PaoraMaxwell
- Director
- Executive
Paora Maxwell spent three years as Chief Executive of Māori Television. He began in the job in May 2014 after time heading TVNZ’s Māori and Pacific Programmes Department, and 15 years making shows for his company Te Aratai Productions. Maxwell was set to step down from Māori Television in August 2017.
Screenography
Biography
Paora Maxwell has produced, directed or executive produced hundreds of hours of television, and run his own production company.
Maxwell was born to a Māori forestry worker from a poor "but very proud family", and a middle class Pākehā woman from Dunedin. As he told Herald writer Michele Hewitson, it was his mother who made sure that he and his older sister kept in touch with their Māori heritage, taking them along to a Māori club after the family moved from Rotorua to Dunedin.
“The purpose of my work is very important. I've always been a person who, you know, wanted to do things and wanted to, in some sort of idealistic way, make the world a better place.”