The ‘Bad Sisters’ cast on the liberating joys of attempted murder
Share this post
With the passing of one week, and with the New Zealand Film Commission’s decision to take over NZFF, there are two big decisions that have to be made. The first is how that funding will be spent (for as a country that just had the worst financial year for a number of years under National, it is difficult to understand how they will do this under Labour). The second is how they will make that money available again.
In that first decision, the New Zealand Film Commission is going to have to come up with a new structure for NZFF. For the past few year’s New Zealand Film Commission have been acting as the only funding body for NZFF. That model of having one funding body for a country’s film industry has to change. The film industry in New Zealand is growing – and the New Zealand Film Commission won’t be able to fund that growth indefinitely. In fact, if they leave it up to the NZFF to manage the money for that industry, they won’t have even time to grow it – they will have to choose where they focus it too – they won’t be able to grow it to where it needs to be.
The NZFF could focus their funding on making films that could play the role of the NZFF – the kind of films that make the world and it’s artists aware of the issues and injustices that they have to face. The NZFF could fund the growth of the film industry, and be the funding body for that growth. If they are not then they will be seen as a funding body, but also as a funding body that ignores the industry – and that is not how a funding body is supposed to function.
A funding body needs to support its funding body’s activities more than its funding body itself – the New Zealand Film Commission is not supporting the industry, it is supporting its funding body.
The New Zealand Film Commission is not supporting the growth of the industry, it is supporting its funding body.
And that is something they cannot afford to do. If they leave it to one fund body to fund the growth of the industry, the funding body will stop funding the industry – but there is no funding body to replace them. In the case of NZFF funding film, they are not going to be