MovieFest Judges

MovieFest is all about getting your work about there in front of people, and part of that is our professional judges, who can provide some feedback on your movie... We've totally stoked to have a great team on board this year... Let us know what you think.

Judge Biographies

Alex Funke

Alex is a 4th generation Californian and now long-term resident of Wellington, and likely to remain so. His first University studies were in biochemistry until he found his true passion was in film and subsequently he graduated from the UCLA Film School.

Like many people of his generation, he had a stint in the US Army in the mid-sixties. Then he began shooting TV specials and industrial films and then worked for 11 years with the great designer Charles Eames, shooting about 24 major films in that time.

In 1978, Alex embarked upon what would become a career as a special effects cinematographer when he became miniatures cinematographer for Universal Studios pioneering TV shows Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers.

In the late 70s, Alex founded the Precision Film Group, creating innovative effects for TV and features. Later at Las Palmas Productions, he designed and built the very first system for pin-registered transferring of film to video, which revolutionised video special effects. Now, for the very first time, it became possible to add multiple picture layers to video without float and weave destroying the composite image.

While Alex is a specialist in miniatures and visual effects, he also shoots live action features and special venue films and creates visual content for educational DVDs

Past projects include The Abyss, Total Recall and Executive Decision. Recent films included Starship Troopers, Mighty Joe Young, the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy and King Kong.

Alex has taught advanced cinematogrpahy courses ot both UCLA and Loyola University, and has given lectures and seminars on visual effects cinematography in Italy and Norway.

Awards include an Oscar for Total Recall, three BAFTA Awards, two VES Awards, several CLIO Awards for commercial cinematography and numerous festival awards, and, of course two Oscars for the Rings trilogy.

Alex has been a cinematographer for nearly 40 years., and in 2004 recently inducted into the American Society of Cinematographers the highest honour that the USA camera profession can bestow.

Miranda Harcourt

Miranda Harcourt is one of New Zealand's best known faces in the performing arts. Since graduating from Toi Whakaari she has explored all aspects of the performing arts, winning awards as an actor, a short film director and a stage director. She is also a drama-therapy graduate of the Central School in London, and has worked extensively with the deaf community, on self-devised theatre and with prison inmates on stage and screen.

Her long list of acting credits includes stage-work in all New Zealand's professional theatres (Verbatim, Arcadia, Skylight, A Doll's House, True), many series, dramas and documentaries on screen including Shortland St, Clare, Cover Story and most notoriously Gloss. Hers is a familiar voice on radio, and with her mother Dame Kate Harcourt, Miranda has toured all over the country with Flowers From my Mother's Garden, commissioned for the International Festival in 1998 and written by Stuart McKenzie and published by Penguin.

Voiceover, her first short film as a director, won Best Short Film at the NZ Film and Television Awards. At the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards in 1998 she won Best Production for Much Ado About Nothing, her first foray into stage directing. Since then she has directed at the Auckland Theatre Company, Downstage and Toi Whakaari.

She is perhaps best-known for her work with prison inmates on screen and stage in Verbatim, by William Brandt, co-devised by Brandt and herself, in which verbatim accounts of violent crime were knitted together in a searing 6-character monologue. Miranda has toured with Verbatim to prisons, theatres and festivals in the UK, the USA, Hong Kong and Australia, garnering rave reviews.

Miranda joined Toi Whakaari as Head of the Acting programme in 2001.

In 2002 Miranda was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (O.N.Z.M) in the Queen’s Birthday and Golden Jubilee Honours 2002. Miranda received this award for Services to Theatre and the Community.

Michael Hedges

Michael Hedges has been a Re-recording Mixer working in the motion picture industry for over 15 years, with over 30 feature credits to his name.

Working in the New Zealand film industry, Michael recently won his second Academy Award for his work on the Peter Jackson Production King Kong. His First Oscar was awarded for his work on The Lord of the Rings, “The Return of The King.

As well as receiving British BAFTA nominations for the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, Michael has also won 9 New Zealand Film Awards working on a large number of the most successful Feature Films made in New Zealand.

Hugh Macdonald

Hugh spent many years in film and television at the National Film Unit and Television New Zealand. Established own production company in 1986. Productions have ranged from promotional (Tourism, NFU) documentary, drama (TVOne The Governor and others), staff training and induction (several for NZ Dairy Board), animation (technical and children’s TV and film), product launches and corporate profiles for use in international markets in many languages.

At the age of 25, directed This Is New Zealand, for the New Zealand Pavilion at Expo ’70, Osaka, Japan. This was the most critically-acclaimed and popular film presentation at Expo ’70 (there were over 100 there), and later went on to become a commercial hit in NZ’s four main centres, where cinemas were specially adapted to accommodate its three-screen stereophonic presentation.

In 1973 received QEII Arts Council grant for overseas study and spent nine months in England and Canada at Pinewood and Shepparton Studios, the BBC, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and National Film Board of Canada.

Over thirty international awards in role of Director or Producer, including an Oscar nomination for Bob Stenhouse's animated film The Frog, the Dog and the Devil (Producer 1986) Latest award was for Westland Milk Products A Land Apart (New York Film Festival 2004)

Clients have included New Zealand Dairy Board (within NZ and internationally with 20 overseas companies), Kiwi Milk Products, Fonterra, Interlock Industries, AMP Society, Hannahs Shoes, Colmar Brunton, Westland Milk Products, Vastera (USA - computer systems), Pellerin Multimedia Inc, USA, and many others.

Other work includes Memory Line Productions¸ a self-funded partnership between Hugh Macdonald, David Sims and Kit Rollings originally formed in 1991 to produce documentaries on New Zealand's social and technological history for sale in the NZ and special interest overseas sell-through markets. Five one hour programmes have been made and collectively have sold over 50,000 copies in VHS. They have recently been re-mastered to DVD and are about to be to be re-issued.

Rosemary MacLeod

Rosemary is a Wellington-based nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, author and cartoonist.

Rosemary has previously worked in television as a comedy and drama scriptwriter, most notably as devisor, storyliner and main writer for Gloss, the award-winning 1980s drama series noted for its distinctive style and wit.

Rosemary has been a judge of the MovieFest competition since its inception in 2003.