MargaretThomson
- Director
The late Margaret Thomson is arguably the first New Zealand woman to have directed films. Thomson spent much of her film career working in England, plus two years back in New Zealand at the National Film Unit. Her NFU short Railway Worker (1948) is regarded as a classic.
Screenography
2010 Research Television
Direction ... Margaret Thomson
1993 Subject Television
War, Peace and Pictures
1989 Subject Television
Tuberculosis: The Forgotten Disease
1969 Director Short film
Talking about Epontol
1969 Director Short film
Biography
Margaret Thomson is something of a forgotten name in New Zealand film, despite her important place in its history. Though Hilda Moran (first wife of filmmaker Rudall Hayward) is the earliest known New Zealand woman to have worked behind the scenes on films, Thomson is generally acknowledged as our first female director.
“Love of research, looking at facts, collating stuff ... penetrating into complexities and then making them simple - I loved all that.”
— Margaret Thomson, in Julie Benjamin's documentary Direction...Margaret Thomson
More information
Related images
Margaret Thomson at the National Library film preview of the documentary Direction... Margaret Thomson, 1993.
Kindly supplied by Julie Benjamin
Margaret Thomson on location at Winchmore Hill, London, 1991.
Kindly supplied by Julie Benjamin
Margaret Thomson directing Clean Milk for the UK Ministry of Information and Department of Agriculture, 1944.
Kindly supplied by Julie Benjamin