An independent NZ film producer believes that New Zealand’s film industry should welcome the USA’s possible new tariffs on non-American films.
As a New Zealand independent producer Sam Miller welcomes the possible new Tariffs from the USA, arguing they could help restore balance to an industry long dominated by mega U.S. studios benefiting from NZ subsidies.
The original New Zealand Screen Production Rebate administered by the New Zealand Film Commission was set up specifically to balance New Zealand and other non-USA Film producing countries against America’s huge studio film production system.
For many years the rebates were strictly used only for New Zealand, UK or Commonwealth co-productions, however in 1997 a loophole was allowed for USA production houses – this resulted in $300-$400m in government subsidies to American interests on one production alone. In the intervening years Wellington, Queenstown and Auckland have been obsessed with this “financial magic dust” – to the detriment of real New Zealand productions, Miller believes.
Miller says he has been happy to produce cinema documentaries and features with “wonderful normal New Zealanders” such as The Wizard & the Commodore, on Chatham Island, and feature films such as The Five Kingdoms Trilogy without any government or international financial backing.
These films have gone as far as London’s Grand Cinema, and recently even to Venice in Italy for Carnevale, with the Five Kingdoms now being translated for distribution in Italy.
“We’ve had absolutely no help from Wellington,” Miller said.
“At the Cannes festival last year we were not listed in the official NZ Film Commission publications. I sent our project outline up to them in Wellington on more than one occasion for the newsletter during the year; we have tried, but nothing ever shows up.”
“Unlike the Film Commission, which sent four employees to Cannes at a cost to the taxpayer of $145,000, I paid for our appearance last year entirely out of my own pocket. The Film Commission actually got rid of some of our posters I had left there; and in the morning they were in the Trash.”
This year Miller and a team of New Zealand actors and narrators including Davey Round, Robert Tait and the Wizard of New Zealand, are off to Cannes again with Our Man in Cannes: The David Blake Story, about Cannes history and erstwhile London producer and Hollywood veteran David Blake who has been on the Croisette at Cannes every year since 1968.
Miller quoted one of his all time favourite directors – R.I.P. Geoff Murphy:
“For a few golden years there we gave the country its own heroes and they loved it. However it wasn’t to last because this other fellow turned up. A fellow called Peter Jackson,” said Murphy to a packed theatre of graduates. “And he stole the film industry off us … he became flavour of the month in Hollywood. And he has stayed flavour of the month in Hollywood for something like 14 years, which is an extraordinarily difficult act.
“Peter doesn’t make New Zealand films, he makes films for Warner Brothers. He makes commercial product for the international market. The films he makes have got very little to do with us culturally. But it won’t last forever. And then perhaps he might come back to New Zealand and start making New Zealand films again. That’d be good.”
Additional information: Cannes Film Festival 2024 OIA request.
https://x.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1920625663012127191
eypstein
Disgusting NZ film commission so many ministries working for themselves and not for New Zealanders it’s shameful! We must support these film producers!
Where is my comment NZ Film Commission should be working for ALL New Zealanders! It’s disgusting!
Peter Jackson made films here though. Employed shitloads of local people too.
Why do films made here have to be culturally about NZ?
Sounds bitter
Is that Geoff Murphy’s comments you are talking about??
Havn’t seen Utu? or Goodbye Pork Pie?
Clammy USAID recipient??
Whoops…. that’s the University of Auckland & the Globalist spooks.
$145,000 for a week – that’s a lot of cash… who took the backhanders?
Every NZ kid needs to watch Billy T James aswell.
We should be laying charges against hollywood for the extensive psychological grooming they have undertaken with their weaponised, military grade propoganda.
This insidious practice is ultimately evil and has captured the masses under a spell of deception. Disney are irrefutably predatory profiteers, aiming at the vulnerable children. Normalised fkdness.
It’s time people woke up to the level of thought leading and manipulation inherrent in this weaponised rubbish oozing out of the land of the freemasons.
Our nation is flooded with this foreign shit which has only served to smother, pollute and homogenise our own culture while delatforming our own art and artists.
Streaming services – Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ need to have Tariffs on them at the minimum & go through a strong NZ Censorship process.
Ban the Propagandists would be ideal.
What have they done for our societies??
Where is the NZ Content policy which used to be so strong?
Just like New Zealand’s NUCLEAR FREE pledge – New Zealand has to do this for the World.
Giving up the American poison can be painful – but it benefits the whole world.
It appears the NZ Film Commission may have become a mere finance vehicle administered by persons more concerned with their selfish ambitions bound to corporate currency, rather than fostering the creative love of the artists evolving Kiwi culture.