Oscar Number Two for Best Director Jane Campion
Jane Campion has won her second best director Oscar, the first woman to be nominated twice for the directing prize, after also landing a nod for her 1993 film The Piano, Laura Harding reports…
Tag Archives: Jane Campion
Vanity Fair Cover For Director Jane Campion
A decade ago, she almost walked away from movies. Now, New Zealander Jane Campion is the only woman ever nominated twice for an Oscar best director thanks to The Power of the Dog. Campion…
In Awards Month Jane Campion Profiled
Ahead of the Baftas and Oscar ceremonies later this month, New Zealand film director Jane Campion and her director of photography, Australian Ari Wegner, discuss their nominations, filming through the pandemic – and what…
Jane Campion Tops Oscar Nominations
Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog has received 12 Oscar nominations, the most of any film this year. Amongst the categories, the New Zealander’s film was nominated for director, adapted screenplay and best…
The Power of the Dog Among Worthy Globe Winners
Jane Campion’s “handsome, complex and brilliant” western The Power of the Dog won best picture (drama) and best director at this year’s Golden Globes, along with best supporting actor for “the excellent” Kodi Smit-McPhee,…
Dreaming up 1925 Montana with Grant Major
Oscar-winning Palmerston North-born production designer Grant Major has transitioned from The Lord of the Rings to the wilds of 1925 Montana for The Power of the Dog, director Jane Campion’s acclaimed western drama that,…
On the Stunning Visuals in The Power of the Dog
“The incredible natural landscapes of The Power of the Dog provide an unsettlingly beautiful backdrop to Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog. Nary a frame in Western tragedy, shot by fast-rising cinematographer…
Turning New Zealand into 1925 Montana
The Power of the Dog’s production designer Grant Major built the film’s ranch from the ground up on location in Jane Campion’s native New Zealand, which, thanks to its remoteness, was perhaps more convincing…
Jane Campion Graces New York Times Magazine
“It has gotten easier over the years to feel comfortable with what work means to the world,” Jordan Kisner writes in a feature published in the New York Times Magazine. “She pulled…
Film-Making Set Jane Campion Free
New Zealand’s “trailblazing director” Jane Campion speaks to The Guardian’s Sean O’Hagan about how the #MeToo movement inspired her first feature in more than a decade, “revisionist western”, The Power of the Dog. That it…
Film Pioneer Jane Campion Still Ahead of Her Time
“When French filmmaker Julia Ducournau took the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year for Titane, her wild explosion of body horror and gender politics, Jane Campion’s status in film history shifted slightly: no longer…
Giant of Cinema Jane Campion Wins in Venice
New Zealand’s Jane Campion has “underlined her status as one of the leading film-makers of her generation, taking home the best director trophy at the Venice Film Festival”, AFP reports. The Power of the Dog,…
Jane Campion Returns to Film with Locally-Shot Western The Power of the Dog
The Power of the Dog marks a homecoming for Wellington-born Oscar winner Jane Campion – with a career-first twist, David Canfield reports for Vanity Fair. Campion’s last feature was the 2009 romantic drama Bright Star; she…
How Our Film Industry Boomed During the Pandemic
Thanks to its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, New Zealand is enjoying an unprecedented boom in film production, with directors seeking safe conditions, and that most elusive thing this year – a normal life,…
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…
Jane Campion Casts Cumberbatch and Moss
After a decade of being absent from the big screen, Academy Award-winner New Zealander Jane Campion is readying her first feature since 2009’s Bright Star. Campion will next direct her own adaptation of Thomas…
Jane Campion’s the Piano Still Hits All The Right Notes
“Rereleased after 25 years, this literary work about a mute woman in 19th-century New Zealand remains full of extraordinary images and enigmas,” writes Peter Bradshaw in a review in The…
Jane Campion on Why She Went Back to the Lake
Top Of The Lake: China Girl’s Jane Campion talks to film magazine Screen Daily about the importance of telling stories from a female point of view. “Motherhood is a very underwritten topic, especially in those…
Jane Campion Rewatches Her Own Classic
One of the world’s most unconventional filmmakers, New Zealander Jane Campion talks with The Guardian about the end of the patriarchy, doing away with decorum, and how losing her baby son changed her forever. Twenty-five…
Top of the Lake Creators Get Together for a Laugh
The team behind Top of the Lake: China Girl plunges into prostitution, illegal surrogacy, motherhood – and humour. New Zealander Jane Campion and Australian collaborators co-creator Gerard Lee and co-director Ariel Kleiman discuss the show in…
New Zealand Contingent Screenwriting Pioneers
“To make a good film,” Alfred Hitchcock once said, “you need three things: the script, the script, and the script.” Yet while it’s easy to find (and argue over) lists of the greatest films…
Jane Campion’s Real Life Motherhood Plot
Amidst Top of the Lake: China Girl’s central thematic story lines related to motherhood – Mary’s relationship with Julia grows tense as she gets to know Robin – there was a real-life motherhood “plot”…
Jane Campion on Her Ovarian Series
The legality of prostitution and commercial surrogacy, the exploitation of women involved in both – in the end, Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake: China Girl explored those issues more than it explored the…
Reasons Behind the China Girl in Top of the Lake
There’s certainly a great deal of thematic resonance in the first series of Top of the Lake and this one, beginning with women immersed in a body of water, a narrative of pregnancy secretly…
Small Screen Gives Jane Campion New Space to Shine
In a review of Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake: China Girl, which is currently screening on BBC2 in the UK, the Guardian’s Sam Wollaston says that not only is lead Elisabeth Moss “mesmerising,…
Jane Campion is a Clever Person Doing TV
From Sweetie to The Piano, New Zealander Jane Campion has made some of cinema’s strangest, strongest films. So why has she switched to the small screen? The Guardian investigates. It is eight years since Campion,…
Jane Campion on Inspiration Behind New TOTL Series
Fans of the critically acclaimed crime drama Top of the Lake will be eagerly awaiting its return at the end of this month – but writer New Zealand-born Jane Campion admits to the Observer…
Jane Campion’s China Girl is Unforgettable
“Is it a movie? Is it a TV show? Whatever you call it, Jane Campion’s latest is as beautiful and soul-stirring as anything you’ll see this year,” David Ehrlich writes in a “grade A”…
Jane Campion Says Cannes Needs All-Female Juries
New Zealander Jane Campion, 63, has just shown the full six hours of her new series, Top Of The Lake: China Girl to audiences at Cannes. At the festival, Campion bemoaned that, just three…
Top of the Lake Season Two More Accessible
Critics loved Top of the Lake, New Zealander Jane Campion’s dark crime drama, starring Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss as Robin Griffin, the police detective tasked with finding out why a…
Ambition Got Niki Caro to Where She Is Today
Picturing yourself as a successful movie director – then getting there – is notoriously tough for a woman in the United States, the epicentre of the movie industry. For a young woman in New…
Top of the Lake – Series With Star Location
“Across the globe and across generations”, there are stories with “settings as important as any character with dialogue,” according to an article in IndieWire. New Zealand’s Top of the Lake is one…
Stunning NZ Films You Should Know About
“New Zealand certainly brings a fair few ‘bests’ to the table. Aside from being one of the most beautiful countries in the world, responsible for some of the greatest exploratory and scientific minds,…
Top of the Lake Two Never Meant to Be Says Campion
New Zealand-born director Jane Campion has said she never expected to be working on Top Of The Lake again and that she was surprised by the success of the original 2013 BBC miniseries that…
Shanghai to Host Kiwi Film Festival
The 2016 New Zealand Film Festival will be hosted in Shanghai from April 21 to 30. 7 recent productions, which cover a wide range of genre and styles including biopic, romantic comedy and suspense,…
Game of Thrones Star Joins Top of the Lake
Gwendoline Christie, who plays popular Game of Thrones character Brienne of Tarth, will join Mad Men star Elisabeth Moss in a new season of the much-praised Jane Campion TV show Top of the Lake,…
Re-Examining The Piano’s Kinky Music Lessons
“Films about mute piano players embroiled in erotic love triangles never did become a burgeoning genre. Perhaps that’s because it’s virtually impossible to imagine another equalling writer/director Jane Campion’s 1993 magnum opus: an extraordinarily…
Top of the Lake Season 2 to Start Filming This Spring
“It’s been almost three years since Top of the Lake first aired and it’s still hard to shake the series’ sense of creeping dread”, writes Jacob Stolworthy in an article on The Independent. Lead actress…
Jane Campion One of Cinema’s Most Powerful Women
“From Golden Age trailblazers to modern-day ass-kickers,” the Telegraph introduces its readers to Hollywood’s 34 “most influential, inventive and important women,” including our very own Jane Campion. A director, writer and producer, Campion is best…
Jane Campion Casts Gaze over Female-Directed Films
Jane Campion contributes to a Sight & Sound magazine special issue, which aims “to write women back into film history by championing 100 female-directed hidden gems that have been forgotten or unfairly overlooked.” “Just because…
Kerry Fox Tutors Directors on Actors in Melbourne
New Zealand actor Kerry Fox, who stars in Australian film Downriver, which premieres at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), also gave a masterclass at the event with the film’s writer/director Grant Scicluna about the…
Jane Campion’s Daughter Acting up
As the child of New Zealand-born director Jane Campion and Australian filmmaker Colin Englert, Alice Englert – who stars in the BBC’s magician drama Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell – grew up immersed in…
Terrific Top of the Lake Returns to Screens
“Last year came the exciting news that Top Of The Lake, Jane Campion’s terrific TV series, wouldn’t just be a one-off, but would return for a new round of episodes,” Indiewire reports. “Details were…
Jane Campion’s Sweetie a Beautifully Strange Debut
Writer-director Jane Campion’s “mysterious visual style was showcased” in her 1989 film debut Sweetie, a “left field story about the love-hate relationship between two sisters,” the Guardian’s Luke Buckmaster writes. “Campion has made a career…
Lorde Expressing Existential Emotions Beyond Her Years
Lorde “comes from a land of pioneering women with sometimes perverse perspectives, from the writers Katherine Mansfield and Keri Hulme to the filmmaker Jane Campion,” Los Angeles Magazine contributor Evelyn McDonnell writes in a…
Lucy Lawless to Star in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D
Former Xena: Warrior Princess Lucy Lawless, 46, will join the cast of American television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D in an unspecified role later this year. According to TV Line, the show is looking to fill…
Revisiting Jane Campion’s Haunting Classic The Piano
The New Zealand-born director Jane Campion won the 1986 short film Palme d’Or at Cannes with her nine-minute Peel, shared the Palme d’Or for The Piano (with Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine) in 1993,…
Miranda July Reads Janet Frame on Podcast
On this month’s New Yorker fiction podcast, American actress and filmmaker Miranda July reads Janet Frame’s short story “Prizes,” which was published in the magazine in 1962. July, whose fiction and essays have been appearing…
Director Firmly Back in the Game
As Jane Campion returns to the Riviera chairing the jury at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the Palm d’Or-winning filmmaker tells the Guardian’s Andrew Pulver about surviving as a woman director. Campion was the first…
Cannes Is a Mythical and Exciting Place, Says Campion
Head of this year’s Cannes jury, Wellington-born director Jane Campion made her name portraying complex, strong-willed female protagonists and knows from first-hand experience that the festival is a place where careers are made. Campion, the…
Short Western to Screen in Cannes
A 15-minute film by Aucklanders Luke Thornborough and Lisa Fothergill, called Jess, will screen at Cannes International Film Festival in the Short Film Corner of the event, in May. Its makers are trying…
World’s First Flower Vending Machine Opens in London Tube Station
New Zealand-born film production designer Andrew McAlpine has launched Rockflower, the world’s first flower retail and vending kiosk on the forecourt of London’s Blackfriars Underground station. Trading has been going very well so far, says Rockflower founder and…
You Don’t Say No to a Director like Campion
The fact that Jane Campion’s drama Top of the Lake has been so well received only makes sense to American actress Holly Hunter, who played feminist seer GJ in the award-winning series. “It’s been energising…
Campion to Preside over Cannes Jury
New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion will preside over the jury of the 67th Cannes Film Festival, succeeding last year’s president Steven Spielberg. This year’s festival takes place 14-25 May. Campion is the only female director…
Kiwi Women Lead Cultural Renaissance
Once upon a time New Zealand cultural values were based on the unholy trinity of rugby, racing and beer. Then the marketing concepts – clean and green; 100% Pure – were added to the…
She’s a Huge Fan of Her Mother Jane Campion
Alice Englert, the actor and daughter of New Zealand screenwriter, producer and director Jane Campion, talks choosing passion over cash and whether her mum makes sexy films with the Guardian’s Alex Godfrey. She’s only 19…
