Standing Room Only for Sunday 14 October 2018

 

12:15 Growing Audiences for NZ on Screen – Amie Mills

Over the last few weeks we've been looking at initiatives the two main TV channels are trialing to entice audiences who want more than just seeing programmes on demand. TVNZ has Alibi, a police drama you can watch in any order online before the big reveal, and TV3 recently aired five sitcom pilots and asked viewers to vote for the one they'd like to see funded for a full series. NZ on Air has invested in these and other attention grabbing ideas because it also wants to see TV audiences grow, not shrink. We talk to Amie Mills, NZ on Air's Head of Funding. 

 

12:30 Pacific Female Tattoo – Lisa Taouma

Marks of Mana is the first feature film dedicated to the practice of female tattooing (tatou or ta moko) in the Pacific. From Samoa to Aotearoa, and on to Papua New Guinea and Tahiti we learn about this vital enduring tradition with director Lisa Taouma and how it asserts the leadership role of women in their communities and reasserts the tatou as very much a Female practice in pre-Christian times, which in the Pacific men took over.

Lisa Taouma is a Samoan-born New Zealand film writer, director, and producer, and an academic and curator in the Pacific arts to boot. In 2014 she launched the wonderful Polynesian online moving image channel thecoconet.tv. Adding to her many screen credits is a new full length documentary, Marks of Mana premiering this week in Wellington as part of Siapo Cinema - the fifth annual Oceania Film Festival.

 

12:45  Texan filmmaker David Lowery

Texan filmmaker David Lowery, who filmed the updated Pete's Dragon in New Zealand a few years ago, has now directed Robert Redford in the 82-year-old actor's last starring role in a movie, The Old Man and the Gun. Redford asked David to write and direct the film based on real life 'gentleman bank robber' Forrest Tucker. Also starring is Casey Affleck who acted in one of David's first feature films almost a decade ago.

The versatile director and writer has an intriguing back catalogue of films including Aint Them Bodies Saints and A Ghost Story. He's about to return to New Zealand to speak at the Big Screen Symposium later this month in Auckland. Screen Auckland is presenting David Lowery's masterclass at the ASB Waterfront Theatre on 26 October.

 

1:10 At The Movies

On At the Movies with Sarah Watt and Doug Dillaman (guest critics while Simon Morris is on his holidays) discuss the latest superhero blockbuster Venom, the hard to define Bad Times at the El Royale and a film about astronaut Neil Armstrong, First Man.

 

1:30 Mark Stocker – A survey of Te Papa’s National Art Collection

New Zealand art history in 2018  - what’s included and what’s excluded? Photography is now in it seems, but ceramics not; Contemporary Maori art - in -  but traditional Maori arts? Still out. That's at least the view of a new book out this month from Te Papa Press - a survey of Te Papa's collection of New Zealand art, within which a wide range of art experts discuss 270 selected works It begins in the year 1777 with a painting of a fish in Dusky Sound from Captain Cooks voyage (purchased by Te Papa in 2003) and ends with works by Janet Lilo and Tiffany Singh commissioned for the opening of Toi Art at Te Papa this year. You can take a look at an extract online.

Standing Room Only producer Mark Amery spoke to editor Mark Stocker, curator of international historic art at Te Papa about what’s included and not. Mark Stocker explains their rationale.  

 

1:45 Street art - the return of the artist Handbrake

He came here to make a documentary about New Zealand's street artists and was so impressed, now Perth street artist Handbrake is returning to stamp his own mark on a wall himself as part of the eighth Taupō Street Art Festival Graffiato.

Handbrake - Hans Bruechle to his Mum - is also a TV Presenter, which is what originally brought him over here. He'll be making his own mark in Taupō over Labour Weekend alongside local, national and other Australian street artists.

Handbrake visited several of New Zealand's street art destinations for his programme which is currently in post-production before being pitched to the Australian TV networks.

 

2:06 The Laugh Track - Matt Powell

Matt Powell is an improviser with years of experience. He returns to the tenth New Zealand Improv Festival being held at BATS Theatre in Wellington this month with Space Patrol 5: The Next Generation. A former member of Christchurch’s Court Jesters he’s now a popular figure on the Wellington improv scene. His selections on the Laugh Track include Erin Harrington, John Finnemore, James Mcaster and Noel Fielding.

 

2.25  Composer Antonia Barnett-McIntosh – Making Sound Gestures

She studied composition in Wellington and has now returned home, after 12 years working extensively overseas in all kinds of settings, as 2018-19 Creative New Zealand/Jack C. Richards Composer-in-Residence at Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music at Victoria. Antonia Barnett-McIntosh is a composer, performer, sound artist and sometime curator with an interest in working across disciplines. As she tells Lynn Freeman she loves the word experimental and finds much inspiration in the sounds and even conversation around her.

Originally studying composition at Victoria University of Wellington, Antonia graduated from the Guildhall in London with a Masters. Since, she has collaborated extensively with musicians, theatre and filmmakers, dancers, visual artists and poets, with compositional interests in what she calls sound gestures and their variation, translation and adaptation. Antonia's music has been performed all over Europe, the UK, Scandinavia, New Zealand, and the United States by everyone from the Aurora Orchestra to Riot Ensemble and the Tudor Consort.

Antonia is already busy now she's back with several works to be performed by Stroma and she will perform as part of Performance Art Week Aotearoa in Wellington November 14-18. Her work with Stroma includes her work performed as part of Vox Fem, an evening of compositions by women, at Wellington's Hannah Playhouse 25 October.2:35 Painter Imogen Taylor - In Fellowship

Auckland artist Imogen Taylor has won two major art fellowships in the same year. Imogen has been granted the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship for 2019 and won the Wallace Arts Trust Paramount Award for 2018. The latter netted Imogen a six-month residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York, but its the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship, though, that will take up the best part of next year. At the same time Imogen has been working on several zines including Femisphere that she and artist Judy Darragh have produced.

 

2:48  Johanna Mechen – being Mother and Artist

Lower Hutt based Photographer and filmmaker Johanna Mechen has been collaborating with her children for her new body of work -  exploring the ways motherhood impacts on creativity. The works have been created as the inaugural Toi Poneke visual arts resident in Wellington, funded by Wellington City Council.

And she's very open about both the inspiration that comes from having children, and the fact that it inevitably means you have less time and energy to produce your art. She often collaborates with other artists but working with her children was a first.

Johanna has worked on her exhibition Sonorous Shadow after being chosen for the inaugural visual arts residency offered by Toi Poneke in Wellington.

Sonorous Shadow opens at Wellington's Toi Poneke Gallery on Saturday.

 

3:06 Beyond Kate

In Episode Four of this podcast coinciding with Women's suffrage 125th anniversary celebrations Sonia Sly focuses on rights and ownership over the female body. "Women’s bodies are political, writes Sonia. "While that might sound like a big statement, there are a multitude of layers and double standards that exist around the female body.

"Women throughout history have been subjected to the male gaze. They have been told what they can and can’t wear. Women have been outright excluded from public space, and have, for more than a century, been subjected to physical and sexual violence."

Find out more in this episode where Sonia looks back at New Zealand’s colonial past and the rights women were fighting for, to today, where "very little has changed". Among the women in this episode, Comedian Angella Dravid says she’s paid a price by being brought up to protect her body at all costs, and Dame Margaret Sparrow who advocated for women’s sexual health rights says a lot still needs to be done for women today.