Jim Booth

Jim Booth took a Diploma in Public Administration at Victoria University before embarking on a busy career in the arts.

As an Executive Officer at the Ministry of Internal Affairs he was part of the official working party that set up the NZ Film Commission in 1978. He also founded the Children's Writers Bursary, an award set up by the NZ Literary Fund to encourage children to read and write.

Booth became Deputy Director of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council. In this role he oversaw a wide range of cultural and community arts programs, and was responsible for a five-fold budgetary increase in public arts funding.

in 1984 Booth became Executive Director of the NZ Film Commission. It was a time when the industry was running red hot with tax shelter films. There was little support available for emerging directors, so he moved to set up a scheme to fund short films via a dedicated fund. Most of New Zealand's subsequent crop of directors have been helped by that fund.

Peter Jackson received a different kind of assistance from Booth. After viewing a rough early cut of Jackson's Bad Taste, Booth determined that Jackson had talent, and personally set about backing the film and the unheralded young director who'd organised shoots around his mate's weekend soccer matches.

The gamble paid off when Bad Taste went into profit within a few days of its debut at the market in Cannes in 1988. Booth then jumped from the safety of his job as a tenured bureaucrat, and set up Midnight Films, initially with the aim of producing Jackson's next film, Meet The Feebles (1989).

The production was plagued by a low budget and friction with a nervous NZFC, but despite a mixed critical reception, it was a modest commercial success, and remains a cult favourite to this day.

The follow up was Braindead (1992), which showed what Jackson and his team could do with a great script. Booth's credibility rocketed, as did Jackson's. Jackson finally silenced his snootiest critics when he took a left turn from horror and delivered the sublime and masterful Heavenly Creatures in 1994.

Sadly, this would be Jim Booth's swansong. He was already ill with cancer when production started. He did not live to see the film win a Silver Lion at Venice.

A number of projects had been in active development at Midnight Films up till this time. Most later lapsed. But Jack Brown Genius, written and directed by Tony Hiles, and Forgotten Silver, co-written and directed by Costa Botes and Peter Jackson, were both produced after Booth died.