Vincent Ward: A very original filmmaker...

Vincent Ward has won an international reputation as one of New Zealand's most original and visionary filmmakers. Vigil and The Navigator played in competition at the Cannes Film Festival (the first Kiwi films to do so). In Hollywood, Ward made Robin Williams afterlife drama What Dreams May Come. Urewera-set docu-drama Rain of the Children in 2008 revisited characters from Ward's 1980 documentary In Spring One Plants Alone.

In this ScreenTalk, Ward talks about:

• His art school experimental filmmaking days
• The evolution of his acclaimed documentary In Spring One Plants Alone, and the time he spent with the characters in the film
• Being a writer by necessity in his career because he can't usually find the kind of stories he wants to film
• Watching his film Map of the Human Heart at a Polish retrospective of his work, and thinking it stood up better than he had expected
• How the idea of making a follow-up to In Spring One Plants Alone haunted him for years, till he made Rain of the Children
• Being encouraged by the positive response to the film in its local community
• Getting his storytelling genes from his parents, who both had dramatic war-time experiences and many stories to tell

This video was first uploaded on 19 November 2008, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Interview - Clare O'Leary. Camera and Editing - Leo Guerchmann