Tim van Dammen
Best known for his music videos, Elam graduate Tim van Dammen began dabbling in acting, bands and photography as a teen. Inbetween drumming for Collapsing Cities, he has directed two no-budget features and 160+ videos, including clips for Sola Rosa, Boh Runga and Kids of 88. His third feature Romeo and Juliet: A Love Story, launched at the 2013 NZ International Film Festival. It combined Shakespeare, many songs and trailer trash. Five years later the festival was set to play van Dammen's action comedy Mega Time Squad.
Jackie van Beek
The multi-talented Jackie van Beek emerged from Wellington’s 90s theatre scene. After directing a run of award-winning shorts, her first feature The Inland Road was invited to the 2017 Berlin Film Festival. She went on to co-direct, co-write and co-star in comedy The Breaker Upperers, with Madeleine Sami. As an actor, van Beek is probably best known for her role in What We Do in the Shadows, as a vampire groupie.
Jackie van Beek: On the importance of chaos in filmmaking...
Jackie van Beek is an actor, director and writer who first honed her storytelling skills in theatre. She has acted in a variety of television and film roles, and directed several award-winning short films. In 2017 van Beek directed her first feature film The Inland Road, then co-wrote, co-directed and co-starred in hit comedy The Breaker Upperers, with Madeleine Sami.
ScreenTalk Short: Jackie van Beek
The multi-talented Jackie van Beek first honed her storytelling skills in theatre. Since then she has combined acting with directing, starting with a run of award-winning short films.
Grant Lahood: Snails, lemmings and a Kombi van…
Director Grant Lahood is a master of the quirky comedic short film - the creative force behind internationally-successful shorts Snail's Pace, The Singing Trophy, and Lemming Aid. Lahood has also directed the feature films Kombi Nation and Chicken, and a number of documentaries including Arc, Anzac Songs, and Intersexion.
Kiwi Comedy On TV
This collection celebrates Kiwi comedy on TV: the caricatures, piss-takes, and sitcoms that have cracked us up, and pulled the wool over our eyes for over five decades. From turkeys in gumboots and Fred Dagg, to Billy T, bro'Town and Jaquie Brown. As Diana Wichtel reflects, watching the evolution of native telly laughs is, "a rich and ridiculous, if often painful, pleasure."
If I Needed You - performed by Jodi Vaughan and Brendan Dugan
Longtime country music collaborators Brendan Dugan and Jodi Vaughan covered American singer Townes Van Zandt's ‘If I Needed You’ on a 1982 single. Here they perform the song for a 1985 variety show celebrating the 25th anniversary of television in New Zealand. Vaughan shows no signs of vocal chord surgery she had undergone months earlier. The duo had recently decided to go it alone after success on — and Dugan's high profile departure from — TV show That’s Country. Dugan was named Entertainer of the Year by the NZ Entertainment Operators’ Association in 1985.
Cannes '92
Cannes is the place where art meets schlock on the French Riviera. A year before Jane Campion's The Piano shared the festival's top prize, NZ-made documentary Cannes '92 managed to snare almost everyone standing, from Voight to Van Damme — including NZ entrants Alison Maclean (with her movie Crush) and Nicky Marshall (Mon Desir). Vincent Ward mentions the 14 companies involved in his Map of the Human Heart. Baz Luhrmann promotes Strictly Ballroom; Paul Verhoeven completely forgets the question after his Basic Instinct star Sharon Stone interrupts proceedings with a kiss.
Off the Ground - 2, Challenge and Crisis
The second part of this 1982 series on the history of aviation in New Zealand hang glides to the 30s golden age where world famous flying feats (from the likes of Aussie Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and NZ aviatrix Jean Batten) inspired a surge in aero and gliding clubs and the beginning of commercial domestic flights and aerial mapping. War saw Kiwis flying for the RAF and modernised an ageing RNZAF, taking it from biplanes to jet aircraft. Presented by pilot Peter Clements, the series was made for TV by veteran director Conon Fraser and the National Film Unit.
Frontseat - Series One, Episode 14
In this early, Edinburgh-centric episode of arts show Frontseat, Flight of the Conchords return to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for a sellout third season — although they argue the new show is “a shambles”. Also present at the fest are an array of Kiwi technicians, performers, and arts programmers. Meanwhile in his Marlborough vineyard, globetrotting cinematographer Michael Seresin critiques Kiwi society and its ugly towns, and calls New Zealand a “lonely, soulless sort of nation”. Also on offer: Artist Phil Dadson in Antarctica, and award-winning dancer Ross McCormack.