Matasila Freshwater is a New Zealand illustrator, director. She was awarded a 2020 Springboard Award, and a 2021 Sun & Moon Jury Prize.
Matasila Freshwater is from the Solomon Islands. She studied anthropology, animation and illustration.
She lives in Wellington. In 2019, she directed the film on the Solomon Islands, Vai. Vai was screened at the 2019 Vancouver International Film Festival, [1] imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival, and Berlin Film Festival. [2]
Pipilotti Elisabeth Rist is a Swiss visual artist best known for creating experimental video art and installation art. Her work is often described as surreal, intimate, abstract art, having a preoccupation with the female body. Her artwork is often categorized as feminist art.
Brillante Mendoza is a Filipino independent filmmaker. Mendoza is known one of the key members associated with the Filipino New Wave.
Katie Wolfe is New Zealand actor and film and stage director. She was in the New Zealand television series Marlin Bay in the 1990s, Shortland Street in the late 1990s and Mercy Peak for two years. Her screen directing work has won several awards including Redemption at the ImagineNative Film + Media Arts Festival and This Is Her at the Prague International Short Film Festival. Her current creative work is writing and directing a stage play called The Haka Party Incident. Programmed by festivals through New Zealand across 2020 - 2023
Keala Joan Settle is an American actress and singer. Settle originated the role of Norma Valverde in Hands on a Hardbody, which ran on Broadway in 2013, and was nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama Desk Award, and Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. In 2016 she was in the original Broadway cast of Waitress portraying Becky. In 2017, she portrayed Lettie Lutz, a bearded lady, in the musical film The Greatest Showman. The song "This Is Me" from the film, principally sung by Settle, won the 2017 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. On January 27, 2019, Settle sang "Seasons of Love" in Fox's Rent: Live.
Ana Lily Amirpour is an American filmmaker, screenwriter and actress. She is best known for her feature film debut A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, self-described as "the first Iranian vampire spaghetti western" that made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014, and which was based on a previous short film that she wrote and directed, which won Best Short Film at the 2012 Noor Iranian Film Festival.
Mīria George is a New Zealand writer, producer and director of Māori and Cook Island descent. Best known for being the author of award-winning stage plays, George has also written radio, television and poetry, and was one of the film directors of the portmanteau film Vai. In November 2005, she won the Emerging Pacific Artist's Award at the Arts Pasifika Awards. Mīria George was the first Cook Islands artist to receive the Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writer's Residency at the University of Hawai'i.
Ashley McKenzie is a Canadian director, screenwriter, and editor. She is known for her feature film directorial debut Werewolf (2016), which won numerous accolades, including the $100,000 Toronto Film Critics Association prize for best Canadian film of the year.
Nina Nawalowalo is a New Zealand theatre director and co-founder of the contemporary Pacific theatre company The Conch. She is known for directing the stage plays Vula and The White Guitar. The first film she directed A Boy Called Piano - The Story of Fa'amoana John Luafutu (2021) won 2022 Montreal Independent Film Festival Best Feature Documentary.
Diane Paragas is a Filipino-American documentary and narrative film and commercial director. She is best known for writing, directing and producing the 2020 film Yellow Rose. Yellow Rose was Paragas' debut narrative feature The film was selected as the Opening Night Film of the 2019 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Yellow Rose won Grand Jury Prizes at LAAPFF, Bentonville Film Festival, CAAMFEST37, and Urbanworld where it also took the Audience Award. The film also won the Audience Award at the Hawaii International Film Festival.
TJ Cuthand is a filmmaker, video- and performance artist, writer and curator of Plains Cree as well as Scottish and Irish descent. He is credited with coining the term Indigiqueer, for modern Indigenous LGBTQ people. In May 2022 he changed his name to TJ Cuthand and came out as a trans man.
Renae Maihi is a New Zealand film director and screenwriter. She is best known for her work on the films Waru and We Are Still Here, both of which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017 and 2022 respectively.
Dianna Fuemana is a New Zealand writer, director and performer. She writes for theatre and screen. Her solo play Mapaki was the first that brought a New Zealand-born Niue perspective to the professional stage. In 2008 Fuemana won the Pacific Innovation and Excellence Award, at the Creative New Zealand Pasifika Arts Award. Fuemana was one of nine women writer-directors of the 2019 feature film Vai.
Taskmaster NZ is a New Zealand comedy panel game show, first broadcast in 2020 on TVNZ 2. The format for the show was created by British comedian Alex Horne during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2010, and was subsequently developed into a successful UK television show in 2015.
The Tales from Sanctuary City is a media franchise created and managed by Australian children's production company Like a Photon Creative. The franchise revolves around the anthropomorphic animals who reside in Sanctuary City, which was inspired by the fauna and landscape of Australia. As of 2021, the franchise consists of three feature films and a mobile app, with the possibility of a TV series, toy-line and further apps and spin-off films.
Miriama McDowell is a New Zealand actor, director and playwright. She is a graduate of Toi Whakaari.
Cristina Zenato is an Italian-born shark diver and conservationist. She is known for her work with Caribbean reef sharks in The Bahamas.
Tempest DuJour is the stage name of Patrick Lee Holt, an American drag performer most known for competing on season 7 of RuPaul's Drag Race. Holt is also an associate professor at the University of Arizona.
Catherine Caylee Cowan is an American actress. She is best known for her roles in Sunrise in Heaven (2019), Willy's Wonderland (2021), Spinning Gold (2022), and Frank and Penelope (2022).