Russell Campbell
Programme Director, Film
Victoria University of Wellington

Of the visual arts, it's film I care the most about. It's my métier. Of the films made locally in recent times, there are those with the sheen of fantasy, and those with the grain of real life. I know where my preference lies, and it's not at the high-budget end of the spectrum. A woman hassled by voice messages from a troubled ex-lover moves me more than massed arrays of warriors, only some of them human, on a medieval battlefield. But realism can be drab, uninspired. I honour the Aro Valley school of digital filmmakers for their commitment to observation over invention. Our lives are worth digging into, documenting, telling tales about. That's authenticity, and a refusal of Hollywooden alienation. But the films must be more piercing, more startling, more witty, or they won't capture the imaginations, and the love, of the audience.