Register 

Registering with NZ On Screen means you can:

  • save favourites
  • comment on and discuss titles
  • join the conversations in the forums
  • receive updates via email about what's happening in the site – if you want to

 Register now

We won't share your data with anyone (see our Privacy Policy) and we won't spam you. It's that simple.

Close

You are here:

Tony Hiles

Director, Producer

 Tony Hiles

Biography

Tony Hiles has written, produced and directed films and documentaries since the mid 1960s. In 1994 he directed and co-wrote (with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh) the feature film Jack Brown Genius, for which he received a Best Director Award at the 1996 New Zealand Film and TV Awards. 

Hiles' first film documented part of the visit of US President L.B. Johnson to New Zealand in 1966. Between then and 1969, he made commercials for Wellington film production company Peach Wemyss. 

Throughout the 1970s, Hiles worked as a studio director/producer for TV One at Avalon, where he directed hundreds of hours of comedy and factual programmes. 

In 1980, Hiles and his partner Judith Fyfe set up City Associates, an independent film and TV production company. Hiles then focussed on social and arts documentaries, including From the Road, about photographer Robin Morrison, and Flight of Fancy, about painter Michael Smither, for which Hiles won a Special Jury Prize at the NZ Adventure Film Festival and Cinematographer Ian Paul won Best Cinematography at the NZFTV Awards. 

Hiles was Consultant Producer for, and had a role in, Peter Jackson's 1987 debut feature  Bad Taste (as Coldfinger) and received an "additional script" credit for the same film. Hiles also directed a documentary on Jackson and the movie, Good Taste Made Bad Taste.

With Jackson and Fran Walsh as co-writers, Hiles directed the feature film Jack Brown Genius in 1994, which was produced by Jackson's Wingnut Films.  

Described as a "goofily offbeat" tale, the film concerns a modern day inventor who is possessed by the spirit of a 10th Century monk. It earned Hiles a Kodak Best Director Gong at the 1996 New Zealand Film and TV awards. 

In 2007, Hiles' documentary Antonello and the Architect, about Wellington architect Bill Toomath's life, and his passion for a Renaissance painting, screened in the New Zealand International Film Festival.

In 2009 he announced the beginning of a ten year, 20 part documentary project chronicling artist Michael Smither at work. The first film, Shared Harmonics, was released in September 2009.