Show Me Shorts Announces the DEGANZ Best Editor and Best Director for 2021

Congratulations are in order for the winners of the DEGANZ Best Director and DEGANZ Best Editor awards at the 2021 Show Me Shorts Film Festival. The award for Best Editor went to Peter Roberts and Dwayne Cameron for June. Isaac Bell took out the prize for Best Director for his short film Space Invader.

A tale of raw despair, carnal natures, and transcendent occurrences, June follows the story of Willow and David as their world disintegrates while trying to grapple with the news of a serious diagnosis from their doctor.

Isaac Bellโ€™s comedy Space Invader follows young Max, a small boy with a big imagination, and his co-pilot father. Feeling threatened by the addition of a new woman in his fatherโ€™s life, Max must do whatever it takes to confront this intruder before his father is lost forever.

Since 2009, the Guild has proudly sponsored both of these awards at Show Me Shorts, an Academy Awards-accredited festival.

Check out the full list of this yearโ€™s winners at the Show Me Shorts Facebook page here.

Last updated on 2 November 2021

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Jan Oliver Lucks Signs with Top Talent Agency in the US

Jan Oliver Lucks, DEGANZ member and director of the critically acclaimed documentary There Is No I in Threesome, has signed with ICM Partners, a Los Angeles based talent and literary agency with offices in New York, Washington D.C and London. Including representing clients in motion pictures, ICM also has clients in television, music, publishing, live performance and new media.

Having premiered on HBO Max earlier this year, There Is No I in Threesome, a film about an open relationship, is having its theatrical release at this yearโ€™s Whฤnau Mฤrama: New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF).

Jan Oliver has a new series in the pipeline, a road trip buddy comedy that follows him and his best friend, Wilbur, as they embark on a quest to discover healthy masculinity.

Last updated on 5 November 2021

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NZIFF: Ashurst’s Snakeskin Returns in Retrospective to Honour Bill Gosden

Snakeskin, directed by DEGANZ members Gillian Ashurst and co-edited by Cushla Dillon, returns to the big screen as part of a specially curated line-up of retrospective films to honour Bill Gosden, former director of Whฤnau Mฤrama: New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF).

Starring Melanie Lynskey, Snakeskin follows two people bored of mundane suburbia who hit the road in search of adventure. Gosden wrote of Snakeskin when it ran at the Festival in 2001, โ€œBold, funny, sexy and macabre, Gillian Ashurstโ€™s juicily cinematic first feature boots the cinema of unease into the new century…โ€

Snakeskin is one of eight films selected to screen as part of The Bill Gosden Tribute. The Tribute is a collection of some of Billโ€™s favourite films screened previously during his 40-year reign as director. In addition, a book to mark one year since his passing, titled The Gosden Years, is available for purchase from November 11 and is a record of his enormous legacy at the helm of NZIFF, including curated film notes and programme introductions.

We are delighted at the chance to see Snakeskin once again on big screens in parts of the country. To see if it’s screening in your town, head to the NZIFF website. Congratulations Gillian and Cushla!

Last updated on 4 November 2021

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It’s Time

A couple of days ago on The Spinoff, South Pacific Pictures Managing Director Andrew Szusterman decried the loss of drama Head High from Discovery Three. Lead director and co-lead writer on the show is a DEGANZ member, Tim Worrall.

Szusterman pointed out the difficulty and cost of getting NZ drama funded and made. He said that without NZ On Air, there would be little drama produced at all because it provides the majority of the funding for such projects.

He went on to call for the Government to say, โ€œItโ€™s timeโ€ to streamers, such as Netflix, Amazon and the others, and to put money into New Zealand programme production. Szusterman quite rightly stated that New Zealandโ€™s market is not big enough to warrant streamers voluntarily investing significantly in New Zealand content.

โ€œNone of these services have commissioned any New Zealand premium drama content directly for New Zealand audiences, and there is not a chance that they will unless change is forced upon them.โ€

Iโ€™m glad that Szusterman is adding his voice to SPADAโ€™s recent activity in this space. SPADA has finally given up on saying, โ€œWe canโ€™t levy the streamers because of GATT*โ€. Iโ€™ve been calling for levies on streamers in this column for years: Show Me the Money, Time for a Reset, An Answer to NZโ€™s Broadcasting Industry Dilemma? I point this out not because I want to say โ€œI told you so.โ€, but to highlight that we have been mired in a time warp for too long while the Golden Age of TV drama sails on by.

Iโ€™m aware that there are a number of NZ producers who are pushing hard to crack the international door open for โ€˜high-endโ€™ TV drama. But you need the budgets to do it. And you need the policies to make it easier. At the moment both are a barrier.

Good drama requires a lot of development funding. So does the production. When many of the shows appearing on the streamers are being made from an absolute low of US$2 million per episode to the stratospheric heights of The Crown or Ozark at US$13 – 14 million per episode, an NZ show at US$ 0.7 โ€“ 1.2 mil. per episode doesnโ€™t cut it. As long as the Government keeps NZ On Air and NZFC funding at the levels it has for the last 10 years or so, we have to find money elsewhere to supplement the budgets. This is outlined in the Screen Sector Strategy 2030.

So where to get it from and what needs to change? Itโ€™s time to levy the streamers. Theyโ€™re an obvious source. Even though our market isnโ€™t big, it still provides incremental income for them, and they should pay to get it.

We also need to remove the block to going behind a paywall for NZ On Air funding, as is currently the case. And we need to allow, as Iโ€™ve said before, Drama and Factual to access both the New Zealand Screen Production Grant and NZ On Air funds, which is only allowed now for Childrenโ€™s and Animation. The Premium Production Fund has been given a temporary reprieve concerning this. Itโ€™s time to make this permanent, and the Premium Fund, too. If we had to, we could accept a 30% NZSPG for behind paywalls instead of the 40% available now for free-to-air.

In the meantime, we wish Szusterman luck in finding a new home for Head High. It has a place on NZ screens.

 

The Spinoff article here.

*General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

 

 

 

 

Last updated on 23 October 2021

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Hsu Edits Inked, Aotearoa’s First Funded Chinese-English Drama Series

Edited by DEGANZ member Chia Chi Hsu, web series Inked is a milestone in Aotearoa’s television history โ€” our first funded Chinese bilingual drama. That may seem surprising given that Chinese have been in New Zealand since the 1860s, the first non-European and Pacific Island immigrants to arrive. Although Inked reflects the lives of more recent Chinese immigrants, it speaks to generations of Asian New Zealanders.

The eight-episode series follows Jiayue, a 1.5 generation pharmacy student secretly apprenticing at a tattoo studio while she struggles to connect with her unhappy father. Technically, Inked contains four dialects of Chinese: Mandarin, Cantonese, Nankinese and Shanghainese. It has subtitles in both English and Simplified Chinese.

Chia cut the web series while completing a DEGANZ Drama Editor Attachment with editor Dan Kircher. When we spoke to Chia about her attachment, she said, “Bit by bit, what I had picked up from the attachment, I was able to apply them directly to what I was working on: from how to organise a project for a drama, how to tackle the notes, to tactfully dealing with tricky situations.”

Chia was part of a diverse, Asian-led cast and crew. Playwright Renee Liang, who had a small cameo, wrote on why Inked is significant for Aotearoa and what it was like behind the scenes.

According to Renee, “There is comedy throughout, but the observations in Inked โ€“ especially of the complex negotiation of family relationships when those involved are trying not to fall into the gaps between cultures โ€“ are insightful, deep and above all, real.”

The series debuted as a single package on Prime in late September. It is now available to stream on Neon and Sky Go.


Last updated on 21 October 2021

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