Sarah Hunter

Sarah Hunter - director, creative producer, writer

Sarah Hunter came to the film world through print and photo journalism, and radio - and she's always been driven by the power of telling our own stories.

The director, producer, writer and photographer, and head of Wellington creative media company Transmit, originally worked at regional newspapers and at Radio Windy. This developed into documentary-style TV and film work, "capturing people being people": from Maori and Pacific Island youth shows, to the Trinity Roots feature-length doco Music is Choice (which was selected for the NZ International Film Festival 2010).

"I've never been that purist, I work across quite a few genres: film, photography, mobile, web," says Hunter. A major career highlight has been working as director and creative producer of the WW1 Remembered light and sound shows (2015-2016) at Pukeahu National War Memorial Park.

"Those two works encapsulated everything I love about cross-platform filmmaking and collaboration with other creatives: taking people on a journey, reaching other audiences, telling a community's stories," she says.

"Sharing our stories in this way unites us as a nation as well as creating an archive for future generations."

Hunter is currently working on an interactive project with WW100 called Luck of the Draw, in which emerging creatives respond to the introduction of compulsory conscription in NZ in 1916. Transmit has also become a pre-qualified supplier of video services for NZ Story Creative Collective, which encourages NZ businesses to tell their stories on video to overseas markets. She does have a feature film concept up her sleeve, but that's another story.