SPADA Industry Awards Announced

MEDIA RELEASE
November 10, 2011

SPADA ANNOUNCES 2011 INDUSTRY AWARD WINNERS AT CONFERENCE

This year’s SPADA Industry Award Recipients was announced at the annual SPADA Conference today.

o New Filmmaker of the Year (Principal Sponsor - Park Road Post Production)

Zoe McIntosh

o Crombie Lockwood/MTJ Independent Producer of the Year

Catherine Fitzgerald - Blueskin Films

o Onfilm/SPADA Industry Champion

John Harris - Greenstone Productions

FURTHER INFORMATION

New Filmmaker of the Year

Principal Sponsor: Park Road Post Production
Sponsors: Panavision and Kodak

Zoe McIntosh

Since graduating from Canterbury University School of Fine Arts, where she majored in film theory and practical film for a BFA, Zoe has directed documentaries, short films, music video, television factual series and commercials. Her documentary about non-conformist lawyer Rob Moodie, Lost In Wonderland, won most popular NZ documentary at the 2010 Qantas Film & Television Awards. It was selected in competition at the NZ International Film Festival and the FiFo International Film Festival in Tahiti, where it was picked up for European distribution. It also sold to SBS in Australia and was broadcast on the Documentary Channel here.

Day Trip, a short film about a Mongrel Mob gang leader whose trip to Picton changes his outlook on life, won the people’s choice award at Montreal International Film Festival this year. It was selected for competition at the Tribeca, New York, Hawaii and Clermont Ferrand international film festivals and won the best international short film award at the En expresion en corto film festival in Mexico.

She collaborated with Costa Botes on both of these productions, and is currently working with him on a short film, The Golden Girls, which is a re-working of her 2009 South Pacific Pictures SPADA Big Pitch-winning feature film idea.

Crombie Lockwood/MTJ Independent Producer of the Year

Catherine Fitzgerald

Catherine Fitzgerald founded Blueskin Films in 2002, and began producing a run of high profile short films. She was part of the producing team on Oscar-nominated short Two Cars, One Night, and Vincent Ward's critically-acclaimed feature Rain of the Children. In 2011 she produced Samoan-language tale The Orator, which won two awards at the Venice Film Festival. Fitzgerald's screen career also includes work as a script assessor, funding executive and policy advisor.

Onfilm/SPADA Industry Champion

John Harris

Originally a print journalist, John Harris joined the NZBC in 1974 as a reporter for television and radio, and when television was split into two channels, he became chief reporter in South Pacific Television’s Auckland newsroom.

In the late 1980s he joined his former colleague Neil Roberts in his groundbreaking production company, Communicado, where he produced That’s Fairly Interesting and Heroes among others.

In 1994, knowing it was time to follow his own dreams, he founded Greenstone Pictures, which has won a reputation for its strong factual programming. Harris rates the following series as key in Greenstone’s evolution: The long-running success The Zoo, fly-on-the-wall Motorway Patrol, and the award-winning historical documentary series Epitaph.

Other award-winners include Back from the Dead – The Saga of the Rose Noelle, Cave Creek – the Full Story of a National Tragedy and To Hell and Back – Tanja’s Story, which sold to UK’s Channel Five.

Greenstone has also produced drama – the kidult series Secret Agent Men and the superhero show The Amazing Extraordinary Friends, which is now in its third series.

The staging of the SPADA Conference is made possible with the generous support of its Sponsors: Principal Sponsor - NZ Film Commission: Principal Sponsor - TVNZ, Key Sponsors - M?ori Television, Screenrights, Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (ATEED), TV3 and NZ On Air. Sponsors and Supporters – AIA, Crombie Lockwood/MTJ, The Film Archive, Film New Zealand, Film Finances, FIUA, Goethe Institut, Images and Sound, Kodak, Onfilm, Panavision, Park Road Post Production, South Pacific Pictures, Sony, Voyage Affaires: and SPADA’s Premiere Partner Telecom.

http://www.spada.co.nz


SPADA: Formed in 1982, the Screen Production and Development Association of New Zealand (SPADA) represents the collective interests of independent producers and production companies on all issues affecting the business and creative aspects of screen production in New Zealand.

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