Dean Cornish

If there is a New Zealand filmmaker whose screen career embodies the great Kiwi OE, it's Dean Cornish: the director, producer and cameraman has worked in more than 90 countries.

Christchurch-raised, he studied journalism at the New Zealand Broadcasting School, and cut his screen teeth working in children’s television. Cornish was a reporter for environmental show Get Real and spent time as a presenter on Squirt and kids' TV staple What Now?. The latter show offered up "a free-flowing and creative environment that allowed me to try my hand at directing, writing, presenting...the lot if you wanted". 

At age 21 the wanderlust that would come to define Cornish’s career kicked in; up until then, he'd travelled no further than Australia. He bought a $500 one-way ticket on a charter flight, and put a MiniDV camera in his pack. He tried Cambodia, and began making travel stories, some of which aired on What Now? and Squirt.

In 2001 Cornish was invited to host two seasons of the award-winning travel.co.nz, alongside Petra Bagust. In each episode, the pair headed to a new exotic destination for a whistle-stop 72 hour tour, then tossed a coin to see who would follow the luxury or backpacker route. In the first season, Cornish ended up travelling budget on eight of the 13 episodes. The gig would lead to overseas commissions, and provide useful training for future gigs when Cornish was directing newbie presenters. 

These included a documentary on dirt bike riders in the Cambodian jungle (Runaway Generation) for Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, two Discovery Channel docos on adventure sports (Extreme Tribes), and a film for human rights group ECPAT on child trafficking in Southeast Asia. While based in Asia, Cornish was also location producing for high rating overseas productions like The Amazing Race and Treasure Hunt.

Cornish’s swag of air miles and adaptability made him a natural pick for further Kiwi travel shows, from the short-lived Working Holiday (on Kiwis working overseas) to epic Jam TV series Intrepid Journeys — which he ended up producing for three seasons (and often directing).

Intrepid Journeys took Kiwi celebrities far from their comfort zone. Starting with a 2004 episode which he directed in East Timor, Cornish became a mainstay across six seasons of the show, wrangling visits to far-flung destinations with everyone from Te Radar to ex Prime Minister Jenny Shipley (who would later spend years raising money for her destination, Namibia). It’s work he is especially proud of: filming in exciting and adventurous destinations, while pushing the importance of travelling "in a culturally and ecologically sound way". En route Cornish held his breath as Pam Corkery tested a bulletproof vest in Colombia, and Jeremy Wells managed to leave Libya without getting busted by Colonel Gaddafi's informants.

Intrepid Journeys scored multiple television awards, including Best Observational Reality Series at the 2010 Qantas Film and Television Awards, and a nomination in the same category in 2011.

Along with the on the road stories, the other topic which sticks out on Cornish’s eclectic credit reel is music. An early credit was directing and helping shoot Pepsismokefree Rockquest 2000 (featuring Nesian Mystik and Evermore). He has shot music videos (Boh Runga, Che Fu, Shapeshifter), and was one of the three directors behind 2006 Qantas award-winning documentary Dave Dobbyn - One Night in Matata.

Cornish would combine his love of music and travel over two seasons of Making Tracks. He shared a Best Director award with Nick Dwyer at the 2011 Aotearoa Film and TV Awards as a result. The acclaimed travel show embedded Kiwi musicians in a foreign music culture. “Musicians are fantastic to work with because they’re already expressing themselves," says Cornish. "I love what happens at the intersection of musical and visual storytelling, and with Making Tracks the music was a strong part of the cultural and historical context of our destinations.” The show sold to the BBC and the National Geographic Channel.

Back in New Zealand, Cornish took on camera and field direction duties on Great Southern TV satire shows Eating Media Lunch and The Unauthorised History of New Zealand. As a senior director on the local version of business pitching show The Apprentice, he led a crew of over 100.

Further Kiwi directing gigs have included Road to Athens, a TV1 series on athletes for the 2004 Olympics, Human Potential, a doco on the human body; and episodes of media review show Media 7 (later known as Media Take). Even before he left town, Cornish barely sat still: his extended jam with company Jam TV included This Town, based on people living in small towns.

Cornish invested his love of architecture and design into The Art of the Architect, presented by Peter Elliott. The eight episodes followed the design and build of projects by leading architects, over a three-year period.

Although he continues to travel the globe, Cornish made Los Angeles his new base soon after completing The Art of the Architect in 2014. He has been a one-person foreign correspondent on scores of stories for Australian networks SBS and SBS Viceland, covering everything from American organisation Proud Boys to octogenarian cheerleaders in Japan and same-sex marriage in Ireland. Often he has written articles to accompany his TV reports (many of which screened on current affairs slot Dateline).He has also worked on adverts and web campaigns for Toyota, Vodafone and Mexico's Tarahumara tribe.

In 2014 Cornish headed to Thailand for documentary Undercover Rescue, which follows a Kiwi investigator Daniel Walker as he works with Thai team to rescue trafficked sex workers.

The following year Cornish developed and directed the pilot episode for Rachel’s Tour of Beauty, which followed Kiwi supermodel Rachel Hunter on a globetrotting exploration of fashion and beauty. The first season screened on American network Ovation TV.

In 2020 Cornish shared Covid-19 lockdown on a piece of land near Auckland, with comedian Rhys Darby and other friends. To help fill the time, the team created comical web series The Alone Rangers. Darby, actor Jonno Roberts and comedian Jamie Bowen play a bickering trio of park rangers. "It was made with no funding, no budget, and only the resources we had on hand at the house," says Cornish, "plus whatever I shoved in my suitcase when I was leaving Los Angeles." The same year saw the debut of TV series Rhys Darby: Big in Japan, in which Cornish follows as Darby explores Japanese culture and comedy. The two reconvened for 2025 TV series Hoff Roading, which saw Darby touring Aotearoa with Knight Rider actor David Hasselhoff. 

Perhaps the most ambitious Cornish travel mission to date is 2022 reality show Tracked. Hosted by British actor Vinnie Jones, the show saw teams from various nations on the run in New Zealand, pursued by expert trackers. Cornish argues that it was New Zealand's "most epic and big budget" show of its kind, and he was on location for more than two months.

He went on to direct rugby/travel web series The Offsider - San Diego, and was the driving force behind one-off documentary The 501s: An Inside Story, which chronicles the stories of Kiwis who were deported from Australia back to New Zealand. The project began after an earlier documentary about deportations of US citizens to Cambodia (where Cornish briefly lived). Cornish noted "a similiar deportation conundrum between Australia and New Zealand". His aim was to show that "not all returned citizens are going to go off the rails once they get to New Zealand, and even fewer will go off the rails, if they're welcomed by Aotearoa".

Back in the US, Cornish was cinematographer on award-winner 40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Movie (2017). The feature-length documentary was produced by fellow Kiwi Fleur Saville, and directed by Two and a Half Men co-creator Lee Aronsohn. Cornish says it explores the reunion of "one of those great bands who never really made it. So we hunted them down and put the band back together".

Profile updated on 10 October 2025

Sources include
Dean Cornish
Dean Cornish website. Accessed 190 October 2025
Jo McCarroll, 'You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em' - The Sunday Star-Times, 30 June 2002, page F7
Melanie Parkes, Deportees set the record straight in The 501s: An Inside Story' (Interview) Stuff website. Loaded 7 November 2024. Accessed 27 September 2025
Nicole Saunders, 'Making It In Hollywood' - Mindfood, May 2017, page 40
Unknown writer, 'Seeing best of both worlds'- The Dominion Post (TV Week liftout), 1 July 2002, page 3
'Producer/director Dean Cornish' (broken link) TVNZ website. Accessed 26 January 2016
Unknown writer, 'The Wanderer' - The Sunday Star-Times (Sunday magazine pullout), 13 May 2007, page 47
'Dean B Cornish' LinkedIn website. Accessed 2 October 2025