International Filmmaker Attending Autumn Events
Meet the filmmaker at our Autumn Events screenings of Putuparri and the Rainmakers, screening in Wellington and Auckland.
About Nicole Ma
Nicole is an award-winning director/producer of new media for Yiwarra Kuju: Canning Stock Route Project and the inaugural exhibitions for the National Museum of Australia; and documentaries Dances of Ecstasy, Kurtal Snake Spirit and Be Happy Be Strong. Nicole began her filmmaking career in New York producing music videos for Whitney Houston, Sonic Youth and long-form concert films for Annie Lennox, Michael Bolton and Newport Jazz Festival. Her New York-based independent film company produced feature films Combination Platter (Sundance screenwriting award) and My Father is Coming. She worked as location manager on Malcom X (Spike Lee) and production manager on Haitian Corner (Raoul Peck). While based in New York, Nicole wrote and directed the experimental short Living Rooms funded by the New York State Council of the Arts. Putuparri and the Rainmakers is her first feature length documentary.
About Putuparri and the Rainmakers
A beautifully interlaced account of connection between an Indigenous Australian and his community’s contested traditional land, Putuparri and the Rainmakers draws us along on the journey of Wangkatjungka man Tom “Putuparri” Lawford and his family. Based in the tiny Kimberley town of Fitzroy Crossing, and subjected to many of the challenges facing displaced indigenous people, they wend their way back over a period of 20 years to their sacred waterhole at Kurtal in the vast Great Sandy Desert.
