News and Events
On this page:
- Research Seminars
- Film Symposium
- Chapman Tripp Awards
- Oscar Winner Teaching Film at Victoria
- Staff Retirements
Research Seminars
"Sara Coleridge's Construction of Wordsworth in the 1847 Edition of Biographia Literaria"
Speaker: Heidi Thomson, English
Time: 12 noon - 12:50 pm
Date: Thursday 18 March 2010
Venue: Room 802 in the von Zedlitz Building
"Music cultures of Sápmi: Origins, identity and change"
Speaker: Anne Werner
Ann Werner is currently a lecturer in Gender Studies at Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. She wrote her PhD on teenage girls' uses of music, with focus on their gender formations and media use.
Time: 4 pm - 4:50 pm
Date: Monday 22 March 2010
Venue: Room 802 in the von Zedlitz Building
The people called the Sámi are a heterogeneous group: inhabiting four nations (Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia) and speaking three different dialects, South Sámi, Central Sámi and East Sámi. Their culture has been largely shaped in relation to the settlers and farmers moving in from the south. One of the corner stones in Sámi culture is the music where traditional joik singing and its melodies have been a way to communicate socially as well as telling stories. Not only the style of singing but also instruments like the shaman drum have been surrounded by myths articulating ideas of ethnicity, nation and gender. In the 1600s joiking was considered to be a form of witchcraft and could result in a death sentence. The Danish rulers who executed these laws performed their colonial power in this manner, banning the culture of the region to ensure obedience. The mythology and tradition surrounding Sámi music is rich and has only recently been accepted as a legitimate form of music and merged with contemporary popular genres. This paper investigates the historical roots of Sápmi music and it's contemporary forms. Questions asked are: how has Sápmi music developed in relation to power process regarding nation, ethnicity and gender? And what media cultures and influences are shaping Sápmi music today?
"The older grows the body, the faster runs the machine"
Speaker: John Downie, Theatre
Time: 12 noon - 12:50 pm
Date: Thursday 1 April 2010
Venue: Room 802 in the von Zedlitz Building
"Writing No Fretful Sleeper: A life of Bill Pearson"
Speaker: Paul Millar, University of Canterbury
Time: 5 pm - 6:30 pm
Date: Tuesday 13 April 2010
Venue: Room 802 in the von Zedlitz Building
"Bloody Bodies from the War on Terror"
Speaker: Nina Seja
Time: 12 noon - 12:50 pm
Date: Thursday 22 April 2010
Venue: Room 317, Hunter Building
"Early Chemistry in Pope's Epistle to a Lady"
Speaker: Kathryn Walls, English
Time: 12 noon - 12:50 pm
Date: Thursday 29 April 2010
Venue: Room 802 in the von Zedlitz Building
"Another India is Possible? The Political Documentaries of Anand Patwardhan and the Indian Present"
Speaker: Vijay Devadas, Otago University
Time: 12 noon - 12:50 pm
Date: Thursday 6 May 2010
Venue: Room 317, Hunter Building
"Beyond Post-Colonialism? Transactions of Power and Marginalisation in Contemporary Australasian Drama"
Speaker: David O'Donnell, Theatre
Time: 12 noon - 12:50 pm
Date: Thursday 13 May 2010
Venue: Room 802 in the von Zedlitz Building
"Onscreen Interventions? The cultural politics of Māori TV"
Speaker: Jo Smith, Media Studies
Time: 12 noon - 12:50 pm
Date: Thursday 20 May 2010
Venue: Room 317, Hunter Building
"Wastelands: The Documentary Photography of Ann Shelton as Historiography"
Speaker: Stephen Turner, University of Auckland
Time: 12 noon - 12:50 pm
Date: Thursday 3 June 2010
Venue: Room 317, Hunter Building
Film Symposium
Cinema in the Digital Age
The Film Programme held a very successful one-day symposium on "Cinema in the Digital Age" on Thursday, 11 February in the Government Buildings. Scholars and practitioners came together to present a range of fascinating papers and lively discussions about the ways in which cinema has been transformed through the arrival of digital technology. The keynote address was given by Professor Sean Cubitt from the University of Melbourne. Other speakers included Cathy Fowler (Otago), Leon Gurevitch (Design, VUW), Jamie Lean (NZ Film Archive), John Downie (Theatre, Victoria) and Lee-Jane Bennion-Nixon (Film, Victoria), as well as filmmakers Geoff Murphy, Gaylene Preston, and Alex Funke.
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Chapman Tripp Awards
Theatre Programme graduates and staff figured prominently in the 18th annual Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards. Eleanor Bishop, a current tutor and recent honours graduate won the Toi Whakaari/Victoria award for the most promising new director of the year for directing The Intricate Art of Actually Caring, which also took the Montana award for most original production of the year. Current honours student Charlotte Bradley was also nominated in the new director category for directing A Most Outrageous Humbug, a work on Edgar Allan Poe created by Three Spoon Theatre, a company founded last year by recent Victoria graduates, one of whom, Dawa Devereux won costume designer of the year for this production. The most nominations (nine) went to Collapsing Creation, directed by Senior Lecturer David O'Donnell. On the night Collapsing Creation won four awards including production of the year. MTA graduate Leo Gene Peters won the director of the year award for Death and the Dreamlife of Elephants, which also won set designer of the year for Tracey Monastra. Erin Banks won actress of the year for A Brief History of Helen of Troy. Other recent graduates nominated were Andrew Simpson (best sound design), Lucy O'Brien and James Nokise (both for new playwright of the year), Paul Harrop and Ralph McCubbin-Howell (both for most promising male newcomer).
Oscar Winner to Teach Film at Victoria
A three-time Oscar winner will be bringing his filmmaking magic to Victoria University this year, coordinating a Film honours course.
Alex Funke is an American-born cinematographer who has worked with Peter Jackson on the The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong. A Member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC), he will be teaching FILM 404 this year, passing on the knowledge that has seen him win three Oscars, three BAFTAS and several Visual Effects Society (VES) awards.
Alex has worked in the film industry for nearly 40 years, beginning work in film visual effects in the 1970s. His first visual effects project was as cameraman on the television series Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers, both produced at a time when the idea of television shows based on visual effects was an untried notion.
Alex was invited to New Zealand by Peter Jackson in 1999, where he set up and directed the shooting of the miniatures for The Lord of the Rings. The work won Alex two Oscars, three BAFTAs, and two VES awards. He gives much of the credit to the New Zealand film crews, who he says are the best he has worked with, anywhere.
Alex has taught the craft of film both at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and at Loyola-Marymount University. He says his greatest passion has always been to convey to students that the vast arsenal of tools and techniques available to the film maker exists for only one purpose: "to tell the story".
Staff Retirements
Two long-serving members of the English Programme have retired: Professor Robert Easting, who taught at Victoria for over 35 years, and Dr Christine Franzen, who has been at Victoria for over 20 years. Together, they have been responsible for a great deal of the teaching of early English language and literature for which English at Victoria is justly renowned for more than 50 years! Colleagues and friends gathered to celebrate and honour their contribution, and to farewell them as they prepare for an extended trip abroad.