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DonSelwyn

Ngāti Kuri, Te Aupōuri
  • Actor
  • Director
Don_Selwyn_Key_Profile.jpg

Don Selwyn, ONZM, was an actor, casting director and mentor to a host of talented Māori who went on to work in film and television. Selwyn’s long acting resume includes 1970s historical epic The Governor and police show Mortimer’s Patch. He also directed The Māori Merchant of Venice, the first feature film in te reo Māori. Selwyn died on 13 April 2007.

Screenography

Don Selwyn - Power in Our Hands
2017 Subject Television
The Making of Sleeping Dogs
2004 Subject Short film

Biography

When Don Selwyn passed away in April 2007, memorials to his talent and mana flooded in from Māori and Pākehā alike. Speaking at his tangi, Ian Mune described Selwyn as "the bridge between our two cultures". Elsewhere Mune wrote that Selwyn had "mana in and knowledge of both worlds, and the skills to find the pathway between". 

Awards

2007 Arts Foundation
Icon Award

2005 Creative New Zealand Māori Arts Board Award
Te Waka Toi Award for 'outstanding contribution to the development of Maori arts

2003 New Zealand Film and TV Awards
Lifetime Achievement Award

2002 Hawaii International Film Festival
Audience Award for Best Fiction Feature: for The Māori Merchant of Venice

“He saw both the dark and the light of what it means to be human. He told us about it, and what to do. ”

— Tainui Stephens

Related images

Came-A-Hot-Friday-Gallery-4.jpg
Don Selwyn as the heavy weight local bookie Norm Cray in Came a Hot Friday. Cray has just been taken for over a thousand pounds in a scam involving rigged horse racing results.
© Mirage Films
The-Governor-Gallery-2.jpg
At right, actor Don Selwyn (who played Wiremu Tāmihana) explains some of the finer points of a greenstone mere to Eastbourne antique dealer Helen Jenkinson, at an auction of props from historical epic The Governor.
Kindly provided by The Dominion Post
Mortimers_Patch_Gallery2.jpg
A behind the scenes shot from TV series Mortimer’s Patch, taken on location in Helensville. From left to right: First assistant director Richard Barker, actor Terence Cooper (as Sergeant Doug Mortimer), and actor Don Selwyn (Sergeant Bob Storey).
Photo supplied by Brian ‘Sarge’ Walden