Tag Archives: Sundance Film Festival

How Xena Became Sundance’s Hottest Director

How Xena Became Sundance’s Hottest Director

The former Warrior Princess, New Zealander Lucy Lawless, tells Daily Beast’s Obsessed about her unlikely journey to directing the documentary Never Look Away, about fellow New Zealander, intrepid war correspondent, Margaret Moth. Moth spent years…

David Farrier’s Doco Tickled a Hit with Critics

David Farrier’s Doco Tickled a Hit with Critics

New investigative documentary, the “engrossing” Tickled, co-directed by New Zealanders David Farrier and Dylan Reeve, has received rave reviews from critics and punters after its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Farrier and Dylan Reeve’s…

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is Perfectly Balanced

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is Perfectly Balanced

Taika Waititi’s film adaptation of Barry Crump’s Wild Pork and Watercress, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, is a “deliciously good time at the movies,” according to…

Sundance Welcomes Taika Waititi’s Latest

Sundance Welcomes Taika Waititi’s Latest

Taika Waititi’s new film Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a dramatisation of Barry Crump’s 1986 novel, Wild Pork and Watercress, has premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Boy director Waititi returns with the road comedy…

Slow West – Actors Discuss the New Western

Slow West – Actors Discuss the New Western

Actors Kodi-Smit McPhee and Ben Mendelsohn discuss their new movie Slow West which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Sundance Institute’s World Cinema Jury Prize for Drama,…

Frontier Comes To Life In New Zealand With Slow West

Frontier Comes To Life In New Zealand With Slow West

Slow West’ first trailer has been released – an indie western which was filmed in New Zealand, which doubled for the wilderness of Colorado, and which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film…

Jemaine Clement Stars as Israeli Fixer Opposite Sam Rockwell

Jemaine Clement Stars as Israeli Fixer Opposite Sam Rockwell

The Utah filmmakers who begat Napoleon Dynamite made a triumphant return to the Sundance Film Festival with New Zealand actor Jemaine Clement playing opposite American funnyman Sam Rockwell in Don Verdean, a movie about…

Taika Waititi Pens Disney Animation Film Moana

Taika Waititi Pens Disney Animation Film Moana

Disney’s 56th animated film Moana has magic written all over it, according to the Latin Post and New Zealand writer and director Taika Waititi has a hand in it. The film is the studio’s…

Filmmaker Taika Waititi Flourishing out of the Mainstream

Filmmaker Taika Waititi Flourishing out of the Mainstream

He’s best known as the Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind hits like Flight Of The Conchords and New Zealand’s highest-ever grossing film Boy. But Taika Waititi had a brush with mainstream Hollywood fame when he starred alongside…

Jemaine Clement at 2014 Sundance Film Festival

Jemaine Clement at 2014 Sundance Film Festival

A Drink With.com interviews Jemaine Clement on the premiere of ‘What We Do In The Shadows’ at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. The Sundance Film Festival is an American…

Season’s Greetings from the Sundance Film Festival

Season’s Greetings from the Sundance Film Festival

New Zealand actress Melanie Lynskey and Up in the Air award-winner Anna Kendrick star in Joe Swanberg’s latest low-budget feature, Happy Christmas, which made its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival on in…

Waititi’s Vampire: Mind the Furnishings!

Waititi’s Vampire: Mind the Furnishings!

Acclaimed New Zealand auteurs Taika Waititi and Jermaine Clement are garnering rave reviews for their vampire mockumentary, What We Do In The Shadows, which has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, America’s finest showcase…

Wellington Vampires Tell Their Story at Sundance

Wellington Vampires Tell Their Story at Sundance

New Zealand horror comedy film, the Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement-directed What We Do in the Shadows, will make its world premiere on 19 January in the Midnight section at the Sundance Film…

New Zealand’s Answer to The Killing

New Zealand’s Answer to The Killing

Jane Campion’s television series Top of the Lake, “set in the staggeringly beautiful landscape of the South Island”, has been called New Zealand’s answer to The Killing. Obstreperous and tunnel-visioned, detective Robin Griffin has…

NZ Film Brings Home the Prize

NZ Film Brings Home the Prize

The New Zealand film Shopping, by directors Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland, has won The Grand Prix of the Generation 14plus for best feature film at the Berlin Film Festival.  ‘An extremely compelling first…

Discerning Types

Discerning Types

Melanie Lynskey, 35, is one of ten Indie actors on the verge of mainstream, according to Loren DiBlasi writing for Highbrow Magazine. “In 1994, the New Zealand native won raves for her performance alongside…

Now at Centre Stage

Now at Centre Stage

The other half of the Heavenly Creatures duo, Melanie Lynskey, 35, has been working consistently in Los Angeles for a decade. Lynskey is perhaps most well-known in America for having appeared in more than…

Documenting Innocence

Documenting Innocence

Director Peter Jackson believes former Death Row inmate Damien Echols would be dead now if not for 1996 documentary, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, that cast doubt on the man’s guilt…

Campion Directs Madmen Star

Campion Directs Madmen Star

Wellington-born film director Jane Campion has written and will direct a Sundance Channel seven-part miniseries starring Madmen actress Elisabeth Moss, called Top of the Lake. Campion wrote the script with Gerard Lee of Sweetie…

Boy to Play US Cinemas

Boy to Play US Cinemas

The American distribution rights to Taika Waititi’s Boy, which had its world premiere at the 21 Sundance Film Festival, have been acquired by indie outfit Paladin. Since playing at the Sundance, Berlin…

Two shorts for Sundance

Two shorts for Sundance

Two New Zealand short films have been selected for the 27th Sundance Film Festival which runs from January 2 to 3. Both short films are part of a group of seven to be selected…

Tamahori’s double

Tamahori’s double

Director Lee Tamahori’s latest film The Devil’s Double, a story about the body double for Saddam Hussein’s eldest son, will premiere at next year’s Sundance Film Festival. Tamahori, 6, best known for the 1994…

Short film revolution

Short film revolution

“Could 2010 be the year that New Zealand short filmmakers take over the world?” asks Indie Wire’s Kim Adelman. “The year began promisingly as Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland’s The Six Dollar Fifty Man…

East Coast boy in Utah

East Coast boy in Utah

Director Taika Waititi’s film Boy, which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, “marks a step up in maturity” and “elaborates on a style that primarily belongs to his own unique universe, according…

Stellar win for Brettkelly

Stellar win for Brettkelly

Auckland documentary-maker Pietra Brettkelly has won Best Documentary Award for Art Star and the Sudanese Twins at the 2008 Whistler Film Festival. The jury was quoted as saying, “This is a film that…

Fraser’s film premiere

Fraser’s film premiere

New Zealand film director Toa Fraser’s latest feature, Dean Spanley, is to have its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on September 6. The film is part of the ‘gala programme’ which is…

First NZ doco selected for Sundance

First NZ doco selected for Sundance

A NZ documentary has won a place at the Sundance Film Festival for the first time. The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins by Auckland filmmaker Pietra Brettkelly will compete in the World…

No.2 No.1

No.2 No.1

Toa Fraser’s debut feature No.2 won the World Cinema Audience Award: Dramatic at the 25th Sundance Film Festival in February. ” a humble backyard in Mt. Roskill in the Pacific, on behalf of…

All Features Great and Small

All Features Great and Small

Debate over the effects of big budget US films such as King Kong and the Narnia series being filmed in NZ continues, with most in favour of the Hollywood blockbusters. “The blockbusters have been…

Mt Roskill meets Utah… and the world

Mt Roskill meets Utah… and the world

No.2, the debut feature film by playwright Toa Fraser, has been selected for competition at Sundance 26. Based on his award winning play of the same name, No.2 stars a mixture of international and local actors…

Two Cars, too beautiful

Two Cars, too beautiful

Two Cars, One Night by Taika Waititi was named Best Short Film at Germany’s prestigious Berlinale festival. The film, which also showed at Sundance 2003, explores the relationship which develops between two children…

Crowd Pleaser

Crowd Pleaser

Niki Caro’s Whale Rider continues to charm international viewers, receiving audience awards at both Sundance and Rotterdam. Caro: “As far as I understand, no one’s won at both Toronto and Sundance in the same year…

Sundance Spot For Whale Rider

Sundance Spot For Whale Rider

Fresh from an award-winning stint in Toronto, Niki Caro’s Whale Rider is to feature at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. Other entrants in the World Cinema category include Bend It Like Beckham and the latest Dogme instalment,…

Raining at Sundance

Raining at Sundance

Christina Jeff’s evocative feature Rain screens at the Sundance Film Festival with Merata Mita’s portrait of painter Ralph Hotere, Hotere, and short bursts of edge cinema in Adam Steven’s Beautiful, Tainui Stephen’s…

Cultural resonance

Cultural resonance

”Everything I saw in this film I see in my own country,” says Maori Jillian White, speaking of Native Canadian films screened at Canada’s Sundance festival.

Moko on Film

Moko on Film

Jillian White’s Moko, a short documentary featuring the first contemporary man to wear moko, included in Sundance 2001. Felicity Morgan-Rhind’s short Donuts for Breakfast, is also on the programme.

Jane Campion is a model profile of a working artist

Jane Campion is a model profile of a working artist

Anthropologist, artist, and award winner, internationally acclaimed New Zealand director exercises an organic approach to her craft …