Join us for a joint event between Proud Voices On Screen and the Pan-Asian Screen Collective.
Minority creatives can feel a burden in needing to represent their community on screen. On the other hand, it is freeing to be able to create work you and your community want to see. Creating characters and stories that project what you want to experience in the world can bring things into existence - creation as actualisation.
Nathan Joe will moderate a discussion with filmmakers Ramon Te Wake, Rachel Fawcett and Ankita Singh as they explore their approach to creating work that surpasses known tropes and potentially creates new ones.
You don’t have to be a member of both communities to attend! We see this as a way to get our audiences together, to meet each other and chat over common ground.
This event is made possible with support from the New Zealand Film Commission
Stay on for some refreshments afterwards
Tickets are $5 from Eventbrite
Speaker Bios:
Ramon Te Wake:
Ramon Te Wake (Te Rarawa, Ngati Whatua) – is a writer, director, producer actor and singer songwriter. She works in both the drama and factual world. She is the creator of the comedy series The Boy The Queen And Everything In Between which screened on TVNZ+ in early 2024. She is the co-director of the critical and commercial success, Inky Pinky Ponky (2023). And she Executive Produced Transgenerations, which won best web series at the Berlin Short Film Festival in 2023.
In 2018 and 2019 Ramon was nominated for best director at the NZ Webfest awards for Attitude’s Glimpse and Crips in Cars. She is one of the first trans woman to present, direct and produce content in Aotearoa. With more than 20 years in the television industry Ramon has created hundreds of stories with a strong focus on Māori, queer and the marginalised as the backbone to her extensive catalogue.
Ramon’s first presenting/directing job was in 2004 for Māori Television, where she fronted the show Takatāpui alongside Tania Simon and Taurewa Biddle. It was the first indigenous queer series in the world. Ramon’s storytelling was noted by Scoop Independent News as “strong, creative and visual”. The show won a media peace award in 2007.
In 2024, Ramon directed Season 2 of Queer & Here and the long awaited documentary, Trans & Pregnant is scheduled for release in September on TV1. Currently, she is in development for a feature length documentary, Denied – 50 Years Of Gay Pride in Aotearoa.
Rachel Fawcett:
Rachel Fawcett is a Pakeha-Chinese producer from Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa. After kick-starting her career as a co-producer on Roseanne Liang’s award-winning series, Friday Night Bites (season 2), she has gone on to produce Steven Chow’s award-winning short thriller, Munkie, the Te Reo short Loading Docs documentary, Wing Song and Rain, Pulkit Arora's short drama, Anu, and the hit TikTok series, n00b. She also served as associate producer on the feature film biopic, Joika, a NZ/Polish/US/UK co-production which stars Diane Kruger and Talia Ryder.
Rachel launched her production company, Lusty Productions, with actress and producer, JJ Fong, which focuses on creating obsessions and connections through female-centric storytelling, and uplifting pan-Asian voices in front of and behind the camera.
She has just completed post production for her NZFC-funded Catalyst short, Chrysanthemum, with writer-director Jolin Lee, and is currently in post-production on the half-hour version of n00b for Three and Three Now.
Ankita Singh:
Ankita Singh is a writer, director and award-winning theatre producer raised between Chandigarh and Kirikiriroa. In 2023, She debuted as a playwright with her neo-noir action-comedy play 'Basmati Bitch', making history as the first South Asian female playwright to be commissioned in Aotearoa. In 2021 she won the Piki Pitch and in 2020 was awarded the "Outstanding Newcomer Award" at The Auckland Theatre Awards. Her half-hour action-comedy featuring a Chinese-Indian mother-daughter MMA duo airs this May on TVNZ.
Nathan Joe:
Nathan Joe 周润豪 is a Chinese New Zealand playwright and performance poet based in Tāmaki Makaurau. He was the recipient of the 2021 Bruce Mason Playwriting Award and the 2020 National Poetry Slam Champion. His poetry short film, Nathan Joe: Homecoming Poems, commissioned by Going West Writers Festival, premiered internationally at the Toronto Queer Film Festival 2022. Joe’s best known work Scenes from a Yellow Peril premiered at the ASB Waterfront Theatre in 2022. He is also the curator and producer of BIPOC spoken word event Dirty Passports and the Creative Director of Auckland Pride.