NEWSROOM: 20 January - 26 January 2007

The story of bro’Town, live on stage!
26 January 2007 - Source: Firehorse Films Press Release
 
Since its debut on New Zealand TV screens in 2004, the side-splittingly funny and proudly non-PC bro’Town has reached cult status, amassing thousands of local and international fans, winning awards left, right and centre, and earning critical acclaim.

Hang with the boys - Vale, Valea, Sione, Mack and Jeff da Maori - as they take to the stage for the first time at the Festival.

Swapping the big, bad city for the friendly streets of Wellington, what new adventures does the capital hold in store for them? A session at Parliament with Helen Clark? A jam with the crew from Fat Freddy's? A starring role in Peter Jackson's next movie? Well, most definitely there'll be a run-in with a southerly.

Bro’Town, New Zealand's first primetime animated series, won best comedy at the Screen Awards for the third time in a row in 2007.

Join bro’Town's creators as they recount the long and winding road to Morningside in a show packed with special guests and behind-the-scenes secrets.

Venue Details:
Bro’Town Live on Stage
Presented by New Zealand International Arts Festival 2008, with support from TV3
4, 5 March at 7:30PM
St. James Theatre, 77-87 Courtenay Place, Wellington
Duration: 1hr 15, no interval.
 

Special accommodation and rental car deals announced for boxing fans
25 January 2007 - Source: eventpolynesia.com
 
Overseas interest in the upcoming Samoa International Pro-Am Boxing event in Apia on Saturday 2nd February 2008 will see up to 200 boxing fans and supporters arriving in Samoa next week.

Many more are expected to book a ticket to Samoa with the announcement over the week end of special accommodation and rental car deals for boxing fans and supporters.

Hotel Kitano Samoa is offering an accommodation special $200 SAT per room per day for up to three people with ELAVA at Vaitele is offering $120 SAT per room per day up to two people with continental breakfast included.

Apia Rental is offering a 15% discount to all their vehicles with DAT Car Rentals is offering a special $165 per day for their Hyundai Tucson fleet.

This was confirmed by Mr. Teleiai Su’atapulolo’o Edwin Puni, Managing Director of Event Polynesia, “For the next two weeks, Hotel Kitano Samoa and ELAVA Resort will be the home of international boxing with Apia Rental and DAT Car Rentals as the preferred rental car service.”

The inaugural Samoa International Pro-Am Boxing is an initiative of Event Polynesia Boxing in association with SPBI and SABA to provide our Samoan boxers both amateur and professional a pathway to boxing world titles by setting up the needed top international competitions right here in Samoa.

Mr. Puni credits the support from media partners Samoa Observer, Le Samoa Post, SBC, TV3, Vaiala Beach TV and Radio Polynesia in promoting the upcoming fight.

Mr. Puni goes on to say, “Staging international title fights in Samoa is very good for tourism and local businesses and also allows for our people to see the action LIVE and up close.”

WBO Oriental Cruiserweight title contender and current IBF Australasian Cruiserweight champion Mr. Lawrence Tauasa arrived in Samoa on Sunday with his manager Mr. Lincoln Hudson to prepare for the upcoming fight.

For more information contact Mr. Tuilagi Maiava Saipele Esera on (+685) 751-9458 or email: saipele@eventpolynesia.com.
 

Childhood social development research grant awarded
24 January 2007 - Source: Health Research Council of New Zealand Press Release
 
Understanding how parent and whanau language can influence a child’s social development is the focus of a new Pacific Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC).

Poor emotional understanding in young children has been related to later levels of internalising and externalising behaviours and recent research suggests that parental language strongly influences children’s developing cognition.

Fellowship recipient Dr Mele Taumoepeau from the University of Otago has received $325,500 to conduct the research, which will involve a longitudinal analysis of 100 Pacific Island children and their families examining the relationship between parental input and extended family networks on pre-school children’s social understanding.

This research will add to the limited pool of research into psycho-social wellbeing in Pacific Island children, particularly in the areas of emotional and social cognition.

This Fellowship has been awarded as part of the HRC’s Pacific Career Development Awards programme which is aimed at developing and supporting the Pacific workforce capacity in health research in New Zealand. Nearly $650,000 was awarded for the 2007 year for three Masters Scholarships, three PhDs Scholarships and one Postdoctoral Fellowship.

“The HRC is please to see an increasing number of high quality applicants, which bodes well for the future Pacific health research workforce,” HRC Chief Executive Dr Robin Olds says.

About the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC)
The HRC is the Crown agency responsible for the management of the Government’s investment in public good health research. Ownership of the HRC resides with the Minister of Health, with funding being primarily provided from Vote Research, Science and Technology.

A Memorandum of Understanding between the two Ministers sets out this relationship.

Established under the Health Research Council Act 1990, the HRC's statutory functions include:
• advising the Minister and administering funds in relation to national health research policy
• fostering the recruitment, education, training, and retention of those engaged in health research in New Zealand
• initiating and supporting health research
• undertaking consultation to establish priorities in health research
• promoting and disseminating the results of health research to encourage their contribution to health science, policy and delivery ensuring the development and application of appropriate assessment standards by committees or subcommittees that assess health research proposals.
 

Tokelau’s new ulu seeks fresh talks with New Zealand
23 January 2007 - Source: Radio New Zealand International
 
Tokelau’s incoming head of government for 2008 says the priority for this year is to meet New Zealand government officials.

Elections were held over the weekend to choose the faipule or leader and village mayor for each of Tokelau’s three atolls, and members of Tokelau’s General Fono.

Pio Tuia was elected as the local leader of Nukunonu atoll, and will be sworn in next month as the ulu or head of government for this year.

He says New Zealand’s relationship is key and Tokelau leaders are well aware the New Zealand government could change this year.

“I think we need to revisit our relationship with New Zealand as we’re still looking at New Zealand to be the administration for Tokelau so our relationship is very important and very crucial at the moment because I think New Zealand’s is going to have a new election this year. So we’re planning to have a meeting with the New Zealand government maybe in early February this year.”

Pio Tuia says talks will centre on NZAID, infrastructure support and ongoing negotiations for a new boat to service the atolls.

In two referendums in the past two years, Tokelauans voted to retain the current relationship with New Zealand.
 

First Kiribati youth work group heads to NZ
22 January 2007 - Source: Pacific Magazine
 
The first group of I-Kiribati youth to undergo New Zealand's Recognised Seasonal Employer Scheme (RSE) has left Tarawa for New Zealand.

A report from the Department of Labour, which coordinated this recruiting scheme, said this first lot will be working with the Fore-Vintage Contracting, Blenheim, in the South Island.

The report adds the 14 youth, both males and females, are part of a larger contingent, 50 in all, who have been selected to work in New Zealand in early 2008.

This figure is expected to increase as the years go by, and according to President Anote Tong's explanation, 1,000 youth from Kiribati is the target figure.

The youth have a limit of nine months to work in New Zealand. They will return to Kiribati and be replaced.

A spokesman from the 14 youth told reporters they have formed a committee that will look after their affairs.

“We promise that we will not drink alcohol and look after our I-Kiribati girls,” the group said. “And we'll do our best for the interest of ourselves, families and Kiribati as a whole. The committee is a watchdog, to make sure that no one breaks the promise.”
 

Kihara works picked up by Metropolitan Museum of Art
21 January 2007 - Source: Shigeyuki Kihara
 
Two photographic works by Auckland artist Shigeyuki Kihara have been snapped up by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to join their world-renowned permanent collection.

The works come from Kihara’s 'Fa'a fafine: In a manner of a woman' series, first shown in Sydney in 2005.

In her works, which are both provocative and evocative, Kihara uses photography and a team of technical assistants to transform herself into different personas drawn from Samoan cultural traditions, colonial fantasies of South Seas Belles and her own imagination.

As well as being a visual artist, designer, and curator, Kihara is also a performance artist.

The purchase came about after Dr. Virginia-Lee Webb from the Metropolitan Museum saw a performance by Kihara at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris last July.

“Kihara performed ‘Taualuga: the last dance’. The intensity, beauty, and emotional power of this work is significant” recalls Dr Webb, a research curator from the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the museum.

The ‘Fa’a fafine: In a manner of a woman’ series was originally presented as a solo exhibition at Sherman Galleries, Sydney in 2005. The following year, it was exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), also in Sydney.

The photographic works were then selected to be part of the Pasifika Styles exhibition – currently showing at the University of Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in the UK.

Dr. Webb explains the attraction of Kihara’s work: “I have followed and admired Shigeyuki Kihara’s work for several years. The creativity that Kihara brings to her work is exemplified by an astute synthesis of performance, multiple media, historical images, art history and contemporary art practice“.

Kihara’s work is arguably the first work by a New Zealand Pacific artist to be added to the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The collections hold over two million works of art.

Shigeyuki Kihara’s work is a unique brand of contemporary art – firmly grounded in her Samoan and South Pacific identity and now ready to face the world.


The two works purchased by The Metropolitan Museum are:
- Image from triptych: ‘Fa’a fafine: In a manner of a woman’ 2005.
- ‘My Samoan Girl’ 2005

2008 Showings of the series ‘Fa’a fafine: In a manner of a woman’:

‘Pasifika Styles’ Group exhibition
University of Cambridge Museum Of Archeology & Anthropology, Cambridge, UK
May 2006 - March 2008
http://www.pasifikastyles.org.uk/

‘Te Taitaga/Bind Together: Contemporary Art of New Zealand’ Group exhibition
Southwest School of Art & Craft, Texas, USA
23 January - 16 March 2008
http://www.swschool.org/

‘Samoa Contemporary’ Group exhibition
Pataka, Porirua, New Zealand
21 February - June 2008
www.pataka.org.nz

2008 Curatorial Project:

‘Hand in Hand’
Co-curators Jenny Fraser and Shigeyuki Kihara
Boomali Aboriginal Artist Co-operative, Sydney, Australia
8 February - 4 March 2008
http://www.boomalli.org.au/

'Hand in Hand'
Co-curators Jenny Fraser and Shigeyuki Kihara
Performance Space, Sydney, Australia
16 February - 16 March 2008
http://www.performancespace.com.au/


Shigeyuki Kihara Background:

Kihara, of Japanese and Samoan parentage, came to New Zealand in 1989. She studied fashion design at Massey University, Wellington. In her second year, her award-winning ‘Graffiti Dress’ 1995, was purchased by New Zealand’s National Museum Te Papa Tongarewa, which also acquired a line of 28 ready-to-wear T-shirts from her first exhibition, ‘Teuanoa’i: Adorn to Excess’ in 2001.

Kihara was the recipient of the Emerging Pacific Artist Award from Creative New Zealand, the Arts Council of New Zealand, in 2003. Since then, Kihara has been exhibiting internationally with solo exhibitions including: ‘Fa’a fafine: In a manner of a woman’, Sherman Galleries, Sydney, 2005; and ‘Vavau: Tales of ancient Samoa’, The Gus Fisher Gallery, University of Auckland, 2006.

Apart from her visual art practice she is a performance artist, performing at: 4th Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, 2002; and Haus der kulteren der welt, Berlin 2003 with the Pasifika Divas performance art group. Her solo dance piece entitled ‘Taualuga: the last dance’ was performed at Linden St Kilda Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2006; Musee du Quai Branly, Paris, 2007; and Boomalli Aboriginal Artist Co-operative, Sydney 2008.

For more information on Shigeyuki Kihara, please visit:
http://www.shermangalleries.com.au/
http://www.tautai.org/
 

Maori Television Launches Indigenous Broadcasting Award
20 January 2007 - Source: Maori Television
 
New Zealand's national indigenous broadcaster, Maori Television, is launching a Lifetime Achievement Award for Indigenous Television Broadcasting - Te Rerenga Tahi.

The award will be presented at the gala dinner of the inaugural World Indigenous Television Broadcasting Conference to be held in Auckland from March 26-28 2008.

Media accreditation has now opened for the three-day hui which will be the first ever gathering of indigenous television leaders from throughout the world. A World Indigenous Television Broadcasters Network will also be launched as part of the event.

Maori Television chief executive Jim Mather says the new award seeks to recognise the work of a person or persons who have made an outstanding contribution to the indigenous television broadcasting industry in New Zealand.

The award submission form as well as the application for media accreditation can be downloaded from the event website - www.witbc.org.

Mr Mather says the selection of the award winner will be a confidential process undertaken by a panel of independent judges, and based on the highest merits of fairness, honesty and respect to the deserving nominees.

Nominations for Te Rerenga Tahi close on January 31 2008.

Leaders, producers and planners involved in indigenous and public television can register their interest to attend WITBC '08 at www.witbc.org.
 

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