News of New Zealanders via Global Media

The Breaker Upperers a Netflix Smash Hit

The Breaker Upperers a Netflix Smash Hit

For New Zealander comedy collaborators Madeleine Sami and Jackie Van Beek, it all started with an idea, a friendship, and one magical ingredient: Celine Dion. Los Angeles Times correspondent Jen Yamoto investigates. Van Beek was…

PRINS on Visual Side of Music & Her New Single ‘Notion’

PRINS on Visual Side of Music & Her New Single ‘Notion’

“Fresh off the release of her incredible new single Notion,” music magazine Happy “caught up with New Zealand-based artist PRINS for a chat.” When asked how it feels to have

Living the Change Inspired by Sustainable Stories

Living the Change Inspired by Sustainable Stories

Sometimes focusing on the ecological and environmental problems facing the world is overwhelming – so why not put the spotlight on the solutions instead? That was the aim of Christchurch-raised filmmaker Antoinette Wilson and…

Danielle Cormack’s Political Role in Secret City

Danielle Cormack’s Political Role in Secret City

New Zealand-born actor Danielle Cormack (pictured left) seems passionate about politics. She was in the Australian capital recently talking to the Canberra Times about the second series of Secret City: Under the Eagle, which…

Krispy and the Pooch Unveil Irresistible New EP

Krispy and the Pooch Unveil Irresistible New EP

“What do you expect from a band named Krispy & The Pooch? Approaching their music, we weren’t too sure,” Sydney music site, Happy reports. “With their wild band name and even wilder cover art,…

What We Do in the Shadows on TV and Note-Perfect

What We Do in the Shadows on TV and Note-Perfect

Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s TV reboot of their vampiric comedy, What We Do in the Shadows is “wonderfully, absurdly over-the-top and hilarious”, according to Hollywood Reporter reviewer Tim Goodman. “There is a point early…

Meet The Kiwi Whose Blog Went Big In Japan

Meet The Kiwi Whose Blog Went Big In Japan

“In 2011, two expats in Tokyo started a blog about making the most of Japan’s capital on a budget. Tokyo Cheapo is now one of the most popular English-language websites…

Architect Megan Wraight Collaborates in NSW

Architect Megan Wraight Collaborates in NSW

In a collaboration with Melbourne’s Kerstin Thompson Architects (KTA), New Zealander Megan Wraight (pictured right), principal at Wellington-based Wraight + Associates, is designing a major expansion of Australian artist Arthur Boyd’s Riverdale site in…

Artist Richard Lewer’s Sydney Show an Adventure

Artist Richard Lewer’s Sydney Show an Adventure

Richard Lewer “is a New Zealand-born artist with an understanding of history and a sense of compassion”, John McDonald writes for The Sydney Morning Herald in an article about Lewer’s current exhibition, which is…

Taika Waititi to Direct ‘Time Bandits’ Series

Taika Waititi to Direct ‘Time Bandits’ Series

The “Thor: Ragnarok” director is set to helm Apple’s TV adaptation of Terry Gilliam’s 1981 fantasy flick Time Bandits, which is currently in development,” writes Bill Thorne in an article for Variety. “The…

Paintings from Sir Edmund Hillary’s Everest Climb Found

Paintings from Sir Edmund Hillary’s Everest Climb Found

“Never-before-seen paintings from Sir Edmund Hillary’s record-breaking expedition to Mount Everest have been found in a house clearance 66 years later.” Darren Boyle reports in an article for The Daily…

Rose Matafeo to Star in Taika Waititi Exec Produced ‘Baby, Done’

Rose Matafeo to Star in Taika Waititi Exec Produced ‘Baby, Done’

New Zealand comedian Rose Matafeo will star alongside Harry Potter star Matthew Lewis in feature comedy Baby, Done, which is exec produced by Taika Waititi. The film is directed by Curtis Vowell (Fantail). Nancy…

Jess Cornelius’ Sudsy Self-Reckoning on Display

Jess Cornelius’ Sudsy Self-Reckoning on Display

In recent years, self-care culture has exploded beyond simple millennial infatuation; the term, which refers to the conscious integration of health and wellness practices into daily life, is equal parts lifestyle manifesto and multi-billion…

In Conversation with the Band Yak

In Conversation with the Band Yak

One of “the most exciting acts around both on stage and on record” is called Yak, according to music site, The 405. Together the Wolverhampton-formed trio, including New Zealand-born drummer Elliot Rawson (pictured centre), talk…

Max Gimblett Reflects On a Life of Love, Art And Freedom

Max Gimblett Reflects On a Life of Love, Art And Freedom

“Internationally renowned New Zealand painter Max Gimblett credits his wife as his greatest supporter, and his leading critic.” Warren Feeney reports for Stuff. “Born in Auckland in 1935 and based in New York since…

Cliff Curtis Set to Soar in Avatar Epics

Cliff Curtis Set to Soar in Avatar Epics

New Zealand actor Cliff Curtis, 50, modestly acknowledges he is not a brand or a marquee name, despite a vast body of work which includes Once Were Warriors, Whale Rider, The Dark Horse, Blow,…

Colenso BBDO Auckland One of 2019 Contagious Pioneers

Colenso BBDO Auckland One of 2019 Contagious Pioneers

Colenso BBDO, Auckland have been featured as number one 2019 Contagious Pioneers in a ranking published by creative and strategic intelligence service website Contagious. Their Te Kupu App campaign was…

Storyteller Anthony McCarten Humanises the Iconic

Storyteller Anthony McCarten Humanises the Iconic

An “exploration of humanity” drives novelist, playwright, television writer, and filmmaker New Plymouth-born Anthony McCarten to write about famous people. Initially a journalist, McCarten credits his time in the newsroom for learning how structure and…

Merata Mita Doco Reviewed by The Hollywood Reporter

Merata Mita Doco Reviewed by The Hollywood Reporter

The legacy and personal life of the late New Zealand filmmaker Merata Mita are brought to life in the documentary Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen. The film, which had its international premiere at…

John Scott’s Werry/Francis Houses Make New Book

John Scott’s Werry/Francis Houses Make New Book

The sunlit spaces of a mid-century modern family home in Greytown, designed by the late architect John Scott, are captured in images by photographer Mary Gaudin. Gaudin, a New Zealander who…

Flack Stars First-Rate Cast Including Anna Paquin

Flack Stars First-Rate Cast Including Anna Paquin

“In Flack, Anna Paquin plays Robyn, an American living in London and working in a high-powered PR firm, an outfit just as moral as it needs to be to protect its own…

‘The Changeover’ “a Perfect Genre Movie”

‘The Changeover’ “a Perfect Genre Movie”

The opening weekend of ‘The Changeover’ – the New Zealand film of Margaret Mahy’s beloved, award-winning 1984 young-adult novel by the writer-director team of Miranda Harcourt and Stuart McKenzie, drew rave…

Anna Wilding Gives Different Look at Obama Family In LA Photo Exhibit

Anna Wilding Gives Different Look at Obama Family In LA Photo Exhibit

“For Black History month, The Perfect Exposure Gallery in Alhambra in Los Angeles is giving you a different look at the Obama family. During the Barack Obama’s presidency, photographer Anna…

The Breaker Upperers Adds Some Welcome Irreverence to Netflix Comedies

The Breaker Upperers Adds Some Welcome Irreverence to Netflix Comedies

“The New Zealand comedy The Breaker Upperers adds some welcome irreverence to the homogenized mix of Netflix comedies. This collaboration between Jackie van Beek and Madeleine Sami — who wrote, directed and star together…

Director Taika Waititi Tackles Star Wars

Director Taika Waititi Tackles Star Wars

After directing Thor: Ragnarok, which was a worldwide blockbuster hit, New Zealander Taika Waititi next explores the Star Wars universe and returns to the world of vampires. The multitalented Wellingtonian directs an episode of The…

Spin Slowly, Fighting Gravity

Spin Slowly, Fighting Gravity

Recently published on online art platform Contemporary HUM, arts facilitator and producer Samuel Walsh reflects on his residency at Zaratan – Arte Contemporânea in Lisbon, Portugal. Zaratan, a not-for-profit art space,…

Mark de Clive-Lowe’s New Album Goes Next Level

Mark de Clive-Lowe’s New Album Goes Next Level

“For those who recognise Mark de Clive-Lowe’s name from this or that compilation disc, his new straight-up jazz effort is the most pleasant surprise of the new year. Others who follow the…

Lisa Walker Exhibits Some Uncomfortable Jewellery

Lisa Walker Exhibits Some Uncomfortable Jewellery

World-renowned artist New Zealander Lisa Walker, 52, sees potential in everything, from shoes, Lego and mobile phones, to egg beaters and dead animals. A new show on now at RMIT Design Hub Gallery in…

K-Pop Singer Rosé’s Ballad a YouTube Phenomenon

K-Pop Singer Rosé’s Ballad a YouTube Phenomenon

BLACKPINK Rosé’s special cover of Halsey’s “Eyes Closed”, accrued almost 5.4 million views in just two days. The Auckland-born vocalist, 22, said the clip was meant for her fans and thanked them…

Anna Paquin On Flack & Gender Power Balances in Film

Anna Paquin On Flack & Gender Power Balances in Film

“After five years trying to get it off the ground, filming for Anna Paquin’s new TV series Flack has completed and the series is about to be released. Paquin, who stars in the series…

David Lloyd Awarded Lumix People’s Choice Award

David Lloyd Awarded Lumix People’s Choice Award

“David Lloyd’s Bond of Brothers, a heartwarming image of an affectionate pair of male lions, has been crowned the winner of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Lumix people’s choice award.”

New Tiny Ruins Album Gentle Study in Freedom

New Tiny Ruins Album Gentle Study in Freedom

“After an extended search for inspiration, New Zealand singer/songwriter uses colour and newly adventurous song structures to explore definitions and limits of freedom,” Pitchfork contributor Margaret Farrell writes in…

Graeme Simsion Pens Final Rosie Instalment

Graeme Simsion Pens Final Rosie Instalment

Auckland-born IT consultant-turned-author Graeme Simsion’s mega-successful Rosie books have sold almost five million copies in 40-plus countries since The Rosie Project in 2013. Readers fell in love with genetics professor Don Tillman who developed a…

British Photographer Captures Majesty of NZ

British Photographer Captures Majesty of NZ

Over the past four decades, the Bristol-born photographer Jem Southam has been documenting the English landscape, but for his latest series, The Long White Cloud, the 69-year-old found himself thousands of miles away. The work…

Dames Jools and Lynda Topp Reflect

Dames Jools and Lynda Topp Reflect

Their career spans 40 years and is emblematic of changing attitudes to gay and lesbian people. New Zealand’s Topp Twins, Jools and Lynda, started their lives in entertainment as “underground performers’ with a unique…

Love and Being Female in Comedy with Rose Matafeo

Love and Being Female in Comedy with Rose Matafeo

Rising star Auckland-born Rose Matafeo recently won the prestigious Best Comedy Show Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, one of comedy’s biggest prizes, for her show Horndog. Matafeo, 26, talked to online news site…

They Shall Not Grow Old Highest Grossing Release

They Shall Not Grow Old Highest Grossing Release

Originally presented on 17 and 27 December in the United States, Peter Jackson’s World War I documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old, grossed US$2.6 million in its encore, bringing the total gross for the…

Peter Jackson Making New Beatles Documentary

Peter Jackson Making New Beatles Documentary

Lord of the Rings filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson is making a new documentary on The Beatles using 55 hours of never-before-seen studio footage that was shot in early 1969 for the 1970 feature film…

Why Aaron Stadlin-Robbie’s Podcast is Different

Why Aaron Stadlin-Robbie’s Podcast is Different

A New Zealander raised in Hong Kong, Aaron Stadlin-Robbie sees his new podcast, Talking Mental as a way to reach out to experts and break the stigma of men talking about mental health. Having…

Breaker Upperers Talk to Vanity Fair

Breaker Upperers Talk to Vanity Fair

Even if good friends and creative partners Madeleine Sami, 38, and Jackie van Beek, 43, don’t immediately look familiar to Americans, their new comedy, The Breaker Upperers, will sound immediately recognisable. That’s not because…

Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Picks Up Merata Doco

Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Picks Up Merata Doco

American director Ava DuVernay, of A Wrinkle in Time fame, has acquired the Sundance Film Festival (SFF) documentary MERATA: How Mum Decolonised the Screen. The pick-up by DuVernay’s film collective, ARRAY…

Dunedin Film Crew Gets Their Dream Job

Dunedin Film Crew Gets Their Dream Job

A small team of filmmakers from Natural History New Zealand (NHNZ) has made it their mission to tell the stories of Indonesia’s orphaned orangutans in a new documentary called, Orangutan Jungle School. Cameraman Alex Hubert…

Flight of the Conchords Announce New Album

Flight of the Conchords Announce New Album

New Zealand’s “fourth most popular parody duo” Flight of the Conchords have announced a new live album to follow their 2018 HBO special Flight of the Conchords: Live in London. Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie…

J.P. Pomare’s Debut a Powerful Thriller

J.P. Pomare’s Debut a Powerful Thriller

“Touted as a ‘literary thriller’, a genre classification often used to characterise a book written by an author who does not usually write crime fiction, Call Me Evie might best…

Midcentury Dream Home In New Zealand

Midcentury Dream Home In New Zealand

“In 2015, Tara Morton and Nick Walbridge—both public servants in New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade—were nearing the end of several years in New York when they began looking for a house…

Mrs Krishnan Puts on a Party in Vancouver

Mrs Krishnan Puts on a Party in Vancouver

Mrs Krishnan’s Party is a semi-improvised comic celebration of the southern Indian harvest festival of Onam, brought to Canada’s shores by New Zealand’s Indian Ink Theatre Company. It is reviewed by the Vancouver Sun. “The…

YouTube Picks Its New Zealand Artists to Watch

YouTube Picks Its New Zealand Artists to Watch

As part of YouTube’s ‘Artists to Watch’ 2019 spotlight, the video-sharing website has highlighted 10 acts from New Zealand and Australia which it predicts are going to create tsunamis this year. The line-up includes…

The Tattooist of Auschwitz Translated into Persian

The Tattooist of Auschwitz Translated into Persian

Recently claiming top spot on The New York Times paperback bestseller list, New Zealand author and screenwriter Heather Morris’ historical novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz has now been published in Persian and is available…

Big New Zealand Presence at Berlinale and SXSW

Big New Zealand Presence at Berlinale and SXSW

Ten New Zealand features and shorts including a record number by female directors will screen in official selection at the Berlin International Film Festival in February while two will feature at the SXSW Festival…

Thomasin McKenzie Reflects on Breakout Year

Thomasin McKenzie Reflects on Breakout Year

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, 18-year-old Wellingtonian Thomasin McKenzie reflects on her breakout year (after Debra Granik’s latest film Leave No Trace premiered at Sundance, she shot four other films), frequent comparisons…

Acclaimed DJ Opiuo Returns to Colorado

Acclaimed DJ Opiuo Returns to Colorado

New Zealand-born DJ and producer Oscar Davey-Wraight, who performs as Opiuo, solidified his place in the annals of Colorado music history last April with a groundbreaking and by-all-accounts epic one-night performance with a 20-piece…

More Career Firsts for Conductor Gemma New

More Career Firsts for Conductor Gemma New

New Zealand-born conductor Gemma New is building a resume with lots of little “first-ever” asterisks. Like her months-old appointment as principal guest conductor of the Dallas Symphony beginning in the 2019-20 season. Recently, New…

Looking Forward to Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit

Looking Forward to Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit

“Matthew McConaughey as a stoner poet, Hitler as an imaginary friend and Cats the movie – the third in our five-part look at 2019’s key titles takes us into strange territory,” Guardian film writes. “[Jojo…

Bill Manhire’s Antarctic Poems Spare and Tender

Bill Manhire’s Antarctic Poems Spare and Tender

Ernest Shackleton’s account of his mission and New Zealander Bill Manhire’s Field Notes are among Canadian author Jean McNeil’s favourites about the Antarctic continent. “Antarctica is the fifth largest continent, but it is home to almost…

Art Basel Winner Zac Langdon-Pole Talks to Forbes

Art Basel Winner Zac Langdon-Pole Talks to Forbes

The latest BMW Art Journey is informed by the ancient art of mapping stars. The winner, New Zealand-born artist Zac Langdon-Pole, will take on an adventurous journey, following the path humans and birds have…

Wonky Donkey Makes UK Christmas Bestseller List

Wonky Donkey Makes UK Christmas Bestseller List

The tale of a three-legged donkey has become a surprise Christmas bestseller thanks to a viral video of a grandmother reading it to her grandson. The Wonky Donkey, written by New Zealander Craig Smith,…