Archive for the ‘Your stories’ Category

Last night the programme for the 37th Wellington Film Festival was launched at the Paramount in Wellington. It’s always a packed event and the hottest ticket in town is the ’still warm from the press’ festival brochure. This year the brochure has a brand-spanking new format. It’s big, it’s glossy and it’s bulging with celluloid treats. The website has also been spruced up and it’s fabulous and informative - check it out at www.nzff.co.nz. And in a smart move the festival is making the most of our obsession with Web 2.0 and have their very own MySpace page where you can see snippets of some of the films on offer.

The 2008 Festival line-up is chock-a-block with good Kiwi talent and includes the largest number ever of feature-length New Zealand films. Well done, we say! Fourteen diverse works from the South to North Island represent the New Zealand of today in all its vibrant shades: idiosyncratic, traditional, outrageous, conformist, gritty, ephemeral.

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Māori Television has launched a short film competition to encourage all New Zealanders to re-tell their own ANZAC stories on film and have them screened as part of the channel’s all-day broadcast on ANZAC Day - Friday April 25, 2008.

The ANZAC Short Film Competition is a chance to tell an ANZAC story. The competition is open to people of all ages, backgrounds and points of view.

Filmmaker Ainsley Gardiner – host of the short film competition along with Tearepa Kahi – says the first-hand recollections and stories of those who have experienced the events commemorated on ANZAC Day are a taonga that will eventually be lost if they are not recorded in some way.

The competition has been established to ensure that the experiences and memories of those veterans and whānau are preserved for future generations and also aims to foster creativity, collaboration and excellence in visual storytelling through short film.

“Kiwis, young and old, are encouraged to find the unique personal war stories of their family members or communities – from the trenches, in the air, at sea, at home, after the war or beyond – and use today’s technology to bring them to light,” explains Tearepa.

“The emphasis is on giving it a go, grabbing some mates or whānau, picking up a camera and putting your take on ANZAC Day into a short film of five minutes or less.”

Entry forms and full details are available from Māori Television’s website or email anzacday@maoritelevision.com for further information.

By Patrick Whatman, Wellington music aficionado

Friday the 21st of September saw me heading out to Wellington’s San Francisco Bathhouse for a show that I had been anticipating for some time. OdESSA were celebrating the launch of their new album The Prize with what can only be described as a party, fiesta or indeed bonanza.

As a rabid OdESSA fan, impartiality may not be my strong-suit, but who cares?

The show kicked off with The Thomas Oliver Band, a three-piece who perform interesting blues-rock, if owing quite a lot to Dave Matthews and Ben Harper. I arrived a little late, and only caught the end of their set, but it seemed that the crowd had sure enjoyed it. By the time they had finished, there was little keeping the masses contained.

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I’ve been reading about peer-to-peer marketing strategies. Although I’ve struggled to find a definition, I think that peer-to-peer marketing is about capitalising on your audience’s willingness (or rather, a segment of your audience) to market your product on your behalf. 

Methods for influencing people’s decisions have changed radically. If we can provide the tools (largely web-based) that help our audiences organise and socialise, they will influence the decisions of others, ultimately helping to build audiences at events. 

Strategies might include posting reviews or testimonials or pictures on your website from people attending your events, allowing visitors to email events information from your website to friends, through to creating quirky ‘viral advertising’ that gets posted on YouTube or other content-sharing sites or passed from one person to another via email. 

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I’ve just been reading about NaumaiPlace.com, a new website which links marae with their whanau worldwide. Launched in May, the website aims to connect marae with the 85 percent of Maori who live away from their local rohe, due to employment, education and other whanau interests.

Ten Te Arawa marae are involved in the pilot. On the website, each marae can provide their own history, video footage, noticeboards, photo galleries, taonga detail, rangitahi section and online store. (Nice to see they are using existing tools such as YouTube and Slide to host rich media, which also gets word out about the project through these networks.) NaumaiPlace.com may be extended to other marae in future.

With between 70 and 80 percent of Maori able to access the internet through work, tertiary institutions, cyber cafes or at home, I hope this is an idea whose time has come. Online communities take time to build, but the potential benefits will be the strengthening of both iwi Maori and local marae.

Here’s a video of the launch, featuring those involved and some shots of the site itself (on the website, the marae pages are only viewable if you register). If you have difficulties viewing this video in your browser, go to YouTube to view it.