Niki Caro
The New Zealand culture and nature is such that we find it very difficult to celebrate creative achievement. In order to get New Zealanders' respect you have to dominate the world like Peter Jackson has done. He is absolutely revered.Collection: Respect
As a kid I was always barefoot, always outside and as an adult I always want to be outside.
I'm primarily interested in examining human issues.
You know, when you make something in live-action, you make it real. And when you are inspired by and determined to honor the original - the most original version of the 'Mulan' story - then you have to acknowledge that this is a story about a young woman who disguises herself as a man and goes to war.
Fundamentally, the way I work is exactly the same whether I'm making 'Whale Rider' or 'Mulan'. And those two stories are somewhat similar. They have interesting parallels, and it felt like I'd really come full circle, back to a story of leadership.
Martial arts are inherently both incredibly impressive and incredibly beautiful. And that's my female nature, maybe, and my instinct, to make things beautiful.
I take particular care in authenticity and specificity when working in cultures not my own. Every aspect of the filmmaking here was meticulously researched, and not just by me but across every department.
I made 'Whale Rider', I saw that to be specific and authentic is to be universal, and I've continued to work in an identical way ever since.
In all cases, I will always hire the best person for the job, and it just so happens that many of those are women.
It's a privilege to tell stories on film. It can be a great community to live a professional life. All of us that do this work should feel very grateful that we can.
As far as people getting into the industry and creative roles as writers and directors, I would say that technology is on your side, and you can tell their stories very easily.
You can start making films as a child. It's become easier to find your groove as a filmmaker, and I'm extremely interested in those voices.
There's so many movies, they're just like fast food you consume them and you can't even remember what you just ate. I don't want to make those kinds of movies. I want to make the slow food of movies.
A film like 'Whale Rider' is equally truthful, perhaps more so, to the Maori experience; Maori people respond to 'Whale Rider' because it's a world that they understand.
I believe that the debate of 'Who should tell indigenous stories?' is very important. It's something that should be talked about. I'm totally up for that and if my work can be part of that debate, I'm thrilled.
The Maori culture is different than our culture where we're most likely to introduce ourselves by email or fax and we conduct a lot of business in an impersonal way, whereas for Maori, the only way to do it is to make the pilgrimage and sit down face-to-face and have some tea.
The problem for me, with most movies for children, is that the filmmakers make the mistake of making it too simplistic. Where a child's world can be very complex, emotionally.
You know when you work with animals you have to do so very carefully, species by species.
You know, what is so curious about being a director is that you never get on anybody else's set and see how they do things.
When I was starting out I was way too scared to ask real directors how to do it or ask for advice, I'm really kind of New Zealand like that.
I do commit really, really passionately. It's why I only work every five years. It's exhausting.
I recognised that femininity and strength are not mutually exclusive, and I think that femininity has often been equated with weakness, but we know it's not.
We know, from our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, our friends, that our strength comes - female strength - comes in all kinds of forms.
Look what I know about directing; is it goes beyond gender. You might see some qualities that are inherently female in the great male directors.
I think about things like the ability to communicate a vision, strength to create an environment where the actors fell very safe and where they can maybe they can work without e protecting themselves they can really stretch. These qualities are neither male nor female.
I come from a place that is very politically sophisticated and progressive. New Zealand was the first place to give women the right to vote.
I really value the skill and sensitivity of my collaborators, and I am really interested in - perhaps more so than if I was a male director - the hair, makeup and the textures of the fabric and the wallpaper.
If you look at my body of work, which is not very big, really, it took an evolutionary leap with 'The Zookeeper's Wife'.
When I made 'Whale Rider' - of course, I'm not Maori and have no business, as a white girl, telling people how to be in this movie - I started by learning the language, as best I could.
I'm very conscious of what I consider to be the first audience of any movie that I make. It's those people whose reactions I'm most attentive to. They're the ones who will tell me whether I've done my job or not.
With every film I've made, 'Whale Rider' included, I've had a vision that was far bigger than the budget allowed.
I was always stealing 40-gallon drums off the road at night, bringing them back to the workshop and cutting them up with a gas axe because I loved to weld. I would make creatures out of these old metal drums.
I have a commitment to real worlds on screen. I like working in real communities. I like telling real stories.
I try to cast actors willing to believe in the world of the movie, who can make an emotional investment in the world we are creating.
I'm not at my house storyboarding, and telling them they need to move from A to B, 'Move here and then there.' Never, ever! I used to storyboard when I was much less experienced.
I don't see myself as a crusading feminist filmmaker. Not at all. I have the luxury of coming from New Zealand and I've had moments in my life where being female is considered to be a tremendous advantage - emotionally, career-wise.
I never had a mentor. God, it would have been nice, but I just didn't. I look up to Jane Campion. And my most favorite director Lynne Ramsay.
Personally, I have nothing to prove. But I'm tremendously curious about human nature. Female life is so incredibly underexplored in cinema, so these stories feel very exotic.
I think a lot of action films, and I'm just saying this as a moviegoer, the default setting on action films seems to be how could it be cooler?
We don't tend to break into song when we go to war.
Whale Rider' was a very authentic and specific movie about the indigenous culture from where I come. Amazingly, by the fact it was so authentic and so specific, it became really powerfully universal.
I've had my best experience as a filmmaker with true stories about real people and real cultures.
I blew up the mine in 'North Country'. It was about a kilometer long. I was so nervous that I'd do it wrong that I closed my eyes when I did it and I missed the shot completely.
Here's the problem: women directors are not allowed to fail.
Sense of place is really big for me - as a filmmaker and as an audience member, it's huge.
It's interesting - the things you remember about Chariots of Fire is the slow running on the beach and the Vangelis music.
God knows nobody hated running more than me. Because I was writing and rewriting the script, I thought that I'm going to have to run because I'm going to have to know what it feels like to run.
The amazing thing about cross-country is that they don't run indoors - I could put them in extraordinary environments. And it's kind of uniquely cinematic in that way, to be able to commit to the screen some things that people don't get to see too often.
I don't see myself as a crusading feminist filmmaker. Not at all. I have the luxury of coming from New Zealand and I've had moments in my life where being female is considered to be a tremendous advantage - emotionally, career-wise. Personally, I have nothing to prove. But I'm tremendously curious about human nature. Female life is so incredibly underexplored in cinema, so these stories feel very exotic.Collection: Feminist
People talk to me all the time about sexual harassment. This sort of behavior did not only happen in the past. And it's not in just the working class. It's in every industry. It's in the military. It's in politics.Collection: Military