All Aboard for NZ Web Fest

DEGANZ members are dominating this year’s NZ Web Fest! Check out the 16 projects below with 24 members involved as directors, editors, and producers.

This year marks the 24th annual run of the festival. It celebrates international online content, including podcasts, short films, and web series.

Short Films (Documentary)

Taurewarewa

Editor: Amanda Mulderry

Short Films (Narrative)

Behind the White Wall

Writer/Director: Suenghoon Sung

Producer: Joshua Siu

Dive

Director: Tyler Redmond

For Thom

Writer/Director: Rafa Yam

Editor: Guillaume Arnoulet

Heatbeat

Director: Amelia Addis

Monster State

Director: Julie Zhu

Editor: Isaiah Tour

The Balloon

On her birthday, an earnest, young girl finds unexpected solace when her mother seemingly fails to make any plans.

Writer/Director: James Fink-Jensen

The Polycees

Writer/Director & Editor: Celia Jaspers

Wilbert Wire

Writer/Director & Editor: Ricky Townsend

Web Series (Factual)

TE ARA the Path

Holly Beckham (Ngāpuhi) is on a mission to be the first Māori woman to scale Everest. She has no alpine experience, but she has survived the depths of addiction and is climbing a mountain to recovery. Back in 1988, New Zealand’s Lydia Bradey, ONZM, was the first woman to climb Everest without supplemental oxygen. But instead of accolades, she became the subject of public bullying and misinformation, as people challenged her claims.

Together these two ‘wāhine toa’ (warrior women) venture into New Zealand’s mountains, developing a deep partnership of trust, honesty and grit as they attempt to summit Holly’s first peak, the iconic Tititea, Mt Aspiring.

Director: Alexis Smith

The Turning Point

The Turning Point follows a new generation of kaitiaki who value the well-being of their whenua. From north to south, they’re helping their communities protect and connect with Aotearoa’s natural environment despite the very real anxieties of the climate crisis.  They have only one thing on their minds: to make a difference!

Director: Steph Miller

Turning The Tide

The Turning the Tide six-part short documentary series highlights the work of researchers, kaitiaki, and community members as they pool their knowledge and resources to improve the health of the seas around Aotearoa New Zealand.

Director: Magnolia Lowe

Editor: Amanda Mulderry

Producer: Tui Ruwhiu

Web Series (Narrative)

ADHD & Me

Director: Michelle Ang (Incubator 2020)

Co-editor: Jack Brown

Ahikāroa

Co-editor: Jack Woon

Writer & Storyliner: Onehou Strickland

The Creature

Stuck in the online dating rut of endlessly swiping with no results, Aidan is ecstatic when he matches with his ‘dream man’. However, to leave for his date, Aidan must face the perturbed Creature lurking in the shadows of his home.

Writer/Director: Jake Tabata

Producer: Isabelle (Izzi) Hoskyn

Well Well Wellness

A comedy web series that follows a silent retreat run by some well-meaning but hopeless wellness gurus. It follows the bumbling owners trying to save their haven, the mystic teachers who aren’t as deep as they seem, and the assorted mix of weird, wonderful, and worrisome retreatants who come to stay, find peace, or otherwise.

Director: Jack Nicol

 

Congratulations to all those selected!

 

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‘Dame Valerie Adams: MORE THAN GOLD’ Now Streaming

Edited by DEGANZ board member Margot Francis and produced by Leanne Pooley (DEGANZ), Dame Valerie Adams: MORE THAN GOLD is now on NEON and Sky Go.

The 90-minute film tells the inspirational story of Olympic champion, Kiwi icon, Tongan leader, mother, daughter, sister, and survivor Dame Valerie Adams. She shares her story with profound honesty and vulnerability which is rare among professional athletes. Both funny and gut-wrenching, Dame Valerie shows us what it means to be a world-class competitor and someone for whom winning means more than gold. The documentary speaks to anyone who has faced hardship, loss, or pursued a dream.

After releasing in cinemas in 2022, Dame Valerie Adams: MORE THAN GOLD was selected for the International Oceanian Documentary Film Festival (FIFO) 2023. The feature documentary went on to win 1st Special Jury and the Youth Jury Awards, winning a total of 700,000 XPF (about NZ$10,000).

Available to watch on NEON or Sky Go now!

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NZIFF’s Best of the Best

Congratulations to DEGANZ member and 2024 MIFF Accelerator Lab participant Vea Mafile’o for winning this year’s NZIFF Patron Award for Best Film with Lea Tupu’anga/Mother Tongue! Alongside the prestigious award, Vea received a $7,500 cash prize.

The film was part of Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival’s (NZIFF) NZ’s Best short film programme, which premiered in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington on 6 August. The festival presented the awards in Tāmaki Makarau Auckland on 18 August as part of the Aotearoa Film Focus weekend. Producer Phillipa Campbell, filmmaker Judah Finnigan, and film critic Liam Maguren made up this year’s jury.

Other films in the programme included I See You, directed by Briar March (DEGANZ), and First Horse, directed by 2024 MIFF Accelerator Lab participant Awanui Simich-Pene and edited by Cushla Dillon (DEGANZ). Awanui took home the Auckland Live Spirit of The Civic Award for First Horse.

Lea Tupu’anga/Mother Tongue follows a young speech therapist who has lied about her language skills for a job. She must find a new way to communicate when she is assigned to an elderly Tongan patient with aphasia who can no longer speak English.

Vea was attending the MIFF Accelerator Lab at the time of the awards, but shared with NZIFF,

I feel incredibly honored and proud to receive such a prestigious award, especially on the eve of Uike Kātoanga’i ‘o e lea faka-Tonga – Tonga Language Week. This film represents the different cultural journeys we are all on. There are many paths and different experiences. Everyone’s cultural identity and sense of belonging looks different. But it’s what you feel in your heart that counts the most. This is loto-māfana.

Well done to all the filmmakers who’s films screened during this year’s festival. That’s a wrap on NZIFF 2024!

 

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‘Grafted’ Trailer Cuts Deep

This news piece contains gory imagery. Please proceed with care.

The trailer for DEGANZ member Sasha Rainbow‘s horror film Grafted is out now in the lead-up to its local theatrical release in September. In addition to directing, Sasha co-wrote the feature with fellow member Hweiling Ow (Incubator 2021), Incubator alum Mia Maramara (2022), and Lee Murray.

When Wei, a brilliant but disfigured Chinese scholarship student, is shunned by her fellow classmates at a prestigious New Zealand university, she decides to achieve the popularity she so desperately craves by putting her science studies to a new and terrifying use.

The film premiered earlier this year at Whānau Mārama: NZIFF, which described the gory and uniquely Kiwi black comedy as a mix of Mean Girls and Face/Off. Sasha commented on the story’s subject matter saying,

The obsession with beauty and changing our bodies has a certain Frankenstein nature to it which has been so fun to explore.

Grafted hits in cinemas across Aotearoa from 12 September!

 

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Dig Into ‘Takeout Kids’ Season Two

The Spinoff’s successful series Takeout Kids, directed by DEGANZ member Julie Zhu and edited by fellow member Isaiah Tour, is back for season two.

The docu-series offers a glimpse into five young people’s lives while growing up between the classroom, home, and their family-owned business. From a Thai restaurant in the Banks Peninsula to a nail salon in Whakatāne, they juggle the complexities of identity, relationships, and responsibility.

The first episode follows Priyan during his first week of school. He opts to play pretend in a toy shop resembling his family’s dairy in Sandringham, Tāmaki Makaurau.

The beloved observational docu-series premiered in 2022 with its first season, focusing on kids growing up in their family’s restaurants and takeaway shops. It quickly became a favourite amongst audiences for how it celebrated the connection between food and family.

So far, the first two episodes of the new season are out on The Spinoff, with the remaining three episodes dropping each Tuesday.

Congratulations to Julie, Isaiah, and the Takeout Kids team on the return!

 

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