A clean sweep for women creatives

10 May 2019

A clean sweep for women creatives in latest NZ On Air drama and comedy funding

NZ On Air has wrapped up the financial year with two Scripted projects supported from the final funding round, both led by women creatives with starkly different stories.

A new dystopian comedy series for TVNZ 2 Creamerie comes from the successful producer/writer team behind Flat 3 and Friday Night Bites. Creamerie is set in a post-apocalyptic future where a viral plague has wiped out 99% of men, and Earth has become a planet run by and for women. There’ll be plenty to laugh at when three Kiwi-Asian women running a dairy farm encounter – shock, horror – a man!

Creamerie is the first project to proceed to production funding from the Diverse Development initiative created by NZ On Air early in 2017. Diverse development is intended to help different creatives bring fresh ideas to screens, widening the diversity of stories reflecting New Zealanders.

Meanwhile a seminal novel by celebrated Māori author Patricia Grace is to be turned into a feature film, which will screen on Māori Television after its cinema release. Cousins tells the story of three cousins connected by blood but separated by circumstances, who spend their lives searching for each other.

The screenplay will be written by Patricia Grace and her daughter-in-law Briar Grace-Smith. Cousins is a Rautaki Māori project with majority funding from the NZ Film Commission.

“These will both be exceptionally good projects. It is very pleasing to see the young Flat 3 team bringing a really innovative storyline to the screen and putting three Kiwi-Asian female characters in prime time with the support of TVNZ,” said NZ On Air Chief Executive Jane Wrightson.

“And it is an absolute privilege to support the creation of a feature film from talented wāhine and based on Patricia Grace’s important novel Cousins. It has a powerful kaupapa and fulfils in every way the intentions of our Rautaki Māori,” Ms Wrightson continued.

Funding details
Creamerie, 6 x 22 mins, Flat3 Productions for TVNZ 2, up to $1,733,889
Cousins, 1 x 100 mins, Miss Conception Films for Māori Television, up to $200,000

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