Ginette McDonald
Although Ginette McDonald's career is most associated with the gormless, vowel-mangling girl-from-the-suburbs: Lynn of Tawa, she is a woman of many parts. Alongside an extensive acting and presenting career, her work as producer and director spans three decades, and includes Shark in the Park, Peppermint Twist, and kidult series The Fire-Raiser.
Peter Sharp
Peter Sharp is one of New Zealand's most prolific directors of screen drama. Though his directing work covers the gamut from police shows and soap satires to live performance, Sharp is best known for his work helming kidult dramas - including Maurice Gee period tales The Fire-Raiser and The Champion. He also directed award-winning mini-series Erebus: the Aftermath.
Nicole Hoey
Cinco Cine founder Nicole Hoey began her screen career in commercials, then produced 1995 telemovie Dead Certs. By the 21st century Cinco Cine was starting on te reo heavy youth show Pūkana, which was nominated for Best Children’s TV Programme at the New Zealand TV Awards in 2002. Hoey has continued to work on te reo broadcasting, and also produced TV movie Nights In The Gardens Of Spain.
Michael Haigh
Michael Haigh gave up teaching to become a professional actor. A founding member of Wellington’s Circa Theatre, his TV legacy is the gruff office worker Jim in Roger Hall’s Gliding On — one of NZ television’s great comic characters and a role that won him a Feltex Award. He played Jim for five years and appeared in a number of other TV series and films (almost inevitably playing a policeman). Michael Haigh died in 1993.
Pamela Meekings-Stewart
Though Pamela Meekings-Stewart's work as a producer and director ranges widely, she has often been drawn to documentaries involving women and the arts. Her Feltex award-winning series Pioneer Women dramatised the lives of six women, from Princess Te Puea to Ettie Rout. These days she runs retreats from her farm in Pukerua Bay. Meekings-Stewart is sometimes credited as Pamela Jones.
John McRae
As a head of drama in New Zealand television, John McRae spearheaded a run of shows that were both local and export successes. McRae's four-decade television career saw him working in three countries, and winning two Emmy awards.
Hugh Macdonald
Hugh Macdonald began his long, award-studded career at the National Film Unit, where at age 25 he directed ambitious three-screen spectacular This is New Zealand (1970). It was seen by 400,000 New Zealanders. In the 1980s he produced Oscar-nominated short The Frog, the Dog, and the Devil and set up his own company, continuing a busy diet of train documentaries, commercial films and animation.
Rosemary McLeod
Best-known as an outspoken and award-winning columnist, Rosemary McLeod devised and was principal writer on iconic 80s soap Gloss. McLeod was a newspaper reporter for years before moving into broadcasting. She eventually became a sitcom writer and script editor both in New Zealand and Australia, and was among the first women to write a sitcom in either country.
Murray Reece
Murray Reece has been the director at a number of key turning points in New Zealand's television history: from the debut of our first drama series (Pukemanu), to the first telemovie (The God Boy), to the episode of Country Calendar where Fred Dagg first showed us around the farm.
Tessa Hoffe
Tessa Hoffe’s directing credits include Shortland Street and iconic British soaps Coronation Street, Hollyoaks and Grange Hill. The Wellington raised filmmaker has written and directed six short films, all selected for international film festivals. She has also directed children’s dramas, including World’s End and Bafta-nominated family tale Rocket's Island.