Paul Janman
Director
With his 2012 film Tongan Ark, Paul Janman celebrated bicultural philosopher Futa Helu and the university he founded in Tonga. A sellout at the NZ Film Festival, the documentary screened in the US and the Pacific, often accompanied by live performances. Janman himself is Welsh and English, but raised in Aotearoa. Alongside various art and ecology projects, he has taught screen production in many locales. Janman and collaborators Scott Hamilton and Ian Powell have extensively explored the infamous Great South Road. Their work is documented in Ghost South Road — the title of both a book by Hamilton, and a feature by Janman.
Philosophy and filmmaking have caused me to sit with visionaries on pavements and in schools and temples in neglected corners of the earth. Otherwise, I'm interested in what the average person does to stay sane in the Auckland suburbs. Paul Janman