Annie Goldson: Award-winning documentary filmmaker...

Interview – 2013

Annie Goldson, NZOM, may be New Zealand's most award-laden documentary maker. Goldson is known for thought-provoking feature-length documentaries like Punitive Damage, Georgie Girl, An Island Calling, and Brother Number One.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Goldson talks about:

Working with "terrorists" and "militants" on American series Counterterror
The challenges of chronicling the 1991 Dili massacre in East Timor, for Punitive Damage
How politician Georgina Beyer's busy schedule helped shape documentary Georgie Girl, which Goldson made with Peter Wells
Filming "morally complex" documentary An Island Calling in Fiji, inbetween coups
Exploring the silence that follows genocide, while filming Brother Number One
Asking questions about journalism and going to war in He Toki Huna: New Zealand in Afghanistan, which Goldson made with Kay Ellmers

This video was first uploaded on 4 November 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, Camera and Editing – Andrew Whiteside

I was just listening to the radio and I heard Helen Todd, who is the central character in Punitive Damage. And she had just taken an Indonesian general to trial for the wrongful death of her son in East Timor. And just in that little tiny Morning Report clip, I was really struck by her intelligence, her grace, her determination. So I thought 'wow, there could really be a film there'.
– Annie Goldson on the origins of her 1999 documentary Punitive Damage

Annie's Full Profile