The Screen Direc­tors Guild has clar­i­fied its posi­tion on the can­cel­la­tion of New Zealand film awards this year, in response to a story pub­lished in the Her­ald On Sun­day.

In a press release, the SDGNZ recalls the his­tory of the event and the Guild’s involve­ment, say­ing that as free­lancers their work on the awards went unpaid, while their col­leagues in TV broad­cast­ing were there as part of their employ­ment and there­fore paid for their time. “This year, because of resource and finan­cial con­straints, the SDGNZ felt that it could no longer con­tinue to sub­sidise the awards with mem­bers and staff’s lim­ited time, so with­drew from the organ­is­ing com­mit­tee.” Read the full release below…

16 July 2012
MEDIA RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEW ZEALAND FILM AND TELEVISION AWARDS

The Screen Direc­tors Guild (SDGNZ) is con­cerned that there is mis­in­for­ma­tion regard­ing the Film and Tele­vi­sion Awards.

In 2005, as a ser­vice to the screen indus­try, the SDGNZ decided to run the film and tele­vi­sion awards after sev­eral years of no awards event.

“The Guild took up this ini­tia­tive as we felt it was impor­tant to recog­nise tal­ented film and tele­vi­sion mak­ers by ensur­ing both were acknowl­edged in Awards cer­e­monies.” says Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of SDGNZ Anna Cahill.

These New Zealand Screen Awards had a full range of film cat­e­gories and TV cat­e­gories and included a wide range of craft cat­e­gories to ensure peer recog­ni­tion. The SDGNZ awards did not have news and jour­nal­ism cat­e­gories because they seemed like a sep­a­rate indus­try to us – and at that time they had their own awards. We also did not have a peo­ples’ choice award, as these awards were pri­mar­ily an indus­try event.

The SDGNZ ran the New Zealand Screen Awards suc­cess­fully for a num­ber of years. In that time the Tele­vi­sion Broad­cast­ers Coun­cil, (now ThinkTV), TVNZ and TV3 started their own awards (called the Qan­tas Awards) with a heavy empha­sis on TV news and jour­nal­ism awards. The two sets of awards ran par­al­lel for a cou­ple of years.

Fol­low­ing over­tures from the Tele­vi­sion Broad­cast­ers Coun­cil the SDGNZ and the TBC amal­ga­mated to have just one indus­try award cer­e­mony as the indus­try is rel­a­tively small and we were often chas­ing the same spon­sors for our events. The new awards were called the NZ Film and Tele­vi­sion Awards and were ini­tially spon­sored by Qan­tas. There was agree­ment to main­tain the film cat­e­gories, doc­u­men­tary cat­e­gories and craft cat­e­gories as well as news and cur­rent affairs awards.

The SDGNZ jointly ran the awards with Think TV suc­cess­fully for three years. Both groups were rep­re­sented on the organ­is­ing com­mit­tee. The awards do not gen­er­ate any income above costs, so all of the SDGNZ com­mit­tee worked with­out reward (as they are free­lancers) to ensure the awards were not only a suc­cess, but they bal­anced the demands of film, tele­vi­sion and news; ande­ven more impor­tantly kept an eye to the pur­pose of awards – cel­e­brat­ing the craft of mak­ing film and television.

It should be noted that the ThinkTV, TVNZ and TV3 rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the organ­is­ing com­mit­tee were in all in paid employ­ment for the chan­nels and so their involve­ment in the Awards came at no per­sonal finan­cial cost.

This year, because of resource and finan­cial con­straints, the SDGNZ felt that it could no longer con­tinue to sub­sidise the awards with mem­bers and staff’s lim­ited time, so with­drew from the organ­is­ing committee.

ThinkTV indi­cated it would be happy to con­tinue organ­is­ing the awards alone as it had suf­fi­cient resources to do so. How­ever, at this stage ThinkTV decided to drop the film com­po­nent of the awards (The SDGNZ and ThinkTV let the indus­try know there would be no Film ele­ment in the awards in a release on the 15th of March 2012).

The SDGNZ is nat­u­rally as dis­ap­pointed as every­one else in the indus­try that the Film cat­e­gories are no longer in the Awards. While we know from expe­ri­ence the tremen­dous costs and time com­mit­ment needed to run awards, we are con­fi­dent the indus­try will dis­cuss where the film ele­ment of the awards will now go and we hope that there will be an event in the future.

www.sdgnz.co.nz