Flight of the Conchords is a New Zealand musical comedy duo formed in Wellington in 1998. The band consists of multi-instrumentalists Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement. Beginning as a popular live comedy act in the early 2000s, the duo's comedy and music became the basis of the self-titled BBC radio series (2005) and, subsequently, the HBO American television series (2007–2009). Most recently, they released the HBO comedy special Live in London in 2018. The special was concurrently released by Sub Pop as their fifth album.
Manohla June Dargis is an American film critic. She is the chief film critic for The New York Times. She is a five-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
Kevin Gelshenen Rafferty II was an American documentary film cinematographer, director, and producer, best known for his 1982 documentary The Atomic Cafe.
Leanne Pooley ONZM is a Canadian filmmaker based in Auckland, New Zealand. Pooley was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, she immigrated to New Zealand in the mid-1980s and began working in the New Zealand television and film industry before moving to England where she worked for many of the world's top broadcasters. She returned to New Zealand in 1997 and started the production company Spacific Films. Her career spans more than 25 years and she has won numerous international awards. Leanne Pooley was made a New Zealand Arts Laureate in 2011 and an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the New Year's Honours List 2017. She is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Joe Bini is an American film editor.
Colma: The Musical is a 2006 American musical independent film directed by Richard Wong and written by H.P. Mendoza. The film, which is Wong's feature directorial debut, is a coming of age story based on the lives and the relationships between three teenagers living in Colma. Colma: The Musical features 13 songs all written and produced by H.P. Mendoza.
Last Train Home is a 2009 Canadian documentary film directed by Lixin Fan and produced by Daniel Cross and Mila Aung-Thwin of EyeSteelFilm. It won the Best Documentary Feature at 2009 IDFA and has been distributed by Zeitgeist Films in the US.
Julian Shaw is an author, filmmaker and actor, best known for directing the 2007 film Darling! The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story, a British Film Institute award-winning documentary about the life of South African political satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys. Shaw is the author of the novel Modern Odysseus, and the creator of several short films including Clearing the Air. He is the director of the 2011 feature documentary Cup of Dreams, about New Zealand's national Rugby Union team the All Blacks. Shaw also gained worldwide fame in 2011 after starring in an Australian marriage equality advertisement entitled It's Time that has reached millions of people.
Hit So Hard is a 2011 American documentary film directed by P. David Ebersole. The film details the life and near death story of Patty Schemel, drummer of the seminal '90s alternative rock band Hole, and charts her early life, music career, and spiral into crack cocaine addiction. The film weaves together Hi8 video footage Schemel recorded while on Hole's 1994-95 world tour with contemporary interviews with her, bandmates Courtney Love, Eric Erlandson, and Melissa Auf der Maur, as well as her family members. The film also features interviews with other female drummers and musicians, including Nina Gordon, Kate Schellenbach, Gina Schock, Debbi Peterson, and Phranc.
One Lucky Elephant is an American documentary film directed by Lisa Leeman that premiered December 1, 2011 on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network as part of the OWN Documentary Club. The film focuses on the extraordinary human-animal bond between Circus Flora founder, Ivor David Balding, and Flora an endangered African elephant, and their journey to find her a permanent home that leads them to The Elephant Sanctuary (Hohenwald). The film provides insightful research footage to further discussion of the human-animal bond as part of anthrozoology, a new academic field that examines the relationships between non-human and human animals.
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is a 2012 documentary film about Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, directed by American filmmaker Alison Klayman.
Leonardo DiCaprio is an American actor who began his career performing as a child on television. He appeared on the shows The New Lassie (1989) and Santa Barbara (1990) and also had long running roles in the comedy-drama Parenthood (1990) and the sitcom Growing Pains (1991). DiCaprio played Tobias "Toby" Wolff opposite Robert De Niro in the biographical coming-of-age drama This Boy's Life in 1993. In the same year, he had a supporting role as a developmentally disabled boy Arnie Grape in What's Eating Gilbert Grape, which earned him nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. In 1995, DiCaprio played the leading roles of an American author Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries and the French poet Arthur Rimbaud in Total Eclipse. The following year he played Romeo Montague in the Baz Luhrmann-directed film Romeo + Juliet (1996). DiCaprio starred with Kate Winslet in the James Cameron-directed film Titanic (1997). The film became the highest grossing at the worldwide box-office, and made him famous globally. For his performance as Jack Dawson, he received the MTV Movie Award for Best Male Performance and his first nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama.
The Doc Edge, formerly DOCNZ International Documentary Film Festival or simply DOCNZ Film Festival, and then Documentary Edge Festival, is New Zealand's Academy Award-qualifying international documentary film festival, run annually by the Documentary New Zealand Trust since 2005.
Searching for Sugar Man is a 2012 documentary film about a South African cultural phenomenon, written and directed by Malik Bendjelloul, which details the efforts in the late 1990s of two Cape Town fans, Stephen "Sugar" Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom, to find out whether the rumoured death of American musician Sixto Rodriguez was true and, if not, to discover what had become of him. Rodriguez's music, which had never achieved success in his home country of the United States, had become very popular in South Africa, although little was known about him there.
Justin Pemberton is a documentary filmmaker based in New Zealand.
My Wedding and Other Secrets is a 2011 romantic comedy film directed by Roseanne Liang, written by Liang and Angeline Loo, and produced by South Pacific Pictures. The film is based on Liang's real-life cross-cultural romance.
In Jackson Heights is a 2015 documentary film about the community of Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City, directed by Frederick Wiseman. The film received widespread critical acclaim. In 2017, the film was considered the thirteenth "Best Film of the 21st Century So Far" by The New York Times.
Ex Libris: The New York Public Library is a 2017 American documentary film about the New York Public Library (NYPL), directed by Frederick Wiseman. It was screened in the main competition section of the 74th Venice International Film Festival where it won the FIPRESCI Award.
Petition is a documentary released in 2009 by Chinese independent filmmaker Zhao Liang. The film was screened as a Special Screening of the official selection of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.
Roseanne Liang is a New Zealand film director. Her first feature film, My Wedding and Other Secrets, was the first theatrically released feature film made by a Chinese New Zealander and became 2011's highest grossing local feature film. She also co-created, directed, and co-wrote the 2021 TV series Creamerie.
New Zealand
