This article was first published by Stuff.
Kiwi screen legend Cliff Curtis has been honoured at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards for his decades-long career spent in front of and behind the camera.
At a star-studded ceremony on Australia’s Gold Coast on Saturday night, the prolific Māori film-maker received the prestigious International Federation of Film Producers Associations’ (FIAPF) Award, recognising outstanding achievement in film.
Curtis told Stuff the honour was a huge surprise, and he was humbled to represent the Kiwi film-making community, especially in telling indigenous stories.
“I’ve got my Hollywood career and that’s a really great part of my life [but also] I’m trying to tell stories from home.
“It’s just great there is a home for those stories, an audience for those stories.”
He said it was a struggle to get things done as an artist, but that the support he received had allowed him to give back to other film-makers.
“It takes a village to raise a child and it takes a village to raise an artist, to give me confidence that I could do more than just memorise lines.”
Curtis is one of New Zealand’s most successful Hollywood exports after a career kick-started by Once Were Warriors, Training Day, Whale Rider and more recently the Avatar sequels with Oscar-winning Hollywood heavyweight James Cameron.
He credits mentors like Oscar-winning producers Barrie Osborne, the late Jon Landau and James Cameron for believing in him.
“They’re kinda like my Hollywood family. They’ve always been incredibly supportive of me as an indigenous storyteller and they encouraged me to produce.
Curtis is currently working with Cameron on the next Avatar sequels and teased of a new project with fellow Hollywood actor Jason Momoa.
“We’re going to be making some announcements soon off the back of this. I can’t say just yet but it’s very very exciting.”
Curtis and Momoa have been working together on TV show Chief of War, much of which was shot in Aotearoa.
Being honoured at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards sees Curtis joining the ranks of previous winners, Australian writer/director George Miller (Mad Max/Babe) and the Lebanese-Canadian film-maker behind the Oscar-nominated film Capernaum, Nadine Labaki.
FIAPF president Luis Alberto Scalella said “Cliff Curtis’ impressive career has been built on a strong commitment to screen storytelling that truly speaks to all audiences, both within the New Zealand screen industry, and internationally”.
“His support for emerging Indigenous film-makers from New Zealand has enabled the production of many compelling films, and he is a producer known for bold and demanding choices in the stories he chooses to tell.”
Stories that Curtis will keep telling, by helping other indigenous storytellers tell their’s.
“I am very blessed and very grateful and very humbled to be a representative of all the great work that everyone else does. It’s cool.”
- Stuff