage

New Zealand-born teenager Harry Sills is starring at the Royal Opera House in Benjamin Britten’s, Death in Venice on London’s West End through 6 December. The 14-year-old, who can act and dance, said: “The opportunity…

Aldous Harding Holding Our Focus

Aldous Harding Holding Our Focus

New Zealand musician Aldous Harding is popular: she’s sold out shows for her tour and headlines London’s Roundhouse next month. Young women who present themselves as she does, daring you to turn away, are…

Sam Neill Earns AACTA’s Highest Screen Accolade

Sam Neill Earns AACTA’s Highest Screen Accolade

When Sam Neill first stepped in front of a camera on a movie set he had no idea he was launching a career that would span five decades and take him around the world,…

New Zealand Hosts US Comedian Stephen Colbert

New Zealand Hosts US Comedian Stephen Colbert

In a stunt hailed as a coup for the New Zealand travel industry, American comedian Stephen Colbert has screened segments from his trip here on The Late Show. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern…

Tūī Winner Benee Has a Vision

Tūī Winner Benee Has a Vision

Aucklander Benee, otherwise known as Stella Bennett, who claimed four Tūīs at this year’s Vodafone Music Awards, talked to Billboard’s Gab Ginsberg in the United States recently about her latest EP, Stella & Steve,…

Taika Waititi Puts on a Tuxedo

Taika Waititi Puts on a Tuxedo

His film Jojo Rabbit may be the year’s most unlikely Oscar contender: a Nazi comedy. How will the irreverent director fare amid Hollywood’s sacred rituals? Pop culture reporter Kyle Buchanan investigates for a New York…

Rich Production Incentives Draw Global Projects

Rich Production Incentives Draw Global Projects

For a small country with a film industry that is export-driven, the quality of New Zealand’s incentives is critical, Variety’s Asia bureau chief Patrick Frater reports. Despite the kudos and tourism dollars delivered by producing…

Glasgow-Based MOY Pop Star in Waiting

Glasgow-Based MOY Pop Star in Waiting

“With only two live shows and two singles behind him, MOY, 23, is already showing signs that he’s a real contender,” Scottish Sun music journalist Jim Gellatly writes. “The New Zealander from Auckland was…

Black Grace Thrill in New York

Black Grace Thrill in New York

New Zealand contemporary dance company Black Grace wowed New York Times’ dance critic Brian Seibert during its debut season at the Joyce Theater with “an exhilarating, seemingly inexhaustible energy.” Seibert lauded the “unaffected style…

Martin Campbell’s Edge of Darkness Remastered

Martin Campbell’s Edge of Darkness Remastered

Celebrated television noir Edge of Darkness propelled New Zealand-born director Martin Campbell into the Hollywood big time. In a story featured on the UK’s Radio Times web page, Campbell, 76, talks about his “terrific”…

Singer Jamie McDell Celebrates Her Own Perspective

Singer Jamie McDell Celebrates Her Own Perspective

New Zealand alt-country guitarist and singer-songwriter Jamie McDell, 26, has just released her introspective Botox EP. Music magazine Billboard reports on the set and how it all came about. McDell enchants with airy vocals…

Media Man David Robie Discovers Another Iran

Media Man David Robie Discovers Another Iran

New Zealand author, journalist, media educator and retired university professor David Robie believes that Iran is a hugely friendly country despite propagandas by Western media, the Tehran Times reports. Robie spent several weeks travelling in…

Below Deck with Chef Kevin Dobson

Below Deck with Chef Kevin Dobson

The seventh season of American reality television series Below Deck is underway, and with it, a new cast to stir up drama at sea including New Zealand chef, Kevin Dobson. According to Bustle reporter Lia…

Satire Jojo Rabbit At Its Best Mocking Nazis

Satire Jojo Rabbit At Its Best Mocking Nazis

Taika Waititi’s latest movie, Jojo Rabbit is reviewed by film critic Kenneth Turan for the Los Angeles Times after its star-studded premiere in LA recently. “Unlikely though it sounds, we have a need to laugh…

Lynley Dodd Reveals Secret of Hairy Maclary

Lynley Dodd Reveals Secret of Hairy Maclary

The influence of Jane Austen on Hairy Maclary From Donaldson’s Dairy may not be immediately apparent, but it’s there. At least that’s what New Zealander Lynley Dodd said at the opening of the The…

Fiac Art Fair’s Jennifer Flay on Challenges Ahead

Fiac Art Fair’s Jennifer Flay on Challenges Ahead

New Zealand-born Jennifer Flay, the director of Fiac (Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain), insists that France’s most important modern and contemporary art fair can weather future storms, Gareth Harris reports for the Financial Times. The…

New York Times Reviews Fiona Kidman Novel

New York Times Reviews Fiona Kidman Novel

“One December night in 1955, a 20-year-old Irish immigrant named Albert Black, wearing heavy boots to make his hanging snap, shuffled to the gallows of a dark prison in Auckland. He’d stabbed and killed…

Annabel Liddell Happy to Mix Medicine and Music

Annabel Liddell Happy to Mix Medicine and Music

New Zealander Annabel Liddell, 25, recently completed six years of medical study in Auckland and will graduate in November, but she’s held off on a job offer and is deferring registration, which requires her…

Welsh Appointment for Conductor Tianyi Lu

Welsh Appointment for Conductor Tianyi Lu

Welsh National Opera (WNO) recently announced New Zealander Tianyi Lu as its first female conductor in residence. The residency was launched to help re-address the gender balance across the industry, following WNO’s ‘Where Are All…

New Penguins Book by Lloyd Spencer Davis Published

New Penguins Book by Lloyd Spencer Davis Published

Napier-born Lloyd Spencer Davis is an award-winning scientist with many Antarctic field seasons behind him, Sara Wheeler writes for The Wall Street Journal. Wheeler reviews Davis’ new book, A Polar Affair: Antarctica’s Forgotten Hero…

David Howell-Designed NY Homes Snapped Up

David Howell-Designed NY Homes Snapped Up

A boutique new apartment complex in New York, designed by New Zealand-born David Howell of DHD Architecture and Design, has sold out in less than ten months, according to a report featured on the…

Joseph Michael Lights Up UN with Climate Messages

Joseph Michael Lights Up UN with Climate Messages

Auckland University of Technology artist in residence Joseph Michael lit the United Nations headquarters in New York last week with an immersive installation that featured images of an iceberg and the messages of six young…

Artist Yuki Kihara to Present NZ in Venice 2021

Artist Yuki Kihara to Present NZ in Venice 2021

Though this year’s Venice Biennale still has two months left in its run, some nations, like New Zealand, are already gearing up for the participation in the next iteration, set to open in summer…

New Zealand Filmmakers Showcase Local Perspectives

New Zealand Filmmakers Showcase Local Perspectives

Years of big-budget location shoots have given rise to a thriving New Zealand film and television sector. Hollywood Reporter correspondent Patrick Brzeski examines how a “happy confluence of preparation and opportunity is giving New…

Linda Collins Writes of Losing Her Daughter

Linda Collins Writes of Losing Her Daughter

Singapore-based New Zealander Linda Collins wrote Loss Adjustment, about the suicide of her 17-year-old daughter, as part of a Master of Arts in Creative Writing at the prestigious International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML)…

Aaradhna’s India Tour Was a Soul-Searching Trip

Aaradhna’s India Tour Was a Soul-Searching Trip

With four successful albums to her credit and glowing reviews around the world, award-winning singer Aaradhna, 35, who grew up in Porirua, was recently on a tour of India. Here’s what the ‘Brown Girl’…

Filmmaker Daniel Borgman Busy in Light and Shadow

Filmmaker Daniel Borgman Busy in Light and Shadow

Dunedin-born filmmaker Daniel Borgman, 31, whose latest film Resin world has premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in the Contemporary World Cinema section, is now developing “a pair of high-concept projects”: the crime…

Taika Waititi Takes on a Decidedly Risky Role

Taika Waititi Takes on a Decidedly Risky Role

After years of trying to get the film off the ground, New Zealander Taika Waititi, director of Thor: Ragnarok, finally convinced Fox Searchlight to roll the dice on a comedy set in Nazi Germany…

Dance Queen Parris Goebel Curates for UAE Expo

Dance Queen Parris Goebel Curates for UAE Expo

Celebrity choreographer Parris Goebel, 27, has been appointed head curator of the entertainment and cultural programme for the New Zealand pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai and will manage a series of events to be…

Petra Leary Captures Views of Daily Geometry

Petra Leary Captures Views of Daily Geometry

“Petra Leary sees the world from above. She skates around cities, focusing her lens on becoming the world’s top aerial photographer. The 28-year-old New Zealander is the subject of a newly released Loading Docs…

Poet Selena Tusitala Marsh Rails Against Racism

Poet Selena Tusitala Marsh Rails Against Racism

She blows in like a song carried on a powerful current: a wild-haired woman, larger than life, carrying a tall carved stick. She loses things in that hair, she says; finds pens in there…

Anna Paquin Talks about Breaking Oscar Protocol

Anna Paquin Talks about Breaking Oscar Protocol

New Zealand-raised actor Anna Paquin, 37, who stars alongside Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Martin Scorcese’s The Irishman, talks to The Guardian about breaking Oscar protocol, loving film-set pranks, and being a…

Upper Hutt Performer Jason Henderson NY-Bound

Upper Hutt Performer Jason Henderson NY-Bound

Upper Hutt singer Jason Henderson, 30, is heading to New York City to spend two years studying acting at the Neighbourhood Playhouse School of Theatre, where he will follow in the footsteps of Robert…

Annaleese Jochems’s Debut Novel Alive and Squirming

Annaleese Jochems’s Debut Novel Alive and Squirming

“Cynthia, the simpering, scheming, covetous emotional sinkhole of New Zealander Annaleese Jochems’ assured debut novel, Baby, is alive and squirming; a memorable addition to the growing coterie of unapologetic antiheroines (dis)gracing the pages of…

Inaugural Toronto Film Fest Award Goes to Taika

Inaugural Toronto Film Fest Award Goes to Taika

The Jojo Rabbit and Thor: Ragnarok filmmaker, Taika Waititi, will receive Toronto Film Festival’s (TIFF) first-ever Ebert Director Award, which will be handed out on 9 September at the inaugural TIFF Tribute Gala, reports…

Performance Artist Alicia Frankovich Set to Work

Performance Artist Alicia Frankovich Set to Work

Alicia Frankovich suspects that the activities we undertake as children can determine the shape of our adult selves, Neha Kale writes for The Sydney Morning Herald. When Frankovich, 38, who’s among the most respected…

Investigative Role for Lucy Lawless

Investigative Role for Lucy Lawless

In My Life Is Murder, a “delightful new detective show”, New Zealand actor Lucy Lawless plays Alexa Crowe, a former police investigator “half-reluctantly drawn back to work as an unofficial consultant on deaths the…

Thomasin McKenzie Chats to Vanity Fair

Thomasin McKenzie Chats to Vanity Fair

New Zealander Thomasin McKenzie, 19, made a name for herself in indie stunner Leave No Trace, Britt Hennemuth writes for US magazine, Vanity Fair. Now she’s taking winning turns in Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit…

Power Inclusion Summit Attracts More Big Film Names

Power Inclusion Summit Attracts More Big Film Names

Award-winning writer-director Jackie van Beek joins fellow New Zealanders Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Mulan director Niki Caro at the two-day Power of Inclusion Summit in Auckland on 3-4 October. According to The Hollywood…

Cellist Richard Belcher Appointed in Minnesota

Cellist Richard Belcher Appointed in Minnesota

New Zealander Richard Belcher, founding cellist of Grammy-nominated Enso String Quartet, has been appointed to The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) in Minnesota, the Violin Channel reports. A graduate of Yale University, where he studied…

Artist’s Black Finch Project Aims to Stop Mine

Artist’s Black Finch Project Aims to Stop Mine

Queenstown-born visual artist and writer Charlotte Watson is the instigator of the Black Finch Project, for which more than 1400 artworks featuring the endangered black-throated finch have been sent to Australian politicians in protest…

Rose Matafeo’s Comedic Rise to the BBC

Rose Matafeo’s Comedic Rise to the BBC

New Zealand stand-up Rose Matafeo, 27, talks on-stage confidence, teen crushes and writing her own BBC sitcom with Alice Jones, a journalist for UK newspaper, i. It is almost a year since Matafeo won the…