News of New Zealanders via Global Media

Telephone Me and I Will Show You My Land

Telephone Me and I Will Show You My Land

New Zealand-born artist Nabil Sabio Azadi, 21, has reinvented a cherished commodity for world travellers seeking an authentic experience in a new place: a local’s recommendation, Erika Allen reports in The New York Times. In…

Auckland Students Feminist Video a Hit

Auckland Students Feminist Video a Hit

YouTube’s parent company, Google, has admitted the site made a mistake when it removed Auckland University law students’ viral parody video of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”. The video received over 300,000 views before it was…

Detained New Zealand Journalist Freed

Detained New Zealand Journalist Freed

New Zealand journalist Wayne Hay has been released by the Egyptian authorities after he, and three other journalists, were detained for five days. The Telegraph reports that the former TVNZ journalist, along with…

Spiffing Stuff on Stage at the Edmonton Fringe

Spiffing Stuff on Stage at the Edmonton Fringe

New Zealand actress Penny Ashton, 38, “magnificently” pulls off one-woman Jane Austen musical Promise and Promiscuity, on during August’s Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival. Edmonton Journal reviewer Elizabeth Withey gives Ashton’s show 4.5 stars…

Misadventure Tourism Makes for Good Read

Misadventure Tourism Makes for Good Read

Wellington-born performer and writer Tom Doig (left) prefers travel with adversity over leisure, and as Doig says in his new travelogue Mörön to Mörön, a book about him and his best mate, Tama Pugsley…

Stamps Behind Stories of Terrible Wartime Loss

Stamps Behind Stories of Terrible Wartime Loss

Aucklander Bruce Chadderton, president of the Philatelic Society of New Zealand, has had his book Descent into the Abyss: The Shoah — a philatelic retelling published by the Society of Israel Philatelists after one…

With a Talent Like Catton’s One Can Never Be Sure

With a Talent Like Catton’s One Can Never Be Sure

New Zealand-raised author Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker nominated The Luminaries is reviewed by Lesley McDowell in The Scotsman this week. “ Catton’s doorstopper of a novel read like a recall the Victorian works so…

Cage and Cusack Star in Impressive Debut

Cage and Cusack Star in Impressive Debut

New Zealand-born writer-director Scott Walker’s “impressive debut” The Frozen Ground, starring Nicholas Cage and John Cusack “amounts to an exploitation flick about the hunt for Alaska’s most notorious serial killer, but told with style and…

Plans for Labyrinth-inspired Puppet Musical

Plans for Labyrinth-inspired Puppet Musical

Flight of the Conchords star, Academy and Grammy Award-winner Bret McKenzie, 37, wants to bring back to life the eighties classic storytelling technique of real people and puppets singing and dancing side by side…

Dropping Soul-Dub in to Some Far-Flung Corners

Dropping Soul-Dub in to Some Far-Flung Corners

Wellington septet Fat Freddy’s Drop “are spreading their infectious grooves all over the world,” according to The Sydney Morning Herald’s Paris Pompor. In a shrinking, fibre-connected world, the band find themselves in ever more…

Recreating Iconic Doors Mural in Venice Beach

Recreating Iconic Doors Mural in Venice Beach

New Zealand-born painter and sculptor Clinton Bopp, who lives in Santa Monica Canyon, has been working on reproducing the Venice Beach mural incorporating Jim Morrison and band members who made up The Doors. Folk musician…

Ten Pounds Gets You Lots of Funny in Edinburgh

Ten Pounds Gets You Lots of Funny in Edinburgh

One of New Zealand’s youngest professional comedians, award-winning Rhys Mathewson, 22, is making his Edinburgh Fringe Festival debut, with his show “The Best £10 You’ll Ever Spend”. The List asks Mathewson: “What do you think…

Dame Kiri Becomes Dame Melba on Downton

Dame Kiri Becomes Dame Melba on Downton

New Zealand-born opera singer Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, who has sung for presidents and princes, including in front of a 600-million audience at Prince Charles’s wedding to Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, has revealed…

Who is This ‘Lorde’ Everyone’s Talking About?

Who is This ‘Lorde’ Everyone’s Talking About?

Lorde continues to make waves internationally ahead of the launch of her debut album, with US online magazine Vulture writing giving their readers a crash course in who the 16-year-old singer is and why…

Compelling Drama Fantasy Blend to Air in US

Compelling Drama Fantasy Blend to Air in US

New Zealand television series The Almighty Johnsons has been bought by American cable channel Syfy, marking the first time a wholly New Zealand-made television drama has aired in the United States. The NBCU cabler has…

Abandoned Sola in the Outback

Abandoned Sola in the Outback

New Zealand-born soprano Katherine Wiles is starring as Donna Elvira in an outback tour of Mozart’s Don Giovanni by Oz Opera, Opera Australia’s touring arm. Wiles said she was excited at embarking on her…

Christchurch Cardboard Cathedral Opens

Christchurch Cardboard Cathedral Opens

Christchurch’s ‘cardboard’ cathedral has opened, a move that is seen as a significant step in the regeneration of the city following the February 2011 earthquake that killed 185 people.  Dubbed the ‘Transitional Cathedral’, the…

‘King of Timelapse’ Captures New Zealand Landscapes and Starscapes

‘King of Timelapse’ Captures New Zealand Landscapes and Starscapes

New Zealand photographer Joseph Michael, aka the King of timelapse photography, featured on the cover Photography Monthly and spoke to them about the three months he spent capturing New Zealand starscapes and landscapes for…

Lorde, First Woman to Top Billboard Alt Chart in 17 Years

Lorde, First Woman to Top Billboard Alt Chart in 17 Years

New Zealand singer/songwriter, Lorde, has landed the top spot on the Billboard Alternative Songs Chart with her hit single ‘Royals’. Not only is she the first solo woman to top the charts in her…

Catton’s Favourite First Line Unfolds Breathlessly

Catton’s Favourite First Line Unfolds Breathlessly

Man Booker nominee New Zealand author Eleanor Catton chooses her favourite first line for a Guardian catalogue, and it’s from another of our own, Janet Frame’s 1961 novel Faces in the Water. Faces in the…

America Better Watch Out

America Better Watch Out

The “unflappable” Lorde, 16, “hypnotises” at her first concert in the United States introducing “her collection of immaculately drawn pop compositions with a confidence and demeanour well beyond her years”, Billboard’s Jason Lipshutz writes…

It XXXXX XX Up at Sydney’s MCA

It XXXXX XX Up at Sydney’s MCA

Sydney’s latest public artwork created by Dunedin-born artist Mike Hewson, 28, is certainly hard to ignore, covering more than 2000 square metres and spelled out in 14 metre-high upper-case letters on the temporary scaffolding…

Fighting for Recognition in a New Field

Fighting for Recognition in a New Field

New Zealand stuntwoman Zoë Bell’s film Raze is screening at the Imperial Theatre as part of the one of the most influential genre film festivals in the world, the Fantasia International Film…

From One South to Another

From One South to Another

Formerly of Gore, singer-songwriter Jackie Bristow, who has been based in the United States for the past eight years, recently performed two shows at the Neutral Ground Coffeehouse and House of Blues in New…

Fairy Tale Television Role for Actress

Fairy Tale Television Role for Actress

New Zealand actress Rose McIver, 24, who starred in Peter Jackson’s 2009 film The Lovely Bones, has landed the pivotal season three role of Tinker Bell on the ABC fairy tale drama, Once…

Peter Jackson a ‘Game Changer’ who ‘transformed’ Filmmaking

Peter Jackson a ‘Game Changer’ who ‘transformed’ Filmmaking

Kiwi director, Peter Jackson is a “game changer who transformed the practice of filmmaking”, according to contributors to the Harvard Business Review’s popular blog. Authors Vijay Govindarajan and Srikanth Srinivas say that Jackson and…

Young Kiwi Artist’s Focus is Art, Not Boys

Young Kiwi Artist’s Focus is Art, Not Boys

In an interview, Auckland singer-songwriter Lorde, 16, said that unlike many female teenage artists, boys aren’t all she is interested in when it comes to writing songs. “I feel like that isn’t maybe the…

South Africa and NZ Join Film Forces

South Africa and NZ Join Film Forces

Executives from the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC) have been meeting with producers at the Durban FilmMart (DFM) to research potential development and co-production opportunities. Representatives from the NZFC and the National Film &…

Mystery Making Process Paying off in US

Mystery Making Process Paying off in US

Identified only as her stage name, Lorde, 16, the artist kept her true identity a mystery for months, Wall Street Journal correspondent Megan Buerger writes. The only available representation of her was a drawing…

Stretching the Limit with One Unique Talent

Stretching the Limit with One Unique Talent

Rubberband Boy, aka New Zealander Shay Horay, is one of the world’s most unusual performers, twisting tight rubber bands across his face on stage to the delight of worldwide audiences. “Strangely enough,…

Keeping It Snappy with Local Shorts Screening

Keeping It Snappy with Local Shorts Screening

Eight locally made short films will screen at the one-session New Zealand Short Film Festival held on 14 August in Sydney and 22 August in Brisbane. The films will screen representing the very best…

Lighting Up the Longlist with Her Second Novel

Lighting Up the Longlist with Her Second Novel

New Zealand author Eleanor Catton, 27, has made the Man Booker Prize longlist for her novel, The Luminaries, which will be released in New Zealand on 1 August and in the US in October….

Jackson Live-Blogs The Hobbit’s Final Day

Jackson Live-Blogs The Hobbit’s Final Day

After more than two years, Peter Jackson has finished filming the final installment of The Hobbit trilogy. With the final scenes shot on 26 July, the award-winning director wrote on his Facebook…

Auric Qualities in Vivid Colour

Auric Qualities in Vivid Colour

Wellington-born Carlo Van de Roer doesn’t just capture a person when he takes their photograph, he captures the colour of their soul, writes the Daily Mail. In his psychedelic collection of images, New York-based…

Timtimfed Makes Web Films on His Own Terms

Timtimfed Makes Web Films on His Own Terms

Originally from Christchurch, Michael Shanks, 22, otherwise known by his pseudonym “Timtimfed”, is creating some of the best gaming parodies on the web. Shanks was one of the hosts of a recent PAX Australia…

Channelling Tricksters in Plexiglas for Vancouver Show

Channelling Tricksters in Plexiglas for Vancouver Show

New Zealand sculptor George Nuku’s work is part of an exhibition called, Paradise Lost? Contemporary Works from the Pacific, on through 29 September at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. The Vancouver…

Music Man Keeping the Harmonies in Check

Music Man Keeping the Harmonies in Check

Timaru-born emeritus professor William “Bill” Hawker is in Port Macquarie for six weeks as the guest conductor of Hastings Choristers. The academic and musician lives in Akolele on the south coast of NSW. He…

Wild Cards Still Making Music on the Outer Limits

Wild Cards Still Making Music on the Outer Limits

New Zealand underground rock trio The Dead C have been making music at the outer limits for 25 years, using geographic isolation to develop one of the most original strains of underground rock of…

Top of the Lake Receives Eight Emmy Nods

Top of the Lake Receives Eight Emmy Nods

New Zealand director Jane Campion mini-series Top of the Lake has received eight Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Miniseries of Movie, Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries and Outstanding Directing in a Miniseries. The New Zealand-shot…

Clonakilty Women Have Their Say in New Book

Clonakilty Women Have Their Say in New Book

New Zealand-born author Alison Wickham, a resident of Clonakilty in Cork, Ireland, launches a self-published book this week called Women Speak, which tells the stories of 14 very different women, now aged from their…

Ada Would Not Have Surfaced Says Campion

Ada Would Not Have Surfaced Says Campion

Jane Campion has revealed she wanted a bleaker ending for The Piano, with the character of mute Ada McGrath, played by Holly Hunter, drowning with her beloved instrument. It is one of the most…

Madrid Festival Awards for Murder Mystery

Madrid Festival Awards for Murder Mystery

New Zealand filmmaker Alex Galvin’s feature film Eternity has won two awards at the Madrid International Film Festival. Eternity won best editing, alongside Nick Swinglehurst and best supporting actor for Wellington actor…

New Zealand’s Answer to The Killing

New Zealand’s Answer to The Killing

Jane Campion’s television series Top of the Lake, “set in the staggeringly beautiful landscape of the South Island”, has been called New Zealand’s answer to The Killing. Obstreperous and tunnel-visioned, detective Robin Griffin has…

Magasiva, Moon and Paquin Make the Crush Cake List

Magasiva, Moon and Paquin Make the Crush Cake List

New Zealand, “more like Babeland”, according to blogger Laura Vincent who writes about who she fancies for Vice magazine’s regular column, “Crush Cakes”. “Though my crushing is as vast as the majestic Lake Taupo,…

Lawless Set to Razzle Dazzle in Chicago

Lawless Set to Razzle Dazzle in Chicago

Television star Lucy Lawless, 45, will join True Blood’s Stephen Moyer and Les Misérables’ Samantha Barks for a special three-night performance of the Broadway smash Chicago, which will run from 26 July to 28…

That’s Showbiz for Wootton Who Takes Up Tabloid Role

That’s Showbiz for Wootton Who Takes Up Tabloid Role

Former News of the World showbiz editor Lower Hutt-born journalist Dan Wootton, 30, is joining British tabloid, Sun on Sunday, where he will write a double-page showbiz column as part of moves…

Young Aucklander Breaks US Charts

Young Aucklander Breaks US Charts

Auckland born singer Ella Yelich O’Connor has broken into the American Billboard Chart despite doing next to no State-side promotion. The sixteen-year-old who goes by the name Lorde became a national sensation in late…

Talented Conductor Directs New Jersey Summer Concerts

Talented Conductor Directs New Jersey Summer Concerts

Wellington-born Gemma New, assistant conductor for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra (NJSO), is directing three free-admission summer concerts at Mercer County Park, New Jersey. New has been conducting since the age of 15….

Vivid Encounters with Insects in Glass Wings

Vivid Encounters with Insects in Glass Wings

“It takes just four lines for ‘Alumnae Notes’ to transport us first to the schoolgirl in 40s New Zealand and then to her literary exile in London: ‘Beautiful Ataneta Swainson is dead….

Wistful New York Gallery Debut for Upritchard

Wistful New York Gallery Debut for Upritchard

New Zealand artist Francis Upritchard’s full-scale New York gallery debut has opened at Anton Kern. Art Daily reports: “London-based who represented her country at the 2009 Venice Biennale – stages eight…

Night to Remember at Melbourne Jazz Club

Night to Remember at Melbourne Jazz Club

New Zealand-born pianist and composer, Steve Barry, named Young Australian Jazz Artist of the Year at last month’s Bell Awards, performed as a trio with Tom Botting on bass and Tim Firth on drums…

Parker Hulme Story Unfolds in Tabloid-like Detail

Parker Hulme Story Unfolds in Tabloid-like Detail

Former Hong Kong lawyer New Zealander Peter Graham’s “compelling read”, Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century, is awarded five out of five stars by reviewer Glen Young for northern Michigan publication, Petoskey…

Why Hollywood is Staying in New Zealand

Why Hollywood is Staying in New Zealand

“From James Cameron’s organic farm to Emmy contender Top of the Lake, the idyllic island nation continues to thrive 12 years after Frodo and Co. put it on the movie location map,” The Hollywood…

Uninterrupted Writing Time Awarded for Belgian Story

Uninterrupted Writing Time Awarded for Belgian Story

Hastings author Anna Mackenzie, 50, is the first New Zealander to be awarded the writer’s residency in Belgium by Passa Porta, International House of Literature, which is offered to writers worldwide. Mackenzie…

Dancer Bound for Fame in San Francisco

Dancer Bound for Fame in San Francisco

Eighteen-year-old Aucklander Joel Walsham has become the first New Zealander to be awarded a scholarship to prestigious United States dance university, LINES Ballet in San Francisco. Early this year Walsham flew to the United…

Back in the Cells as Fletch in Prison Drama Wentworth

Back in the Cells as Fletch in Prison Drama Wentworth

Auckland-born actor, Logie Award-winning Aaron Jeffery, who graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 1993, stars in the popular Australian television prison drama Wentworth, which will return to screens for…