Jane Wrightson
Jane Wrightson is Chief Executive of Crown agency NZ On Air, which funds Kiwi television, digital media, radio and music. Prior to taking on the job in 2007, she spent a decade at Television New Zealand, was New Zealand's first woman Chief Film Censor, and headed both the Broadcasting Standards Authority and screen lobbying group SPADA.
Amanda Evans
The trio of documentaries surrounding the religious community of Gloriavale generated huge TV ratings. Amanda Evans is the director and producer behind this mini-TV phenomenon. In her 30 year career she has produced and/ or directed documentaries, reality series and iconic Kiwi kids and arts shows.
Alison Parr
Alison Parr has documented key moments in New Zealand’s cultural and social history during an award-winning career as a journalist, oral historian and broadcaster. Her credits include iconic programmes of the 1980s and 90s like Close Up and Kaleidoscope. In 2003 she joined the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, where she has spent more than a decade as an Oral Historian, recording the memories of war veterans.
Fred O'Neill
Dunedin businessman and artist, Fred O’Neill, whose hobby of making quirky animated films brought him international recognition, sent his Plasticine hero to Venus thirty years before Nick Park got Wallace and Gromit to the Moon. O’Neill’s films encouraged children not to take up smoking, brought Māori legends to the screen in a novel way, and entertained young viewers in the early years of New Zealand television. Image credit: Stills Collection, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision. Courtesy of the Fred O'Neill collection.
Jane Campion
Jane Campion is one of the most dynamic — and applauded — filmmakers to emerge from Australasia. Campion's CV includes Cannes-winning road trip Peel, An Angel at My Table, based on the life of writer Janet Frame, and award-winning mini-series Top of the Lake. With her twisted settler romance The Piano (1993), she became the first woman to take the top award at the Cannes Film Festival.
Esther Stephens
Having grown up in a musical family, Esther Stephens found it hard to decide between music or acting. So she did both. After training in performing and screen arts, she won an ongoing role as fashionista Olivia Duff in Go Girls. Since then, Stephens has had major parts in WWI drama When We Go to War and Westside. On stage, she won acclaim as suffragette Kate Sheppard in musical That Bloody Woman.
Les Andrews
Les Andrews, QSM, began singing with the Kiwi Concert Party during World War II. After the war he studied at London’s Royal College of Music, and sang on BBC television. Back home he was one of the first faces on air when local television began transmitting, and later spent four years hosting quiz show Personality Squares. With his wife Sonia, he was a busy patron of the arts. Andrews died on 28 February 2014.
Shayle Gardner
From a turbulent beginning in Auckland, self-styled adventurer and traveller Shayle Gardner was regularly employed on the British stage, and managed NZ troops’ entertainment during World War I. He also played his part in UK silent film history, starring in Comin’ thro' the Rye and The Three Passions. Gardner also had a short, tantalising stay in Hollywood; but in the end he came to rest in the place of his birth.Image credit: Alexander Turnbull Library, Eph-A-DRAMA-1922-01 (Detail)
Peter Metcalf
Peter Metcalf has four decades of experience in making it all look seamless. After 20 years in state television, he became TV3’s first Head Video Editor in Wellington. His credits include classics like Country Calendar and Kaleidoscope, plus Great War Stories, 35 short documentaries for TV3 commemorating the First World War. He also helped launch successful post-production suite Blue Bicycle Flicks.
Mhairead Connor
Producer Mhairead Connor's career encompasses a stint at production company Sticky Pictures (where she wrangled the creatives on acclaimed arts show The Gravy), and two features: drama Little Bits of Light, and science fiction tale Existence.