ChrisThomson
- Director
- Producer
While still in his 20s Chris Thomson was given command of a number of landmark New Zealand TV dramas, including genre-hopping colonial tale The Killing of Kane and The Alpha Plan (1969), Aotearoa’s first dramatic TV series. After time working for the BBC, he moved to Australia and began a busy career as a director, including credits on high profile mini-series 1915 and Waterfront. Thomson died on 1 July 2015.
Screenography
Biography
Chris Thomson was on hand to help command a number of New Zealand’s earliest television dramas.
After early attempts at Kiwi screen drama proved of variable quality, the NZ Broadcasting Corporation began organising seminars in an attempt to come to grips with the new medium. As this documentary chronicles, 170 actors were chosen to take part in training workshops in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch in 1967. Thomson led one of them. He describes this early period of learning on the job in the opening minutes of this documentary.
Awards
1988 CableAce Awards (United States)
Nominated for Directing - Dramatic Series: for The Hitchhiker, ‘Why are You Here?’ episode
1986 Australian Film Institute Awards
Best Telefeature: The Perfectionist
“It's as historically accurate as humanly possible, and all the characters except the very minor ones were real persons. During filming we kept running into descendants of all the characters. ”
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