Director Anna Cottrell has been a fixture in the documentary scene here - particularly the TV doco one - for as long as any of us can remember. Her TV films are sharp, observant, intelligent and grown-up - not necessarily words that fit many prime-time reality shows. But Anna has - not one but three documentaries that are about to reach our screens in the next month, including one that remembers the Wahine disaster, 50 years later. Also on the horizon, an Armistice Day project looking at Maori and Pacific Great War Stories, and an intriguing documentary that links a New Zealand rug repairer, a tribe of Iranian nomads and naturalist Sir David Attenborough. Lynn Freeman talks to Anna Cottrell about her work, and the TV documentary scene under threat from the dreaded reality TV. Wahine 50 years on screens on October 29 on Choice TV, Maori and Pacific Great War Stories is on Maori TV on Armistice Day, November the 11th, and The Kiwi the Kinght and the Qashqai plays on Choice TV on November the 26th.
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