Lindsay Shelton: Film seller supreme…

Lindsay Shelton's career testifies to his love of communicating, and his love of film. After working in newspapers he began a decade programming the Wellington Film Festival, while working in television news. In 1979 he joined the New Zealand Film Commission: over the next 22 years he was an enthusiastic promoter and salesman for New Zealand film around the globe. 

In this ScreenTalk, Shelton talks about:

• Getting pulled into the new medium of television, from a globetrotting newspaper career
• Campaigning to sell films for the New Zealand Film Commission
• The golden days of Kiwi movies first breaking into overseas markets: Goodbye Pork Pie, then selling Sleeping Dogs and Smash Palace to the United States
• How the world was discovering New Zealand as a hothouse of new and exciting talent
• Shelton's long held belief that the best way to promote New Zealand films is by country rather than genre
• How without the NZ Film Commission there would be no local film industry
• The 'wonderful' but stressful story of how Shelton persuaded Jane Campion to turn An Angel at My Table into a movie
• Stunned reactions to the first international screening of Once Were Warriors, at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival

This video was first uploaded on 23 January 2013, 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 and Editing - Ian Pryor. Camera - Alex Backhouse