PeterWells
- Writer
- Director
Peter Wells broke ground as one of the first New Zealanders to tell gay stories on-screen. Aside from his work as an author, he explored gay and historical themes in several acclaimed drama and documentaries — including pioneering TV drama A Death in the Family, colourful big screen melodrama Desperate Remedies and Georgina Beyer documentary Georgie Girl. Wells died on 18 February 2019.
Screenography
Biography
At a time when local stories largely stayed on the straight and narrow, Peter Wells set out to bring a gay sensibility to the screen. His work was years ahead of its time, bringing sympathetic transgender characters, naked males and the tragedy of AIDS to mainstream audiences. Wells believed that New Zealand's distance from the rest of the world fuelled a distinctive local cinema which could be "potent, rich and expressive. Mix isolation and the power of dream, and you end up with something extraordinary."
Awards
2006 Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit
For Services to Literature and Film
2003 Dallas Out Takes Festival (United States)
Best Documentary (shared with Annie Goldson): for Georgie Girl
“When I was a kid I was constantly dreaming of other places apart from where I lived … in some ways I treated aesthetics as an anaesthetic to help me cope with lots of things.”
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