|
He is a leading proponent of Maori drama, performed in both Maori and English, and a prime mover in encouraging respect for Maori viewpoints and culture in mainstream New Zealand film and
television drama.
He has devoted many years to training Maori and Pacific film makers and is a mentor and inspiration to many now working in the industry. He is a former member of the board of the New Zealand Film Commission.
His contribution was officially recognised in1999, when he was awarded the New Zealand Honours Award Officer of NZ Merit (ONZM). He was awarded an honorary performing arts degree from Unitec in 1999 and he was New
Zealander of the Year 1995 for his contribution to arts and culture. He received the Wellington Fringe Award for service to theatre, film and television and the National Film Board of Canada Alanis Obomsawin Award
for outstanding contribution to the advancement of Aboriginal film making in Canada at the Dreamspeakers Indigenous Film Festival in 1994.
A New Zealand Maori of Ngati Kuri and Te Aupouri descent, he grew up
in Taumarunui in the centre of New Zealand’s North Island, an area influenced by many different Maori iwi (tribes), with leaders initiating community projects for youth, education and te reo Maori (Maori language).
He became a schoolteacher, noted for his pioneering methods at a multicultural school in Wellington.
Selwyn made his entry into acting as a result of a dare: he attended a rehearsal with a friend who was
acting in a stage production of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Nights Dream. (His actor friend went to Don’s rugby football practice). When the actor playing Oberon became ill, the director, Nola Miller, asked Don to take
over the role. Thus he discovered his talent for the stage in a pink tutu with butterfly wings as the King of the Fairies, to the good-natured ribbing of his rugby mates.
He toured with the Nola Miller
Shakespeare Company, playing Caesar, Antony, Othello and Shylock as part of a well-respected acting career, which also encompassed musicals (Porgy & Bess), film (Sleeping Dogs) and television (Mortimer’s Patch,
Marlin Bay, The Governor, Pukemanu). He was a founding member of the New Zealand Maori Theatre Trust, with the vision that it would extend opportunities for Maori performers in Maori opera and theatre.
Always
concerned with education and promotion of Maori, from 1984 to 1990 he ran a film and television training course called He Taonga I Tawhiti (Gifts From Afar) for Maori and Pacific people to give them the technical
skills to enable them to tell their own stories. 120 people went through the course over its six-year existence. In 1992, with producer Ruth Kaupua Panapa, Selwyn formed He Taonga Films to create job opportunities
for course graduates and to provide outlets for Maori drama writers.
Through He Taonga Films, he has produced and directed Maori language television dramas (Maaui Pootiki, Tohunga) and many Maori dramas in
English, including Don’t Go Past With Your Nose in the Air, awarded best foreign short film at the New York Festival in 1992. He was executive producer of the 2000 New Zealand Media Peace Award-winning feature The
Feathers of Peace.
Another aspect of his work has been to secure roles for Maori actors and share his acting experience with them by working as casting director on other people’s productions, including
feature films Once Were Warriors, What Becomes of the Broken Hearted, Broken English, Jubilee and Crooked Earth.
Selwyn was inspired to make The Maori Merchant of Venice as a film after directing Dr Pei Te
Hurinui Jones’ 1945 Maori translation as a stage play in the 1990 Koanga (Spring) Festival in Auckland. It is a project which combines his passion for Shakespeare with his lifelong commitment to the revitalisation
of the Maori language.
The Film Makers Previous Next Guestbook
|
