NZEDGE.COM and The Sunday Star Times present  the Top-60 International New Zealand newsmakers for 2002. Drawn from the achievements of New Zealanders at home and from the nearly 1 million Kiwis off-island; from sources ranging from the New York Times, Guardian, Vogue, Salon, LA Times, Wired, London Times, iD, Sydney Morning Herald, Salon and more. Peter Jackson's incredible efforts in creating middle earth at the edge, and the beginning of America's Cup racing in Auckland, drew attention to the new world styles of Aotearoa and the secret begun to leak that our island nation in the South Seas was a whole lot deeper than a sanctuary for sheep and pretty scenery. The 'z' mentions in the world's news media saw the Kiwi fly high. From the icons to the surprising - the co-designer of the Apple iMac and the CEO of the City of London … the breadth and diversity of NZ achievement is an affirmation of the New Zealand difference.

Bill Manhire's Creative Writing Academy
In an unlikely pairing with Las Vegas gambling magnate Glenn Schaeffer, the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University (encompassing Bill Manhire's acclaimed creative writing course) has become a literary "talent spotting agency" attracting international attention. Manhire's course, credited with a literary renaissance in the land of the long white cloud, is putting a lie to the myth that Kiwi writers have to flee to flourish (Mansfield, Frame) and is producing a winning stable for literary punters to follow. Emily Perkins is, "one of Britain's [sic] most exciting writers" (The Sunday Times). Elizabeth Knox was recipient of the $50000 2001 Tasmanian Pacific Region Prize, (Australasia's richest) and has gathered a best selling international following. LA Times recently described Catherine Chidgey's The Strength of the Sun as, "exquisitely written, […] a beautifully crafted, often poignant work." And the latest bet is Paula Morris whose Queen of Beauty is eagerly anticipated. In a major feature on Manhire, entitled 'The Magus' Australian Financial Review wonders in trans-Tasman awe at the serendipitous association of Vegas high roller Schaeffer and NZ's first poet laureate and the course's creative guru, Manhire. "The ILML is a work-in-progress […] In hindsight, Australia's budding writers may wish that Scaeffer had holidayed on their shores."

Nathan Astle
In March Nathan Astle produced the most astounding display of cricketing artistry in hitting the fastest double-century in test cricketing history in the first test against England, reaching 200 off 153 balls, "One of the greatest ever test innings ... unbelievable savagery" (Daily Telegraph). He eclipsed Australian Adam Gilchrist's record and earned himself, "a place among the immortals" (Guardian). The second century came off his flashing blade in just 39 deliveries, eclipsing the previous record by an amazing 59 balls. International cricketing legends could not remember a time when the ball had been hit so cleanly, so often. "Only the richter scale could measure its magnitude." "It was the most destructive of all test innings" (Independent).

David Low
A major retrospective of the work of David Low, the New Zealand artist widely acclaimed as the "Twentieth Century's greatest cartoonist" went on show in March at British Parliament's Westminster Hall - the locus of much of Low's cartoons' subversive humour. The master satirist "with an outsider's perspective" (The Guardian) known to one of his favourite targets, Winston Churchill, as "the Charlie Chaplin of caricature" arrived in London in 1919. Over half a century, Low sent up British politics at The Star, The Evening Standard, the Daily Herald and the Manchester Guardian. Low's most famous creation was Colonel Blimp, the "bloated, walrus-faced symbol of British reactionism and stupidity. His 1930s drawings of Hitler earned him a place at the top of the Gestapo death list and a slap on the wrist from foreign secretary, Lord Halifax. Much of the exhibition was drawn from the private collections of politicians such as Churchill who had rescued Low's original artwork from the office rubbish bin. British MP Tony Banks: "Low was a prime example of how cartoonists could be both true artists and significant political commentators."

Giovanni Intra
We are diminished to report the death of Giovanni Intra in New York City on December 17th 2002. Giovanni, artist, critic, gallerist went east to stir up the LA art scene and established the gallery, China Art Objects, and its location, Chinatown, as a fresh new locus that, "changed the landscape" of the West Coast art world and was internationally regarded as one of the most influential new galleries. Giovanni was remembered in Art Forum, LA Times, New York Times, Las Vegas Sun, and The Independent. The British style bible i-D magazine recently selected China Art Objects as one of international art's "outstanding galleries" (April 2001) - high praise for a gallery on the fringes of the conventional art-scene. At last year's prestigious Basel Art Fair in Switzerland China Art Objects was awarded "Best Booth, Established Galleries". In addition, Intra was a regular and highly regarded writer-editor within the pages of Artforum and Artext. Connie Butler, curator at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art: "He and the presence of China Art Objects have made an incredible mark on the art community here, in fact changed the landscape. Chinatown is now the freshest and consistently most interesting context for young artists' work and the spirit of China Art Objects is largely responsible for this. Their program is a provocative mix of emerging artists and more mature artists' work that is seldom seen in Los Angeles. I admire Giovanni's energy and intelligence, and his low key amibition is a welcome addition to the community."

A tribute exhibition for Giovanni was held at The Hamish McKay Gallery in Wellington from January 18th - February 1st. Kelly Carmichael's NZEDGE profile of Giovanni remains here.

Mark Baldwin
In July, Mark Baldwin was appointed artistic director one of Britain's oldest and most prestigious dance companies, Rambert. Fijian-born Baldwin, who performed with Limbs Dance Company and New Zealand Ballet before moving to London, danced with the prestigious company for nine years. He then forged a successful career as a choreographer producing, by his own estimation, about seven new works a year over a decade. Fresh, original choreography (including his own work) in synthesis with new music and design is likely to become the hallmark of Baldwin's reign at the company: "As a choreographer," commented The Guardian, "Baldwin has a reputation for making bold and intelligent music choices… and he loves the mysterious alchemy that occurs in the theatre between music and dance." Baldwin is also intent on preserving the tradition of excellence at the company which is so dear to his heart: "What's the point of me taking on this company if I don't have the highest ambitions for it? What's the point if I don't start off by swinging from the chandeliers?"
    

Danny Coster
Industrial designer Danny Coster is a key component in the design of one of the most influential (and coveted) pieces of industrial design of our time: the Apple iMac. As part of Apple's in-house industrial design team, he shares responsibility for the iMac (1998 and 2001), iBook, and G4. The icon making, convention busting, award winning (but secretive) Apple design team took out the British Design and Art Direction Association's top award for industrial design this year for the fourth year running, as well as a Design of the Decade Gold Award. The Sydney Morning Herald struggled to find the code behind their latest design, conceding: "I understand, without knowing for sure, that it is about six people, one of whom is an Australian and another a New Zealander ..." There is no i in team, but Kiwi Danny Coster is the edge in the machine.

Tim Bevan
Close to Home clipboard carrier turned major Hollywood player, film producer, Tim Bevan added to his stunning and diverse portfolio this year with releases including About a Boy, Bridget Jones' Diary, Captain Corelli's Mandolin and Ali G Indahouse. 51st place on Premiere Magazine's 2002 Power List (alongside fellow NZers Peter Jackson (41) and Russell Crowe (28)), Bevan and partner Eric Fellner are, according to The Guardian, "Brit-flick's twin towers of power… Britain's biggest movie moguls of all time." As co-founder and co-chairman of Working Title Films, Queenstown-born Bevan has produced over 40 of the most commercially and critically acclaimed releases of the last two decades. Heralded as the successor to the great David Puttnam, his films range from the indie-breakthrough My Beautiful Launderette, through to the billion dollar successes of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Elizabeth, Fargo, Notting Hill, Dead Man Walking, and Bridget Jones' Dairy. The Observer: "Are Tim Bevan (43) and Eric Fellner (41) the most powerful London-based film producers in history? The answer is almost certainly yes. No one in the British film industry has an international hit-making track record that comes close." Bevan, who served his screen apprenticeship at the National Film Unit, before making music videos and indie films in the 80s, now sits on the Board of Directors of the British Film Council. He has a close relationship with American left-fielders The Coen brothers, five of whose films he has executive produced (including this year's The Man Who Wasn't There).

Jilly Evans
Asthmatics worldwide have biochemist and Auckland University graduate, Dr Jilly Evans, to thank for the prevention and treatment drug Singulair. Developed by Evans and her team at Merck Research Laboratories in the States, Singulair has proven successful in alleviating the suffering of even chronic sufferers. Her team also helped arthritis sufferers with the medication, Vioxx. Evans' impressive international scientific career grew from inspirational teaching in rural New Zealand schools. She still keeps in touch with correspondence chemistry teacher, Jean Struthers: "Tapes would come from Wellington every week. I never met her, but her voice was lovely. She described the composition of water in all its forms with such passion and she was very encouraging." A passionate supporter of women's careers in science, Evans is a proud New Zealander living abroad and enthusiastic about our improving understanding of genes: "There is a great story to be told in genetics and it needs to be delivered with passion."

Chad Taylor
Auckland writer Chad Taylor plugs into the circuit, showing that NZ lit is more than a journey down a lonely gravel road to a boozy summer of '69 familial dissolution at the bach, by generating strong international reviews with his own brand of down under noir: "Brilliance emerges from the chaos" notes the Irish Times about Taylor's latest, Electric, a tale of Auckland's maths and drugs scene. GQ: "Hums with energy […] an inventive and intelligent thriller." Observer: "The plot seems to unfold in another world where reality is shifting and elusive. Taylor's impressively laconic prose style is enough to maintain the tension of the narrative right up to the end." Taylor's work, noted for its "cinematic sense of location and narration" (The Times) has evoked comparisons with Paul Auster and Bret Easton Ellis and Electric was Time Out's book of the week for 21st January. Pulp: "Dark, intense, fast-paced, and perceptive, both noir literary thriller and pulp crime fiction […] Cool, surreal and sexy." The Scotsman: "This is an exciting read, and Chad Taylor is a writer with very much more to say." Maybe it's that stark winter light -lit pouri perhaps?

Craig Perks
"The incredible, the completely unpredicted and unpredictable actually happened in the Players Championship here near Jacksonville, Florida, yesterday," wrote The Guardian in March. "Craig Perks, a New Zealander who is not even famous in his own lounge… become the unsuspected winner of one of the biggest tournaments in golf." In New Zealand's greatest golfing moment since Bob Charles won the British Open in 1963, Craig Perks shot a stunning final round to clinch the Players' championship, regarded as golfing's fifth major tournament. Perks's final stroke, a chip-in from thick rough behind the 18th green, brought him a theatrical victory, the richest payoff on the PGA Tour and an unlikely trip to the Masters. "A champion no one knew. A finish no one can forget." (Los Angeles Times)

Phil Keoghan
Starting out on after-school Kiwi staples Spot On and 3:45 Live, NZ's intrepid TV personality, Phil Keoghan, has gone on to host top-rating American network shows. In 2002 he fronted The Amazing Race for CBS. A smart variation on the reality TV genre that sends contestants on a Survivor-esque round-the-world sprint for a US$1 million prize. Amazing Race follows on from shows he has created and produced, including Keoghan's Heroes, profiling international thrill-seekers, The Human Edge, a technology show for National Geographic, and Phil Keoghan's Adventure Crazy, which is one of Discovery Channel's highest rating series ever. In a 2001 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Keoghan confessed to having a list of things to achieve before he dies. Some of them - getting married underwater, eating a 5-star meal on an erupting volcano - he has already done, but the list continues to grow. Says Keoghan: "The more I live, the more I want to live […] and the more I want to help others live their 'once in a lifetime' dreams." Appearing on a recent cover of American TV Guide wearing a black NZEDGE T-shirt, Phil showed the world where his heart is.

Che Fu
Super-royal groove: in a year that saw local musicians competing against each other for the first time for top spots in the charts, Che Fu brought his unique South Seas' blend of hip hip, R&B and reggae to the rest of the world. Not even the Queen missed out on getting down to the Aotearoa sound: Fu and his band the Krates (featuring world-ranked turntable master, DJ P.Money) joined Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and composer John Psathas in adding a taste of NZ to the Royal Variety Performance in July. Che Fu's first trip to London also saw him performing at the Fierce Festival, a Jubilee weekend celebration of music from the colonies. After a year of globe trotting following the amazing success of his second album Navigator, the former Supergroover won the 2002 Silver Scroll for the gorgeous Misty Frequencies, co-written by keyboardist and Krate, Godfrey de Grut. The award is the cherry on top of the pav for Navigator, including five New Zealand Music Awards for best album, single and video of the year.

Georgina Beyer
"The stallion who became a gelding, the gelding that became a mayor, and the mare who finally became a member". The world's first transsexual MP, Georgina Beyer, made an international impression as a documentary about her life, Georgie Girl, toured film festivals around the world. The star of the show received a standing ovation after its screening in San Francisco; subsequently its makers became "inundated" with bids by TV channels and film festivals. A documentary about a politician has never been so watchable. Beyer's former incarnations include farm boy, drag queen, male prostitute and TV star, culminating in a spectacular victory over National's Paul Henry and his "I'm still male" campaign to win the Wairarapa seat for Labour in 1999. Her constituents, marveled The Independent, were hardly the liberal type: "(They) are the redneck farmers of Wairarapa in New Zealand's rural heartland, a largely white area that was a rock-solid conservative seat until she won it for Labour"; the victory was "an extraordinary result that was testament to her ability to win hearts and dissolve prejudice." To the Sydney Morning Herald, Georgie Girl's greatest appeal is its "entertaining" protagonist: "not merely because her life has been so unusual, but because she has a quality that is rare in a politician: candour …"

Dennis Dutton
Philosophy of art professor at Canterbury University and intellectual hero of the internet, Dennis Dutton, was this year's recipient of People's Voice award for best news site at the "internet Oscars", the Webbys. His site, Arts and Letters Daily, motivated by a desire to sort out the worthwhile bytes from the chaff, is crammed with links to the sharpest articles, essays, reviews, interviews and reports from media sources across the globe. Dutton's site was given the prize by the International Academy of Arts and Sciences, whose members include Bjork, Beck and Branson and IT gurus from Larry Ellison to Mark Tribe. Dutton is known around the Canterbury campus as much for his outspoken views on state TV, national museums and radio, as his fanaticism for classical music and vast collection of phrenology heads and Sepik River art. "Over dinner with him," wrote Salon.com, "trying to keep up with his knowledge and ideas about wine, Glenn Gould, Kant and evolutionary psychology, you can feel like Boswell invigorated by the company of Dr. Johnson." In an article arguing that the internet's brain still has a pulse Guardian singled out "the learned delights of Arts and Letters Daily … a unique connection of links to articles and essays on the arts and humanities".

Dalvanius
Entertainer and entrepreneur Dalvanius Prime, pioneer of Polynesian soul and hip-hop, died of cancer in October at 54. Prime was remembered by The Guardian as "a gentle giant… a crucial figure in New Zealand's now celebrated Maori cultural renaissance". Loyal to his hometown Patea, Prime founded the youth group The Patea Maori Club, "a fascinating blend of musical theatre and socio-political statement", that toured the US and Britain, singing about the effect of unemployment on their community. Their song Poi-E topped the charts in 1984 and kick-started a thriving hip-hop scene in the South Pacific. Prime would later compose soundtracks; help set up Aotearoa Radio and establish the "Maori Motown", Maui Records. Distinctive to his sound was the marrying of Maori vocal harmonies and soul, as in his hit with Prince Tui Teka, E I Po. Prime's other great passion was a symbolic reclaiming of maori property, the repatriation of moko mokai (preserved Maori heads) from museums around the world. At his tangi, MP Donna Awatere Huata spoke of his impact: "Dalvanius was the first person to make Maori performing arts accessible to every New Zealander… he crossed a boundary that had never before been traversed."

Lee Tamahori
"Sexy, funny and spectacular" (BBC); Tamahori, Lee Tamahori's, Bond debut, Die Another Day, knocked even the omnipotent Harry Potter off its Number 1 perch at the US box office in its first week. The kiwi director has been based in LA since the groundbreaking commercial, critical and cultural success of Once Were Warriors eight years ago. His take on the British pop culture institution, he says, was fresh yet respectful: "A Bond movie has conventions: girls, gadgets, action. It's not that you must stick with them, but if you don't, you may be doing the film - and the genre - a disservice." Featuring Halle Berry in an aubergine catsuit, Pierce Brosnan, and shaven haired villains bent on world destruction and lots of the expected pyrotechnics and explosions, the film preserves a grand tradition of preposterous action, innuendo and cheesy one-liners. The critics were shaken and stirred in equal parts: Salon: "Tamahori seems out to entertain us rather than just impress us, and that distinction makes all the difference." BBC: "After 40 years and in his 20th film, James Bond deserves a kick in the noughties. Kiwi helmer Lee Tamahori provides it." New York Times: "a big, noisy blend of globe-trotting, coy sexuality and cartoonish political intrigue [...] perhaps the most satisfying Bond movie since The Spy Who Loved Me."

Brendan MacFarlane
Eiffel? non. Blobby? oui! Brendan MacFarlane, Kiwi half of design duo Jakob and MacFarlane continued to dazzle the Parisian architecture scene: "The only work of architecture raising Parisians' eyebrows was Jakob and MacFarlane's "blobby" rooftop restaurant, crowning the Pompidou Centre renovation." Architectural Record named the minimalist restaurant redesign for Paris's center of arts and culture as the "hottest space in Paris". "Jakob + MacFarlane's "blobular" terrain in the new Georges restaurant rises from the gridlines of the Pompidou Center like volcanic eruptions, defining four large, undulant aluminum-clad shells that range in length from 26 to 68 feet. […] The four objects, or shells, are lined in colored rubber: lime green for the coat-check area and bathrooms, yellow for the future bar (which now houses video screens), red for the VIP lounge, and gray for the kitchen. Tables fill in the unobstructed, glazed perimeter." Chic and cutting edge the design embraces technology while absorbing and reflecting its natural surroundings: in this case, the old Beauborg area of Paris, and the eccentric Georges Pompidou centre, whose air ducts, heating shafts, and stairwells are exposed on to the outside to create more space inside. Richard Roger and Renzo Piano took out the building's intestines; Macfarlane and Jakob deformed the floor. "Hopefully our work makes people think and feel" says Macfarlane in Interview.

Peter Gordon
Peter Gordon, the man who introduced fusion cooking to London via Paraparaumu barbies and a cook's tour of Asia ("the man who launched a thousand experiments with seaweed, noodles and kangaroo", The Observer) is working on popularizing Kiwi cuisine up over. The notion of a flat white was a stranger to most Londoners until Gordon unveiled The Providores, winner of last year's BMW Square Meal Award for Best New Restaurant in the UK. Downstairs in The Tapa Room (named for its jumbo-sized tapa cloth along one wall), homesick New Zealanders can order a "proper coffee" whilst humming to Che Fu and flicking through a North & South. Gordon's Sugar Club kitchens migrated from Wellington's Vivian St to London's Notting Hill and Soho, cooking up a storm in the London restaurant scene. He left in 1999 to begin his first solo effort, The Providores, in posh Marylebone High Street. Gordon's remarkable menu blends Mediterranean and Pacific influences: "If you think you don't like fusion food, then it's probably because you haven't tried Peter Gordon's cooking" (BMW). This year Gordon has released a new cookbook, and took master classes in mixing it up at Toast New Zealand's annual food and wine event.

Jonathan Lemalu
Sweet sounds from the South Pacific wafted into international ears this year, as a former Mobil Song Quest winner continued to scoop prizes: among them, the UK's most prestigious singing award. Bass-baritone Jonathan Fa'afetai Lemalu (his middle name means "thank you" in Samoan) was awarded a joint first prize at the prestigious Kathleen Ferrier Awards. In July, he graduated from London's Royal College of Music, winning the College's gold medal. Lemalu's debut album with pianist Roger Vignoles, Songs: Brahms, Faure, Finzi, Schubert left the British press awestruck: "An exceptional talent" (Sunday Telegraph, who featured Lemalu on the cover); "Here is an enormous voice, of cavernous resonance and silken tone, in the control of an artist equipped with all the right musical instincts and intelligence" (The Times); "A major new talent destined for greatness" (Gramophone Magazine). In November, Lemalu cemented his star status with a debut performance with the English National Opera as Basilio in The Barber of Seville.

Neil Scott
In November, humanitarian computing guru Neil Scott became a finalist in the US Tech Museum of Innovation Awards for 2002. The respected Silicon Valley based awards honour "innovators and visionaries who are applying technology to improve the human condition." Scott heads the Archimedes Project, an independent research organisation based at Stanford University that is dedicated to developing information technologies that improve the lives of the disabled, the elderly and others who aren't able to access conventional technology. President and CEO of The Tech Museum, Peter Gilles described Scott as among "the best of the best", and the ramifications of his work "stunning". "Applications range from enhancing productivity of people with such disabilities as limited vision and movement … to giving autistic children a means to communicate." But for Scott, a Canterbury University engineering graduate, "My truest reward is the smiles on peoples' faces when they can use computers as well, or better than, people without disabilities."

Tall Blacks
Fulfilling their wildest hoop dreams and confounding expectations, the Tall Blacks provided the year's most thrilling sporting moments as they hustled their way into the semi-finals of the World Championships in Indianapolis. Stirred into a frenzy by their wins against Russia and Venezuela in the first round, China in the second and Puerto Rico in the quarter-finals, suddenly it seemed that basketball had been our national sport all along. The amazing new form of the "thunder from down under" was celebrated in Sports Illustrated: "During the Sydney Olympics a picture of the team doing the haka ran in an American newspaper under the headline 'They can't play, but they sure can dance.' Sweetheart, get me rewrite." The haka was less welcome in some quarters: "Los gringos son locos!" spluttered the Sydney Morning Herald as the Venezuelans complained of intimidation. By the semi-finals, even the mighty Americans languished behind us, and a record-breaking 800,000 New Zealanders dragged themselves out of bed to watch the Tall Blacks' narrow loss to Yugoslavia. Captain Pero Cameron joined the greats as the All-Tournament forward, and Tall Blacks' coach Tab Baldwin spoke for an ecstatic team: "To say we're thrilled only highlights the inadequacy of the English language."

Peter Hunter and the Auckland University Bio-Engineering Institute
The creation of a 3D computer modelling of the body's inner workings, or "virtual body", is the aim of an ambitious project instigated in part by Auckland bioengineer Dr Peter Hunter. Hunter is a key collaborator on the international Physiome Project, which aims to collate all the physiological information known about the human body into one database and transform it into models of cells, tissues, organs and, ultimately, the entire human system. Hunter's team - the Auckland University Bioengineering Institute - are taking the lead in heart and lung modelling and software development. Profiled in a major Economist feature the implications of their project are enormous: if researchers could run tests on computer models instead of real body parts, the effectiveness or potential side effects of a particular treatment could be established within days, saving millions of dollars and years in research.

Geoff Blackwell
Popular milk run proves salve to unsettled zeitgeist: a photo essay on shared moments of humanity and international xmas pressie favourite MILK (Moments of Intimacy, Laughter and Kinship) is the brainchild of Nzer Geoff Blackwell. Hundreds turned out at New York's Grand Central Station in July for the opening of the associated photography exhibition. Blackwell had invited photographers around the world - from amateurs to Pulitzer Prize winners - to enter a competition, the results of which were collated in the exhibition and in three books with the themes of friendship, love and family. 250 winning images were chosen from 40,000 entries. Inspiration for the project, which also travelled to London, was drawn from the classic 1950s photography book "The Family of Man". One of the photographers featured in that volume, Eliott Erwitt, acted as chief judge for Blackwell's project. "The whole idea behind this," Blackwell told CBS News, "was that it was a celebration of humanity, not a celebration of photography. And we said the criteria is simply we're looking for real stories, real emotion, images that touch people." One of the books resulting from Blackwell's competition, MILK Family, was short-listed in the Montana Book Awards' illustrative category.

Colin McCahon
Aotearoa's most important artist, Colin McCahon, went international this year with a major retrospective of his life and work at Amsterdam's renowned Stedelijk Museum. Billed controversially as the "the Van Gogh of Australasia" by Stedelijk senior curator Marja Bloem; McCahon's spiritual journeying across nearly four decades culminated in the A Question of Faith survey, which features 78 paintings drawn from collections across the globe. It's the first time Northern Hemisphere has been treated to a comprehensive view of the Timaruvian's canon. The Stedelijk sought to introduce newcomers to McCahon's distinctive style: "What at first sight would seem to be the naïve work of a religious believer from a distant corner of the world is revealed to be the explorations of a doubter whose questions and concerns have a much wider significance and add dimension to our view of post-war modernism." Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith is now showing in Wellington and next year will travel to Auckland, Melbourne and Sydney.

Christine Jeffs
This New Zealand coming-of-age movie isn't really about anything. When it's this rich and luscious, who cares?" (Salon). Christine Jeffs' first feature, this year's delicate, melancholic Rain, has been warmly welcomed by critics worldwide and saw her placed on Variety's "Ten Directors to Watch" list. The film, adapted from the eponymous Kirsty Gunn novella, is seen through a teenage girl's eyes and tells the story of a family on the brink of unraveling over a sultry summer at a kiwi bach. The film explores the protagonists sexual awakening - a coming of age complicated by her own mother's (Sarah Peirse) dissolving marriage and attraction to the same man, brooding photographer Cady (played by Martin Csokas whose next role was as Vin Diesel's nemesis in xXx). Nerve called it "The Ice Storm on defrost" and Jeffs' understated, artful style was praised as a stunning debut: "Her gorgeous, fluid compositions, underlined by Neil Finn and Edmund McWilliams' melancholy music, are charged with metaphor, but rarely easy, obvious or self-indulgent" (New York Times). "Breathtakingly assured… a work of spare dialogue and acute expressiveness" (Los Angeles Times). Also attracting praise was John Toon's cinematography, capturing the particular torpid light of the late Aotearoa summer, and the acting performances, particularly of the new-comer in the lead role, Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki. Jeffs' next project is a British production about Sylvia Plath's turbulent marriage to Ted Hughes, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig, inspired by Hughes' biography, "Birthday Letters".

Neil Finn
Still singing like a bird released Aotearoa's most loved, respected, and internationally successful singer/songwriter Neill Finn continued to carry the mantle as the troubadour from Te Awamutu in 2002. Finn's latest effort, 7 Worlds Collide, caused the Chicago Tribune to wonder "what kind of birds are fluttering around his native New Zealand … he sings melodies that are just plain gorgeous … one of the finest melodists working in modern popular music". Neil's musical mana is evidenced by the international super-group he brought to Auckland's St James in 2001 for the one-off concert and recording; a line up of friends that included Radiohead's Ed O'Brien, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, and ex-Smiths guitarist, Johnny Marr. The album has, according to Rolling Stone, pleasingly rougher edges than the "pop perfection" of his previous work. Canoe: "There's so much here to enjoy. And nothing to dislike". Billboard: "Hats off to Finn for coming up with a great idea - and to his friends for coming through". Finn is currently touring the world with the album, whose royalties will be entirely given to charity.

Neal Travis
"Without a doubt one of the most important journalists and columnists of his generations": Neal Travis, the "brash, swashbuckling New Zealand import", novelist and legendary editor of The New York Post's influential and in/famous Page Six gossip column, died on 14th July. The high school drop-out from Dunedin worked as a journalist in New Zealand and Australia before hitting the big time in New York. "Gatsybyesque" Travis was a huge personality in the Big Apple, known as much for his "Savile Row tailored shirts and handsome shock of silver hair," friends in high places, and rapier wit as for his no-holds-barred style of reportage.

Alan Brunton
57-year-old performance artist Alan Brunton died while touring Europe with his Red Mole theatre troupe, "[depriving] NZ letters of its one truly iconic radical figure" (The Independent). Brunton had been on the road with Grooves of Glory with his partner, Sally Rodwell. Coming to prominence in the late 70s as one of the emerging young artists to rally against established literary norms and perceived elitism, a profile of Brunton by The Independent painted him as an radical, ideologically committed and extraordinary figure, an unlikely hero amidst New Zealand's sporting giants and technological achievers: A stalwart of the Aotearoa alternative scene, "Brunton gave New Zealand a huge vein of mystic gold." Fq, the last work prepared for publication by Brunton before his death in Amsterdam this year, contains this wry self description: "Each step is more delirious than even a line by Alan Brunton/ life's supreme uranic poet/ Overseer of the Scribes of the Great Records".

The Datsuns
"Guitar music is dead - go cut your hair!'' The student radio DJ who gave this advice to the Datsuns will never find employment as a soothsayer. Happily, the Datsuns ignored him and hauled their hairy, sweaty, old-school rawk'n'roll off on the ultimate in OEs. Legendary broadcaster John Peel eased their entry into Britain by opening his show with their self-recorded record Transistor. The Cambridge quartet then treated the rest of the country to a series of shows that invariably found them hanging from rafters, climbing speakers and diving into the crowd. A few months later, the Datsuns joined Moby and Tom Jones on the label V2, and a lovesick New Musical Express, in typical hyperbolic style, was crediting not just its "genetically gifted" new cover stars but - hilariously - the whole of New Zealand, as its New Saviours of Rock - "the greatest band since the Rolling Stones … "If you like beer-soaked boot-cut Levi's, sweat-matted hair and Cro-Magnon guitar riffs [...] - and who doesn't? - your prayers have been answered further. New Zealand's The Datsuns are less a band, more a thrilling gonzoid Kiwi refitting of sundry deeply ludicrous - yet deeply glorious - rockster clichés."

Karen Walker
Karen Walker started working from the fringe, stitching up hemmes on the family Bernina when she was six; now her eponymous designs hang on the rails at Barneys in New York and LA, Colette in Paris, Joyce in Hong Kong, b store and Euphoria in London and in 60 stores in Japan. After Madonna wore a pair of Karen Walker trousers to the MTV Awards, they sold out at Barneys within a week. But Walker situates herself comfortably on the edge, letting the fashionistas seek her out if they dare. "Maybe Auckland is not the traditional centre of the fashion world, but it seems to be working fine so far." Her 2002 Breakfast Club-inspired collection, choreographed by Face Fashion director, and Kiwi, Heathermary Jackson, was a talking point of London Fashion Week and had Londoners wishing it was winter there too. "It is perhaps the sense that Walker's clothes are not a product of the slick and glossy fashion machine", gushed the Observer, "that makes them so right for now." With a quintessentially NZ design ethic of comfort over glitz, a style she describes as "high casual", the Walker brand of dressing down is becoming increasingly popular. She draws inspiration from other Aotearoa artists whose work shows the influence of the place: "Take The Piano, Colin McCahon's paintings, our work and even Neil Finn - there's a heavy, ominous, slightly restrained kind of feel. And I think that comes from our culture and our landscape and just the personality of the country. There's a heaviness to it." The Powerhouse in Sydney, Te Papa and the Auckland City Art Gallery have acknowledged her icon status by acquiring specimens of her work.

Brent Hansen
Kia ora, I want my MTV: for his many London-based kiwi staff, hosting regular lunches for the Aotearoa component of the media megalith is but one of the endearing qualities of Brent Hansen, president and chief executive of MTV Europe. As MTV worldwide celebrates its twentieth birthday, "old-school music fan and Mojo reader", Brent Hansen "has been instrumental in making MTV as powerful an entertainment force - and marketing tool - in Europe as it is in America. Part of MTV since 1987, Hansen has seen the entertainment juggernaut beam into 100 million homes across the continent, launch the careers of acts as diverse as Madonna and Eminem, and change the way we appreciate music. The former Radio With Pictures producer with a masters degree in old English Literature has been instrumental in backing Kiwi careers in the UK industry and was a major supporter behind Kiwi modernist maverick, artist Len Lye's, significant retrospective at the Pompidou in Paris.

Niki Caro
Standing ovations greeted both screenings of The Whale Rider at the Toronto Film Festival, where it swerved past Bend it Like Beckham and shot past the much-acclaimed new documentary on the US gun lobby by satirist Michael Moore, Bowling For Columbine, to win the People's Choice award. Previous winners include Amelie and Crouching Tiger - Hidden Dragon. Coming in under the radar SMH called the reception "one of the film world's minor miracles". Director Nicki Caro's "beautifully realized" preoccupations with death and dreaming, evident in her debut Memory and Desire, unfurled easily into her adaption of Witi Ihimaera's novel Paikea. The story weaves myth and fiction as it mirrors the path of a Maori ancestor who escapes death by riding on the back of a whale, with the modern story of a young Maori girl (new-comer Keisha Castle-Hughes in a "quietly heroic" performance, LA Times) who grapples with tradition and a stoic grandfather to assume a leadership role in a small East Coast Maori community. "The charm of all this lies in the film's beguiling combination of the exotic and the familiar. These people smoke, drink, play cards and possess a thoroughly modern and laconic sense of humour. Any fan of The Full Monty or Bend It Like Beckham is quite likely to feel at home with them. At the same time, they feel a profound and spiritual connection to the natural world - something which Caro manages to dramatise in an unaffectedly poignant way." Sydney Morning Herald.

Sir Peter Blake
The spirit of a sailor: yachtsman, environmentalist and national icon, Sir Peter Blake, continued to be recognised for a lifetime of achievement. In November he was posthumously awarded the prestigious Olympic Order for his services to sport. Honorary IOC member, the former King Constantine of Greece, presented the award to Blake's wife, Pippa, at the Emsworth Sailing Club. King Constantine: "Sir Peter was an incredibly impressive man […] He was a man who inspired people, sailors and non-sailors alike." And in May Sir Peter was given both the Laureus Lifetime Achievement Award and the Laureus Sport for Good Award at the 2002 World Sports Awards in Monte-Carlo. Sir Peter was a founding member of the Academy of 44 international sporting greats along with former AB captain Sean Fitzpatrick.

Matthew During
Revolutionary work by a New Zealander at the forefront of human scientific endeavour is offering hope in the battle against the West's most significant health problems in the 21st century. In September, Matt During announced a breakthrough in his search for a treatment for the medically baffling Parkinson's disease. A pioneer in the controversy-courting "fourth revolution" in medicine, gene therapy, During had already stunned the scientific community with his groundbreaking work on a vaccine for stroke and epilepsy. Published in the prestigious journal Science, his findings on Parkinson's derive from a technique of inserting a synthetic gene into the brain using an inactivated virus. In a world first, the United States Food and Drug Administration approved a trial run of the therapy. During's research also developing vaccines to tackle two of what are predicted to be the Western World's biggest health problems - depression and obesity. During, after being wooed by big money US offers, and despite the disheartening scarcity of local funding, chooses to continue his research at Auckland University (in conjunction with Jefferson University in the US) and attract trials and treatment here.

Judith Mayhew
"Top city dame teaches Brit woman a trick or two" runs the headline in a BBC News series on women in business that profiles overachieving NZer and head of City of London, Dame Judith Mayhew. "For a glimpse of Britain's future, look not to your horoscope or government flier, but the next flight to Wellington, Auckland, or Otago." Matthews explains her femme edge: "The colonies developed women's rights early on, because you could not ignore half your workforce, ... They had to clear the land with the men and get the tents up. New Zealand is led by women. The prime minister is a woman, the chief justice is a woman, the governor general a woman, the chief executive of the largest company is a woman..." When Dunedin-born Dame Judith Mayhew recently announced her intention to quit her role as political head of the City of London, she claimed to be "doing too much." She wasn't joking. Described by the Observer as "one of Britain's most powerful women", Dame Judith spoke for an economy bigger than most European countries. Now she's free to wear her innumerable other hats as member of the London Development Agency, founder of the Women's Library in the East End, board member of Imperial College and special advisor to the London Mayor on finance and business. "She may have relinquished the top job at the corporation," said the Observer, "but her mover-and-shaker role seems unlikely to diminish."

David Lewis
Global browser David Lewis died aged 85. Europeans had been mystified by Pacific Islanders' ability to glide compass-less across their vast ocean until one dashing adventurer simply asked them how it was done. "My name is David Lewis," he proclaimed upon disembarking on a Micronesian island, "and I have come to sit at the feet of your wise men and to learn how to find my way across the sea." Lewis' disregard for convention characterised his career. As a young doctor, he would perform surgery in his swimming trunks; his chat with the Micronesian elders would result in a revival of traditional canoe building and voyaging; and later he successfully fought entrenched government (and, presumably, his own communist views) to lift a long-standing ban on private expeditions to the Antarctic. When Lewis died this year at 85, his fellow adventurer Dick Smith offered this winning eulogy: "David Lewis was the most wonderfully fantastic scallywag I have ever met. His love for the ocean can only be balanced by the love of beautiful women for him."

Dick Hubbard
Kiwi "messiah of muesli", entrepreneur Dick Hubbard is joining international brands like Benetton and The Body Shop in urging businesses to "consider the social and environmental impact of [business'] activities, rather than being fixated on the financial bottom line." Legend has it that 15 years ago, Hubbard, sitting atop a rock in New York's Central Park, promised his wife he'd be running his own company within nine months. He had yet to discover what it would be - but the answer was staring at him from the lack-lustre contents of his cereal bowl. Tired of the stranglehold Sanitarium and Kellogs had on the breakfast market, the former food technologist developed the delectably titled Winner Foods. Today the ever-smiling Hubbard and his renamed Hubbard Foods also provide sustenance to ethical business practice by way of his role as chair of New Zealand Businesses for Social Responsibility. His famed "Triple Bottom Line" philosophy centres on the three Ps: People, Planet and Profits. Independent: "His aims are grand; he seeks to give New Zealanders - and the world - not only breakfast, but also inspiration and moral leadership: sustenance for mind, body and soul."

Bic Runga
"She sings the kind of beautiful, haunting songs that work their way into your subconscious and emerge when it's raining and you can't sleep." Harpers Bazaar. Following up Bic Runga's debut album Drive was no small task, amounting as it did to matching the highest-selling record in New Zealand recording history (the single Sway even found its way across the Pacific on to the soundtrack of the movie American Pie). So the 26-year-old took her time. Three years, 12 sound engineers, eight studios and five locations later, she stumped up with the goods. A global soul with a local heart - on returning home from two years in New York: "I like the innocence of being in NZ. There's a kind of introversion and it's a little bit dark. It's such a new country that it has a sort of freshness. If you're making music or art here, you feel like you're part of the history that's being made." Runga produced, sang and provided much of the instrumentation on Beautiful Collision, as she had on Drive, and this time paid gentle tribute to some key influences. 'Get Some Sleep' features shades of The Mamas and the Papas, while Listening for the Weather is an ode to Crowded House, with Neil Finn helping out on vocals. According to Australia's Juice: Runga masterfully exudes a blend of old-world authenticity with an ultra-modern sparkle. […] it's clear where the three years this album took to craft have gone. The ambient, country-tinged melodies of Beautiful Collision are faultless, finding that elusive balance between originality and classicism. Following her Australian tour, Runga will base herself in Los Angeles, with a regular gig at Largo, a hip showcase venue favored by the likes of Beck and Aimee Mann.

Brian Henderson
News broadcaster Brian "Hendo" Henderson's prolific career has secured him an iconic place in Australian TV history. Confined to a hospital bed with TB, the teenage Henderson developed a lifelong love of the wireless. His first radio job was at 4ZB in Dunedin, then in 1958 he crossed the ditch to find his fortune in the blossoming world of television. Initially deemed "too square" to front a teen music show, Henderson's became host in the early Fifties of the Australian music show Bandstand. In 1958 he won the job he would keep for 46 years, as Channel 9's stalwart newsreader. His comforting, perennial presence was considered to be a large part of the channel's success: "a constant presence in a changing world," according to his boss Kerry Packer. This year Henderson, at the age of 71, aired for the last time with his trade-mark sign-off … "that's the way it is".

Joanne Gair
The body is her canvas: "she is a ball of fire in Chinese pyjama pants; she is a whirling dervish, a Nepalese tonka with a million faces, a human mandala." LA Times. The work of LA-based body make-up artist Joanne Gair - the Kiwi behind Demi Moore's painted suit on the cover of Vanity Fair and award-winning make-up in Madonna's music video, Frozen, - was the subject of a month-long exhibition at Hollywood's PhotoImpact Gallery. "Kiwi Joe," as she is known in LA circles, grew up in Auckland, the daughter of politician and diplomat George Gair. She has painted Madonna, Elle MacPherson, Heidi Klum, and Naomi Campbell and the finished products have been photographed by Herb Ritts and Annie Leibovitz. Now, the woman revered in the world of makeup-artists feels she is ready to return home: "There's so little capacity for love [in LA]. New Zealand is all about family and community… about stories, ancestors and colour."

Peter Jackson and Lord of the Rings Team
How on (middle?) earth did one of the Twentieth Century's most mythic and popular works of literature, JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, end up being translated into cinema in the largest movie project ever undertaken, by a team helmed by a maverick New Zealand director refusing to budge from his home-made studio at the edge of the planet ... a director previously best known for his DIY Kiwi-schlock horror flicks and an art-house film about teenage matricide? One year ago Peter Jackson, after a 15 month shoot and a US$270m budget that had blown to $310m, was a nervous Frodo with the Ring in his palm. To recap a year on: Fellowship of the Ring, the first installment in the trilogy that he, his partner Fran Walsh, the Richard Taylor-led weta f/x crew and the rest of the LotR team fashioned at the bottom of the world, scooped four Oscars (out of a record 13 nominations), five Bafta's and numerous other industry awards. Charming fans and critics alike it grossed $860 million worldwide and rocketed past Star Wars just months after its release to become one of the biggest grossing films in history. Time magazine in a cover article calls PJ the , the "Kiwi George Lucas". A distinctly Made in New Zealand story, Jackson's journey is a steadfastly idiosyncratic case study of innovation, focus and energy from the edge. On the eve of the release of the second installment, Two Towers, Jackson's faith in the reel advantages that New Zealand offers is reflected in his desire to create an Aotearoa based film-making fortress of his own: "Ever since I was a kid dreaming about being a filmmaker, I've never imagined going to Hollywood." A testament to the creative capital of the New Zealand crew and production team and a showcase that has brought the unique topography of Aotearoa to the world's attention. With related tie-ins gracing spreads in everything from National Geographic Traveller to Vogue LotR has proved to be NZ's most successful tourism campaign. Recently the South Island was ranked fourth on the BBC's "50 places to see before you die," clocking in behind the Grand Canyon, Great Barrier Reef, and Disney World, a popularity, "more than likely linked to its role as the backdrop to the first Lord of the Rings movie."

Andrew Adamson
"I'm from New Zealand, I only know about rugby," proclaimed a disingenuous Andrew Adamson, co-creator of the hit animated movie Shrek, when asked whether the gentle green ogre of the title was a fan of baseball or football. The film, which features the voices of Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy, was the first to win the new Academy Awards category Best Animated Feature. Peter Travers in Rolling Stone: "Forget the in-jokes, the moral messages about beauty being skin-deep (No! Really?) and the rock soundtrack. By the time Smash Mouth sings the Monkees' hit 'I'm a Believer,' you'll be a believer, too...Shrek is a world-class charmer …" But it wasn't a first trip to the Oscars for Adamson, described as "personable, humble and composed," by journalist Russell Brown: he'd been nominated in previous years for his work as visual effects supervisor for Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. Chosen by Walden Media for his "visionary" film making, Adamson's next directorial assignment is to hem the children's classic, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

Russell Crowe
Crowe, who last year won an Oscar for his lead role in Gladiator, pulled off the second biggest win of his career - a Golden Globe for best actor, in A Beautiful Mind. Winning both these awards puts Crowe in the company of such superstars as Marlon Brando, Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson. "G'day folks. How ya doin'?", he says on taking the platform to accept the award. As well as the golden Globe Russ picked up the Bafta (British Oscar) for the same performance. His Bafta acceptance speech: "I love my job and I don't think I do it that well - but keep on disagreeing with me".

Evers-Swindell Twins
Living up to expectations, identical twins Georgina and Caroline Evers-Swindell powered to gold at the 2002 World Rowing Championships in Seville, continuing a strong lineage of New Zealand international rowing achievement. The twins started the year as they meant to go on, taking gold in their first international race of the season, at the third World Cup in Munich. In Seville, the Evers-Swindells were on a mission to top the silver medal they picked up in 2001. With a tail wind behind them, the twins grabbed the lead from the very start of the race and didn't let it go - breezing into a lead which would knock more than three seconds off the previous world record for the women's doubles race. Georgina now holds two world records - the other on the indoor rowing machine.
    

Sir Garfield Todd
"An internationally respected guru […] the conscience of his country […] "Becoming a legend in his lifetime," said the Guardian, "is a heavy burden for any man to bear. But it was typical of Sir Garfield Todd…. that he carried the load lightly." The handsome, articulate New Zealander, who died in October aged 94, arrived in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as a missionary in the early fifties and, determined to eradicate the country's "dam of white supremacy", entered politics. As Prime Minister, Todd paved the way for elementary education to every African of school age and established multi-racial trade unions. Removed from power and despite decades of exclusion from active politics, his influence as a human rights activist and thorn in the side of numerous dictatorial regimes remained as positive as his motto: "Just keep throwing your bread upon the waters; if you're lucky, it will come back as ham sandwiches."

Ray Webster
Budget airlines have transformed travel in Europe, providing fares that are almost ridiculously cheap and making it possible to travel between destinations at costs sometimes less than the airport tax. Easyjet chief executive and Kiwi Ray Webster sees it this way: "Airlines are about people, not about airplanes and airports." Not that the airports, customers or accountants are complaining. When Easyjet completed its $1,200 million (NZ) purchase of rival Go this year, it became the continent's biggest no-frills airline, ahead even of the mighty Ryanair. In the year to June, the combined airlines had carried nearly 14 million passengers. The Observer caught up with "typical New Zealander" Webster in May, in a week which found him forging access into European markets and persuading the city of London and his rivals to accept the merger with Go. "I can't see myself ever stopping," he said. A first-class honours engineering graduate from Canterbury University, Webster started out at Air New Zealand, for whom he developed a low-cost airline concept which was eventually scuppered. Undeterred, Webster took his bus class revolution to the UK and recycled the model when he took over the controls at Easyjet.

Reg Mombassa
Designer Reg Mombassa: "the quintessential idiosyncratic Australian artist, even though he's from New Zealand" (The Financial Review) is a creative ringmaster of iconic Aussie street wear brand and international multi-media circus, Mambo. Mombassa, who doubles as the guitarist for Mental as Anything and Dog Trumpet, left New Zealand in the late 60s, and post stints as a builder's labourer, cleaner, house painter, Reg has been collaborating with Mambo since shortly after it was created in 1986. His first graphic for the company - Violent Hen, a fire-breathing fowl - went down as a classic, as did The Mambo Picture Book of Wisdom - an illustrated collection of the artist's wry and wise words and images. Mombassa's artwork has also graced CD covers, a Melbourne tram, billboards, calendars, and has been frequently reproduced in the magazines Rolling Stone, Juxtapose and Raygun. As well as exhibiting in solo exhibitions his artwork is included in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, The Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. Several of his Mambo "characters", including Beer Monster and Australian Jesus were transformed into six metre high inflatables and 20 metre high dirigibles and played a luminous role in the Sydney Olympics closing ceremony.

Rebecca Taylor
"In terms of international success, she may be the most successful designer New Zealand has ever produced." An expansive profile on the kiwi designer Rebecca Taylor featured in the February edition of Vogue (Australia). "One of the most talented upcoming fashion designers in New York City", Taylor's designs feature regularly in Sex in the City, and her mobile mannequins include Jennfier Lopez and Courtney Love. "There's a particular sort of celebrity who really suits my clothes," says Taylor. "[J Lo and Nelson Girls' old girl Love] have this tough, sexy image and my clothes, being quite feminine, give them a bit more of a Lolita look." Taylor shows regularly at New York Fashion Week and her designs stock the racks at Barneys, Saks, Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus and Harvey Nichols in London. Miami style mag Channels, in its catalogue of "those who start the trends, make the deals and call the shots", have heralded Taylor as fashion's latest wunderkind. "Someone is going to eventually do what you've dreamed of," says Taylor, "so it might as well be you."

Cliff Curtis
As drug baron Pablo Escobar in this year's movie Blow (also starring Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz), Cliff Curtis hosts what appears to be an amiable meeting with one of his clients - then has him shot in the head. "One of the most memorable supporting roles of the year" (Centrestage.net), it certainly made an impression and was another unpredictable film façade for New Zealand's most successful international impressionist. Since upping sticks and fish slices to Hollywood following his role as the sinister Uncle Bully in Lee Tamahori's Once Were Warriors, Cliff Curtis' vast talents and swarthy looks have seen him portraying characters of a myriad ethnic persuasions: from an Iraqi resistance leader (Three Kings) to a Columbian terrorist (Collateral Damage) and, once again, (is Hollywood superficial?) a drug dealer in Martin Scorsese's Bringing out the Dead. It has just been announced that Curtis is to join Dustin Hoffman, John Cusack and Gene Hackman in the dramatic thriller The Runaway Jury, written by super-author John Grisham and to be released in 2003. Kapiti boy Curtis worked as a glazier, rock-n-roll dancer and construction worker before successfully applying to The New Zealand Drama School. In 1999 he was named New Zealand Actor of the Year for his work in the TV show The Chosen. Part-Maori Curtis returns home regularly to work and play, starring in a closer to home role in Niki Caro's eagerly received The Whale Rider.

George Nuku
Gracing the swan-like neck of supermodel Gisele Bundchen on the cover of June's American Vogue was a delicate mother-of-pearl pendant by Auckland artist George Nuku. Jumping aboard the recent trend for all things ethnic and bohemian, Elle (Australia) also praised the "beauty and power" of Nuku's designs and urges readers to make Nuku's designs their own: "Pile on multiple pendants for a modern, urban edge." Actress Claire Stansfield described falling in love with Nuku's pieces while acting in Xena: Warrior Princess, which featured some of his designs inspired by his Maori heritage. This year Nuku is also featured in One Giant Leap, a film and doco celebrating world music which fused spoken word performance with sounds and images from across the globe (including Maori vocalist Whiri Mako Black's "haunting and silken soulfulness" alongside Robbie Williams, Horace Andy, Michael Stipe, Michael Franti, Nenah Cherry and Grant Lee Buffalo). In it, Nuku bemoaned that Maori kids in Aotearoa often know more about Michael Jordon than their own culture.

Formway Life Chair
Design for life: the customisable yet elegant Life chair fashioned by Wellington's Formway Design this year picked up the "best in show" gold award at the important NeoCon trade fair in Chicago. The chairs will be made and distributed by major New York furniture company Knoll and sold for $1,300 each. The New Zealand-designed office chair is an exercise in ergonomic eficiency, "[it] uses your own body weight to keep you in a constant equilibrium. It responds fluidly to your movements." Knoll CEO Andrew Cogan says after winning the award, the company has had an "overwhelming" response to the chair: "Life could not have had a better entrance to the market. We expect to sell in excess of 100,000 chairs in North America alone." And Formway says winning a gold award against leaders in the industry shows New Zealand design is the best in the world. Quite apart from functionality, says CEO Rick Wells, "It also looks great! We think it will create 'chair envy' in offices around the world."

Escorial
The Canterbury-based company, Escorial, in conjunction with Australia's government science organisation, CSIRO, has produced the world's finest bale of wool, registering a fibre diameter of 12.7 microns. "The finest bale up to now was 12.9 micron in raw fibre, which is nowhere near as fine as ours", says company founder Peter Radford. Escorial is a unique Australasian fibre from miniature sheep descended, so the company says, from a North African flock kept in the 16th century by King Philip II of Spain. With $40 million worth of retail trade since its inception in 1994, Escorial wool is used by Italian fashion houses Gucci, Comme des Garcons, Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Brioni, who have an exclusive licence for suits. Esquire's A-Z style guide tip for 2000: "Buy Escorial".

Fay Weldon
Grande dame of feminism Fay Weldon released her autobiography Auto de Fay this year, traversing a contradictory, but never dull life and found muse and motivation in the country she was raised in: "Always! Yes, always! I wanted to see more, it was part of being alive. If you're in New Zealand, you feel that the real world is just around the corner - or a long way round the corner. You're so far away, you want to know everything." Reviewed in The Guardian, "she has always been anarchically clever, funny, fearless, a one-woman-show." and hilariously interviewed in The Independent, "the New Zealand of childhood is sketchily remembered: the 'inspiring' cakes seem to have hung on most vividly in the mind, the friendships second, the landscape third." Weldon is famous for 24 novels including Life and Loves of a She Devil (made into a Hollywood film and TV series) and coining the ad copy "go to work on an egg" and one that didn't make it: "vodka makes you drunker quicker" On the cover is a portrait of Fay and her sister by Rita Angus.

Doc Kakapo Rescue Team
In what was described as "the best news for threatened bird conservation in recent years" by the worldwide bird conservation alliance, BirdLife International, the kakapo enjoyed a record breeding season in autumn that brought not only the strange, nocturnal and flightless green parrots to the world's attention, but also the world-leading conservation techniques of the Department of Conservation's kakapo recovery team. 22 chicks hatched on Whenua Hou, a small island off Stewart Island, bringing numbers of the world's most endangered parrots up by a third, from 62 to 84. The DOC team transported the parents-to-be to the predator-free island sanctuary earlier in the year. 20 volunteers spent a fortnight watching over the birds. They fitted them out with electric blankets, radio transmitters, monitored their nests by infrared cameras and hand-reared any chicks who became ill. But the real hard yards, said the BBC, were done by the parents themselves, and "experts say the kakapo's survival prospects are now distinctly brighter than they were a short time ago."

Mark Billinghurst
One of America's "1,000 most creative people", kiwi scientist Mark Billinghurst, returned home this year to head a new laboratory aimed at introducing virtual reality technology into a variety of industries. The 33 year old earned his place on influential information architect Richard Wurman's "1000: Who's Really Who" list by developing designs ranging from virtual dinosaur worlds to wearable computers in research labs in Japan, the UK and the US. With his 'magicBook' virtual reality invention, Billinghurst won last year's entertainment section of the Discover Magazine Innovation Awards - science's equivalent to the Oscars. He has also managed to raise over $1.7 million in research support. Billinghurst's next goal is to bring virtual reality technology to medicine, telecommunications, architecture, education and manufacturing through the newly established Human Interface Technology laboratory of New Zealand, to open in February. Director of the lab's sister company in Washington, Tom Furness, described Billinghurst as a "latter day Renaissance man." "He was soft spoken but oozed intelligence and creativity. What stood out for me was Mark's 'can do' attitude and willingness to tackle almost any challenge."

John Clarke
The artist formerly known as Fred Dagg - trans-Tasman comedian and writer John Clarke - has produced the latest in his series of best-selling parodies. The Tournament features the creme de la creme of the century's artists pitting mind and body against each other on the tennis court. "Coco Chanel plays Sarah Bernhardt in a little black dress; Marcel Duchamp describes his own strokes as art; James Joyce confounds his opponent, SuperTom Eliot, by mumbling a nonsense monologue through his final winning set" (SMH). Palmerston North-born Clarke, author of kiwiana classics "The Gumboot Song" and "We Don't Know How Lucky We Are", has long been embraced by Australians as their pre-eminent humourist. "Round our way, John Clarke rates as a national institution" writes the Sydney Morning Herald. Barry Humphries concurs: "Clarke is the best humorist in Australia", as does Maxine McKew in The Bulletin, conceding, "well, we always claim successful New Zealanders as our own, don't we?"

Graeme Hart
Graeme Hart has solidifed plans to become a major global player with an audacious billion-dollar raid on cereal snacks group Goodman Fielder. The "New Zealander with aspirations to take on the world" (Sydney Morning Herald) plans to bring together Goodman Fielder, his own 57.58 percent-held spices and yeast company, Burns Philp, and the recently acquired New Zealand Dairy Foods to create one mega Australasian, globally competitive food group. In 1997 Hart suffered a devestating defeat when he lost much of his fortune after Burns Philp's shares nosedived from $2.69 (NZ) to just 3.7 cents. However, under Hart the company restructured and refinanced, and after a heroic rescue effort, is now worth an estimated $900 million to $1 billion.

America's Cup - Tourism
As the series got underway to find the challenger to take on Team New Zealand for the America's Cup, the world's attention, seduced by Prada accessorized glamour of techno-royal billionaires and high class super-yachts, was drawn to the Hauraki Gulf and found an Auckland growing in sophistication and confidence to match: the New York Times in a major feature described NZ thus: "Long stereotyped as a big green farm with 30 sheep for each of its nearly 4 million inhabitants, New Zealand has become in recent years a high-end boutique travel destination." October's Travel + Leisure checked out the evolving new world styles of Auckland: "The city has evolved over the past two decades from a staid bastion of British colonialism into a multicultural mix of Europeans, Maori, Pacific Islanders, and Asians. And the fashion world is taking notice of forward-thinking Kiwi designs and trends. Whether it's designer Karen Walker (set to become the Donna Karan of NZ) tempering Nordic seriousness with South Pacific insouciance, chef Amanda Morris conjuring an international menu out of a Far Eastern staple at Rice, or artist Fatu Feu'u rendering Polynesian motifs in pure wool rugs, if it's made in Auckland, it looks like the future." Tumeke!

LOTR - Tourism
"Too bad they don't give Oscars for 'best supporting landmass'. If they did New Zealand's role in Lord of the Rings would have swept that award," wrote travel editor Anne Chalfant in a three-page feature on New Zealand in San Francisco's Bay Area Daily. Since Lord of the Rings hit screens around the world, Tolkein addicts have been flocking to the country to set eyes on a landscape as wondrous and ethereal as that described in their beloved story, set location guides in hand. "These are islands where the earth still spits boiling water and mud, with the volcanic plateau in the central North Island becoming Tolkien's fiery Mt Doom, peaceful pastoral Matamata in a starring role as Hobbiton and the majestic fiords of the deep South standing in for the Misty Mountains" (The Guardian). The stars of the show were also reluctant to leave the backdrops: "I fell for New Zealand rather heavily," said a pounamu-bedecked Sir Ian McKellen at the Oscars. "It's not just the environment, though that does do something to your head... it's discovering the culture, one which is extremely relaxed and liberal".

Wine
"Despite a small population and a relatively limited land mass, NZ has the right kind of people and geography to act as a giant-killer when it comes to wine," said American wine guru Michael Franz in the Washington Post, who has made a wager that the New Zealand wine industry will be producing the best wines outside Europe in 20 years' time. To prove his point, kiwi wines raked in the medals at this year's London International Wine Challenge, the world's largest blind-taste session. Gold medal winners were wines by Villa Maria, Gibbston Valley, Stoneleigh, Mount Riley and Montana. During a recent trip to the South Seas the Guardian's 'Superplonk' column was intoxicated by the "superb, tannic tenacity and layered fruit" of Delegat's Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 1999, and the "racy, complex, finely textured and delicious" Villa Maria Private Bin Sauvignon Blanc 2001. The Guardian also caught up with Sam Neill at his Central Otago vineyards. The actor, who's been at work on a remake of Dr Zhivago, expounded the virtues of his Two Paddocks 999 Pinot Noir: "One thing you can say about it is that it does get you pissed."

Sanctuary Aotearoa
With the America's Cup casting the spotlight on Auckland and Lord of the Rings showcasing the Tolkienesque scenery, Aotearoa was making a mark in the global attention economy - particularly as tourists seek out sanctuary in an increasingly unsettled global climate. "Isolation, long an obstacle to international tourism, has become a plus in the post-Sept. 11 world. New Zealand, long promoted as clean and green, is now adding safe." (New York Times). Even Australians, in the midst of their worst drought in a century, are finding that the grass might be greener across the ditch: this from a December Sydney Morning Herald profile on the North Island entitled "What a Beauty": "To go to a country so deeply etched in the Australian consciousness by cliche and misinformation is to spend most of your time correcting embedded false impressions. [...] Abandon all those negative cliches. New Zealand has changed [...] New Zealand is really buzzing. It is no longer a country trapped in the 1950s." Cover star of May's National Geographic Traveller and December's GEO Saison - Germany's premiere travel magazine, Aotearoa-NZ had travel writers across the globe in raptures as they explored paths less travelled by thrill addicts en route to their mecca, Queenstown. New York Times took a road trip up the "stunningly beautiful" east coast of the North Island - describing a "temporal as well as geographical" journey, while Lake Taupo offered up "the ultimate fly-fishing experience" to the Sydney Morning Herald ("the hypnotic noise of the river and the beauty and solitude of that remote wilderness […] had me hooked"). LA Times discovered the joys of tramping in the South Island's East Coast: "As usual, the greater part of NZ's charm was in the breezy grace of its residents." And US Conde Nast Traveler's influential "hot list" named the Auckland Hilton, Eagle's Nest in the Bay of Islands, and the lodge at Kauri Cliffs as the premier places to stay, with the Huka making the world top-10 list. Times motorcycle writer John Naish called NZ "biker heaven […] it rated as one of the finest bits of blacktop-adventure I've ever experienced."
    

  
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