Latest news with #FionaKidman
Newsroom
20-07-2025
- General
- Newsroom
The Sunday Poem, by Fiona Kidman
The children's toys This morning I took the children's toys from the bottom of the linen cupboard where they have been stored forty or so years and transferred them to the tin shed that has been cleared by the son whose toy train is tangled in the plastic rubbish sack along with his sister's dolls and the painted head of Josephine, my own doll handed on. There was that afternoon on the farm when my mother walked up the road with a bulge beneath her coat, and inside was nestled this make-believe human I slept with for years. She took away night terrors and the fear that the devil would rise through the floor during darkness when I was sleeping. Oh Josephine on this sunny bright morning, the agapanthus a torrent of blue beside the path, it seems little to ask that the children be kept safe now and forever, near and far away, given endless days just like today. Taken with kind permission by the newly published latest collection The Midnight Plane: Selected and new poems by Fiona Kidman (Otago University Press, $40), available in bookstores nationwide.
Newsroom
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsroom
A love letter to Fiona
I met Fiona Kidman for the first twice. Firstly, fittingly, through her words on paper and secondly, gratefully and intimately, through her words spoken out loud in her light-filled living room. My documentary portrait of her, The House Within, explores my desire to collate these two experiences. Although I'm hesitant to labour that idea for fear of painting a portrait of Fiona that feels somewhat schizophrenic. I guess she's simply double, rather than split in two. She's an author of the highest calibre, a true humanist in every sense of the word, and she's written extensively about her own life in a manner that's both directly biographical, and not so directly. I remember her jokingly telling me that she wrote her memoirs so that someone else didn't. I'm enamoured by the contradictory nature of writers. Many have a thin veil of deception and reveal. A tentative tipping from one to the other. Fiona is no different. Critics have discussed the merits of Fiona's razor-sharp writing and her piercingly tender gaze into the lives of her characters. But as a film-maker I wanted illuminate her kindness, and the generosity of, to use a big word, her soul. I first wrote to Fiona after being floored by her novel This Mortal Boy. I tracked down her email and wrote her a lengthy essay on what I loved and connected with in the book, and how it touched me. I went on to explain how I felt it had immense potential as a film, and if that was an idea that she was open to then I'd love to discuss it further. I sent it off thinking I had little chance of getting a reply. Two days later, one arrived. A beautiful message in which she wrote that my responses to the novel were everything she had aimed for and yes, she had had offers from people wanting to adapt the novel. But, on the basis of what I had written, she promised she wouldn't move forwards with any of them until we had had the chance to speak. Speak we did. I flew down to Wellington the following week and started a conversation that has continued, daily, ever since. She didn't owe me anything and I had little to offer. But she believed in me; saw me for all the things I was rather than the things I wasn't. Shortly after this initial meeting in her Hataitai home I dived deeper into her work and found myself more and more fascinated by the way in which her stories and her life intertwined and intersected; how they collided and coagulated. The pieces of a very different film than the one I originally proposed began to take shape in my mind. One that was something of a portrait both of Fiona the person and Fiona the writer. Being rightfully cautious, and of a more humble disposition than I, she said 'no' when I suggested it to her. But the next day she said 'maybe', and then day after she said 'we could talk more about it'. As I went about trying to capture, on film, the feeling of that first meeting and the fragmentary fascination of meeting someone for the first time, our friendship deepened. The film became both a portrait of something fixed, like a painting, as well as a living, continuing testament to the connection we were in the process of building. The final film became a love letter to a lot of things; one being the simple pleasure of meeting someone new, and the peculiar, but essential, friendships that life can bring you if you allow the secret corners of yourself to stay ajar and flutter in the breeze of someone else's company. And it all started because Fiona is someone whose heart and door is always open. She takes the time, makes the time, finds the time, for others. She's someone who has a porous relationship to the world. There's a dialogue, endlessly, with those around her. She has a gaze that looks without bias. A gaze that's tender and compassionate, but also fiery and unapologetic. I feel very grateful to have found my way into her orbit. I wish it had happened earlier, but given the more than 50 years that separate us the window was, admittedly, pretty thin to begin with. I love her. The world is a better place for her being in it. The House Within, a documentary portrait of Fiona Kidman by film-maker Joshua Prendeville, is screening throughout New Zealand from Thursday, July 17. * [Editorial note: The filming of the documentary inspired Fiona Kidman to write a poem which is included in her new collection published by Otago University Press, The Midnight Plane. It appears below with kind permission.] Pink washbasin The young director loves my pink washbasin standing in the bathroom beside the pink bath. He is so attracted to it that he has filmed this pitted antique Shanks porcelain vessel that should be replaced like so much in this house, the ancient match-lining, the out-of-fashion lamp shades, a too-small dining room that would be better open plan or so I am told although there is something about small rooms that makes me feel safe, an intimacy that matches the idea of where I wash my face and hands several times each day, in a bowl where layers of skin must have been shed over years, knickers rinsed, toothpaste spat, the extremities of my body immersed, cleansed, some days a conspirator's sly wink, caught while I'm glancing towards the mirror.
Scoop
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
THE HOUSE WITHIN: Trailer & Release Date Revealed For Acclaimed Dame Fiona Kidman Documentary
Press Release – The Public Good Ahead of its nationwide theatrical release on July 17, the highly anticipated trailer for The House Within, a documentary film on the life and work of internationally acclaimed New Zealand writer Dame Fiona Kidman, premiered on Saturday to a sold-out audience at the Auckland Writers Festival. Directed by Joshua Prendeville, The House Within is the first-ever documentary to explore the personal and literary legacy of Dame Fiona Kidman – one of New Zealand's most respected and influential writers. At 84, Kidman remains a towering figure in the country's literary and cultural history. ' The House Within is a project very close to my heart, ' says Prendeville. 'I t's one that I feel was really important to do now, given Fiona's immense contribution to the arts, and social causes over her lifetime. Fiona has spent her life standing up for the rights of others and carving out a space for herself in industries where she was often the only woman in the room. ' ' The film is more than a portrait of a literary icon,' the director adds. 'It's about the courage to speak one's truths, and the personal toll of doing so. ' The House Within shines a light on a truly maverick writer who overcame innumerable obstacles to establish her voice and place in the world of literature, and the cost of standing by those values over a lifetime. THE HOUSE WITHIN, A PORTRAIT OF DAME FIONA KIDMAN, IN CINEMAS ACROSS NEW ZEALAND FROM THURSDAY JULY 17, 2025 Written & Directed by Joshua Prendeville Produced by Kerry Prendeville, Victoire Maderou & Joshua Prendeville Vendetta Films is managing the NZ distribution About the Film The House Within is a documentary on the internationally celebrated New Zealand writer Dame Fiona Kidman (Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour). The film explores the profound ways in which life and fiction become inextricably braided over time, tracing the deeply personal experiences that have shaped her voice and vision. Offering an intimate window into Kidman's fascinating and often tumultuous journey, the film captures her reflections on private losses, formative struggles, and the fire that drove her to tell stories that have resonated with readers around the world. It's a portrait of a literary maverick – and the emotional truths that made her fiction unforgettable.
Scoop
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
THE HOUSE WITHIN: Trailer & Release Date Revealed For Acclaimed Dame Fiona Kidman Documentary
Ahead of its nationwide theatrical release on July 17, the highly anticipated trailer for The House Within, a documentary film on the life and work of internationally acclaimed New Zealand writer Dame Fiona Kidman, premiered on Saturday to a sold-out audience at the Auckland Writers Festival. Directed by Joshua Prendeville, The House Within is the first-ever documentary to explore the personal and literary legacy of Dame Fiona Kidman - one of New Zealand's most respected and influential writers. At 84, Kidman remains a towering figure in the country's literary and cultural history. ' The House Within is a project very close to my heart, ' says Prendeville. 'I t's one that I feel was really important to do now, given Fiona's immense contribution to the arts, and social causes over her lifetime. Fiona has spent her life standing up for the rights of others and carving out a space for herself in industries where she was often the only woman in the room. ' ' The film is more than a portrait of a literary icon,' the director adds. 'It's about the courage to speak one's truths, and the personal toll of doing so. ' The House Within shines a light on a truly maverick writer who overcame innumerable obstacles to establish her voice and place in the world of literature, and the cost of standing by those values over a lifetime. THE HOUSE WITHIN, A PORTRAIT OF DAME FIONA KIDMAN, IN CINEMAS ACROSS NEW ZEALAND FROM THURSDAY JULY 17, 2025 Written & Directed by Joshua Prendeville Produced by Kerry Prendeville, Victoire Maderou & Joshua Prendeville Vendetta Films is managing the NZ distribution About the Film The House Within is a documentary on the internationally celebrated New Zealand writer Dame Fiona Kidman (Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour). The film explores the profound ways in which life and fiction become inextricably braided over time, tracing the deeply personal experiences that have shaped her voice and vision. Offering an intimate window into Kidman's fascinating and often tumultuous journey, the film captures her reflections on private losses, formative struggles, and the fire that drove her to tell stories that have resonated with readers around the world. It's a portrait of a literary maverick - and the emotional truths that made her fiction unforgettable.
