ScreenTalk

Marcia Russell is an award-winning journalist and TV writer/producer with a long career in New Zealand media. Her first television role was as host of the 1970s talk show Speakeasy. Russell moved on to news and current affairs roles with TVNZ, and helped set up the fledgling TV3 News department in the late 1980s. She has been involved with some of the most notable documentary series produced in New Zealand such as Landmarks and The New Zealand Wars. Russell produced the four- part documentary series Revolution, which chronicled the rise of the Lange Government and its impact on the New Zealand economy and society. Russell was awarded an OBE for services to journalism in 1996 and was a recipient of the Academy of Film and Television’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Russell talks about:

• Being the first ‘live’ presenter on TV2 in the show Speakeasy
• How the show debuted future politician Jeanette Fitzsimons and TV cooking superstars Hudson and Halls
• Being a panelist on Beauty and the Beast and how it enabled her to be subversive
• Helping set up TV3 News and how the new Minister of Broadcasting pulled the rug from under them
• Having a slight falling out with Dame Cath Tizard on the doco Dame Cath Moves Up
• Her passion for history leading to her involvement in the series Revolution
• How James Belich resisted script changes in the series The New Zealand Wars

This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a Creative Commons licence

Veteran documentary producer/director George Andrews has been a strong and consistent supporter of public service broadcasting, and was the main creative force behind the iconic early 1980s documentary series Landmarks.

Andrews began his career as a broadcast journalist, later moving to producing and directing.

In this ScreenTalk interview he talks about:

• the story of his time presenting pioneering current affairs show Gallery
• producing the ground-breaking documentary series Landmarks in the early 1980s
• his involvement in the start-up of TV3, and how the network’s direction changed over time, moving it away from the public service style programming that he had hoped for
• launching his own production company George Andrews Productions, and some of the programmes he has enjoyed making over the years
• how his 2006 documentary Made in Taiwan – starring Oscar Kightley and Nathan Rarere – came about
• and finally he tells the story of how Made in Taiwan led to his 2008 documentary Allan Wilson – Evolutionary, about the pioneering and controversial New Zealand-born biologist. The programme was funded by the University of California, Berkeley, where Wilson spent much of his career.

This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a Creative Commons licence.