Don Blakeney, former Executive Director of the New Zealand Film Commission, talks about the early days of NZ Film in this special ScreenTalk interview with veteran producer and industry colleague John Barnett.

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Film producer Don ‘Scrubbs’ Blakeney came from a background in finance. Returning from working overseas in the 1970s, he met pioneering filmmakers Grahame McLean and John Barnett. Blakeney had become disillusioned with the corporate world, and ended up drifting into the film industry as unit caterer on Sleeping Dogs.

In 1979, his background in both finance and film made Blakeney the ideal first Executive Director of the newly-established New Zealand Film Commission. He later produced Geoff Murphy’s classic Maori western Utu.

In this ScreenTalk interview Blakeney talks about:

• How he got the Film Commission’s first Executive Director job
• How the Commission got going
• The early filmmakers the Commission nurtured and funding philosophies back then
• The importance of marketing New Zealand films
• Producing Utu for Geoff Murphy
• How luck went against Utu with both its NZ and international releases
• How early Film Commission optimism is reflected in some of today’s NZ feature film releases

This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a Creative Commons licence.

NZ On Screen: Interview - John Barnett; Director - Pat Cox; Editing - Alex Backhouse