Expertise

Mairi Gunn

After a stint as a photo-journalist for Auckland University’s CRACCUM and Rip It Up magazines, Mairi went to London in the punk late 70’s where she worked in the cutting room on documentaries for an independent production company and for the BBC, then as a runner on a feature film with Ska group Madness. She returned to Aotearoa/New Zealand in 1983 where she was assistant editor on NZ features including “Pallet on the Floor” and “Came a Hot Friday” for Larry Parr’s Mirage Films. She worked with others making films out of Alternative Cinema where she first met Merata Mita and landed her first job in the camera department of the freelance film industry in 1984. After loading then pulling focus for ten years on dramas, docos, TVCs and music videos, she assumed the role of cinematographer, shooting two dramatic features in NZ and New York - “Gravity and Grace” and “Reality Show”, several shorts, music videos and documentaries. She won the ITVA Award for Best Camera in 1994, the Women in Film and Television Unsung Heroine of the New Zealand Screen Industry Award for her work as a pioneering woman cinematographer in 2006 and is a foundation member of the New Zealand Cinematographers Society. The feature length environmental documentary she shot and co-produced for Maori Television, “Restoring the Mauri of Lake Omapere”, won Best Overall Entry at the Wairoa Maori Film Festival [2008]. Mairi taught camera and lighting at UNITEC for six years and is currently teaching Video Production at AUT.