Barbara Darragh
Barbara Darragh's screen costumes have been worn by ghosts, prostitutes, Māori warriors and Tainuia Kid Billy T James. An award-winner for The Dead Lands, River Queen and The End of the Golden Weather, Darragh's CV includes TV shows Under the Mountain and Greenstone, plus more than a dozen other features. She also runs Auckland costume hire company Across the Board.
Allen Guilford
Allen Guilford was a prolific and much admired cinematographer, whose host of television programmes ranged from 1970s TV landmark The God Boy to colonial melodrama Greenstone. Guilford won NZ Film Awards for his work on movies The Footstep Man, coming of age tale The Climb, and blockbuster What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? He passed away on 10 March 2009.
Keith Aberdein
Keith Aberdein is probably best known for playing the small-town policeman who arouses Bruno Lawrence's ire, in Kiwi screen classic Smash Palace. But his screen work covers almost every angle: from covering the Wahine disaster as a reporter, to directing, to writing scripts for some of the most ambitious television dramas of the 1970s.
Terence Bayler
After starring in feature Broken Barrier — the only New Zealand feature made in the 1950s — Terence Bayler departed for England, to continue a six-decade long acting career that encompassed Monty Python, William Shakespeare and Harry Potter. Born in Wanganui on 24 January 1930, Bayler passed away in England on 2 August 2016.
Richard Fletcher
Producer and Co-President of SPADA (the Screen Production and Development Association), Richard Fletcher has worked on Vincent Ward's River Queen, and helped arrange foreign finance for movies The Strength of Water and Under the Mountain. Fletcher is Managing Director of production company Libertine Pictures.
James Wallace
James Wallace, KNZM, is a patron of cinema, among other types of art. His CV as a producer of short films includes Accidents and Cannes success Planet Man. Wallace produced pioneering AIDS drama A Death in the Family and acclaimed feature Desperate Remedies. He was the Company Secretary and Solicitor for cinema chain Kerridge Odeon, and has spent time on the board of the NZ Film Commission.
Simone Kessell
Simone Kessell debuted as part-Māori, Australian-raised teenager Hannah Tumai, in 1992 soap Homeward Bound. After spending time in the fantasy lands of Hercules and Xena, the Aucklander's next big role was as a TV journalist on Cover Story. Since hit 2001 movie Stickmen, and playing romantic lead in colonial TV drama Greenstone, Kessell has worked largely in Australia (including hit Underbelly) and the US.
Phillipa Dann
Phillipa Dann’s work presenting music shows has taken her from 80s-era series Shazam! to MTV Europe. Dann studied English Literature and acted in series Pioneer Women, before winning a break fronting youth show Viewfinder. In 1986 she departed for a UK screen OE with husband Brent Hansen, before going on to present a run of shows for MTV Europe and VH1.
Antonia Prebble
Antonia Prebble played the manipulative Loretta West on Outrageous Fortune over six seasons, before starring in prequel Westside. Prebble began her screen career aged 12 on TV series Mirror, Mirror, and did five seasons on sci-fi hit The Tribe during her school holidays. From 2013 her career got even busier, with starring roles in legal thriller The Blue Rose, Witi Ihimaera film White Lies and bio-thriller The Cure.
David Beatson
David Beatson's 50 year career included high profile stints in TV current affairs: reporting, interviewing and producing for shows like Town and Around, Compass, Gallery, and Eyewitness, and chairing election debates. Beatson went on to edit The Listener, and was a press secretary to PM Jim Bolger and spokesperson for Air NZ. He served on the boards of various media organisations, and was chairman of NZ On Air.