Max Cryer
Max Cryer’s career as an entertainer has encompassed pioneering live talk shows (Town Cryer), singing on stage and screen, and extended time in the United States. After a busy decade of television presenting beginning in the late 60s, Cryer went behind the scenes to produce a clutch of quiz shows —before a late flowering as a prolific, bestselling author, exploring his love of words and Kiwi culture.
Jonathan Brough
Jonathan Brough's short films have screened at Cannes, Edinburgh and America's Slamdance Film Festival. His directing CV includes episodes of Outrageous Fortune, the acclaimed The Insiders Guide to Happiness and mockumentary The Pretender, followed by a run of acclaimed Australian TV comedies (Rosehaven, The Family Law). He also edited award-winning documentary Colin McCahon: I Am.
Roger Donaldson
Roger Donaldson is notable for spearheading the New Zealand film renaissance with Sleeping Dogs (1977). He has been busy directing in Hollywood for much of the period since. Donaldson's first Kiwi story since acclaimed drama Smash Palace (1981) was Burt Munro biopic The World’s Fastest Indian (2005) — the most successful New Zealand film on home soil until the arrival of Taika Waititi's Boy in 2010.
Roger Hall
Roger Hall began writing and acting on television in the late 1960s. In 1976 his debut play Glide Time became a sellout. Later Hall turned this satire of bureaucrats into Gliding On, arguably New Zealand's most successful sitcom to date. Play Middle Aged Spread became a film in 1979. Hall went on to write marital comedy Conjugal Rights for English television. He remains the country's most successful playwright.
Cliff Curtis
Cliff Curtis alternates a busy diet of acting in the United States (where he's forged a reputation as the actor to call on, for roles of varied ethnicity) with smaller scale New Zealand projects — including co-producing Taika Waititi smash Boy. His CV of Kiwi classics includes playing Pai's father in Whale Rider, Uncle Bully on Once Were Warriors, and bipolar chess champion Genesis Potini in The Dark Horse.
Steve Roche
Steve Roche is one third of Plan 9, a musical collective whose CV of soundtracks includes 20 plus features and over 130 hours of television. Roche first played with David Donaldson and Janet Roddick in celebrated band Six Volts. Since then they have won multiple soundtrack awards, and worked on everything from Forgotten Silver to What We Do in the Shadows. Roche also plays in bands Thrashing Marlin and The Labcoats.
John Blick
After starting his filmmaking career at the National Film Unit, cinematographer John Blick has shot many iconic Kiwi commercials, done extended time in Asia and the United States — and worked alongside everyone from Brian Brake and Peter Jackson (The Frighteners), to Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.
Tim Sanders
Tim Sanders has worked on a number of New Zealand's most ambitious movie productions, including Whale Rider, The Lord of the Rings, and Perfect Creature. Originally based in Australia, Sanders is now better known as a New Zealand producer. He is noted for his pragmatic attitude and bent for commercial genre subjects.
Vincent Burke
Vincent Burke has been producing television programmes for roughly three decades. Since launching company Top Shelf Productions, he has worked on history series Frontier of Dreams, acclaimed NZ movie history Cinema of Unease, and long-running consumer show Target.
Alun Bollinger
Alun Bollinger, MNZM, has been crafting the slanting southern light onto film and other formats, for almost 40 years. He is arguably New Zealand's premier cinematographer; images framed by Bollinger's camera include some of the most indelible memories to come from iconic films like Goodbye Pork Pie, Vigil and Heavenly Creatures.