WIFT NZ Events

Highly undervalued, a great costume designer is one of your highest assets. Costume can make or break your dream film. We're extremely fortunate to have some of the best internationally recognised costume designers in New Zealand. Join award-winning costume designers Jane Holland, Ngila Dickson and Kirsty Cameron as they discuss this vital area with acclaimed documentary director Pietra Brettkelly.

Topics to be covered will include:

• How do you select your costume designer? 
• What are they looking for from you, and what should you reasonably expect from them? 
• When do you bring them on board and what is the ideal process through your project?

Whether you are a student, a producer, a director, or in the art department, this is a workshop for you ALL!

Panellists:
Kirsty Cameron
Kirsty is an award-winning costume designer and production designer. She won New Zealand Film Award’s Best Costume Design for Whale Rider, directed by Niki Caro, and Best Costume Design for her work on Perfect Creature, Glenn Standring’s vampire feature. Her work includes costume design for director Tusi Tamasese’s acclaimed The Orator, which won best film at Venice Film Festival in 2011, and most recently for the Academy Award-winning The Power of the Dog. She’s also written and directed short films, designed costumes for dancer/choreographer Douglas Wright, and develops her own homewares. 

Ngila Dickson
Ngila won an Academy Award in 2004 for her work on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. She earned dual nominations that year, also being honoured for her costume designs for Edward Zwick’s The Last Samurai. Dickson had previously gained her first Academy Award nomination and a BAFTA nomination for Best Costume Design for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.  In addition, she won a BAFTA Award for her work on The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and won a Costume Designers Guild Award, and received her third BAFTA Award nomination for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Jane Holland
Jane has recently returned from nine months in Budapest as costume designer for Halo Series 2. With a career spanning 30 years in film and television Jane's work ranges from large-scale international projects to local drama and arthouse projects. Her passion is for character storytelling and innovative world-building, be it the expansive retro sci-fi world of Cowboy Bebop, or character-driven period films like Juniper and World’s Fastest Indian. Jane is also creative producer and writer and through 10000 Company she and Michael Bennett initiate and develop original scripts. 

Moderator:
Pietra Brettkelly
Pietra  is a three-times Oscar selected and Sundance award-winning NZ filmmaker. Her documentary features include Yellow Is Forbidden, A Flickering Truth, Māori Boy Genius, The Art Star And The Sudanese Twins and Beauty Will Save The World. In 2019 she received the inaugural New Zealand Arts Laureate in Documentary, and at the 2020 WIFT NZ Awards, Pietra won the South Pacific Pictures Award for Achievement in Film "for creating unique, intimate, beautiful cinematic works that open a window into another world".

RSVP essential to office@wiftnz.org.nz

WIFT NZ members FREE, non-members $20, students $10 (includes wine and nibbles). Please pay in cash at the door