The 48Hours Team

Ness Patea - 48Hours National Manager

The 48Hour season is my favourite time of the year. I have met so many great people through the competition, this is the time we all get together and make some films!

The competition kick-started my film-making career and it's gone from project to project and now I find myself in the position of National Operations.

I love the grassroots nature of the filmmaking and doing my bit to support the new and established filmmakers of Aotearoa.

Ruth Korver - 48Hours National Manager

I first entered 48Hours in 2004 and have competed a total of 9 times. In 2013 I produced the Grand Final Winner with Traces of Nut and decided it was time to retire from competition.

There was no escape though and I ended up co-managing the Wellington event for a couple of years before taking on National Operations. Despite no longer competing I find myself spending more time on 48Hours than ever, with three months of the year consumed by the competition. I do get to sleep on the shoot weekend though.

Lucky I love 48Hours and wouldn't have it any other way.

Ant Timpson - 48Hours Founder

The 48HOURS started as part of the Incredibly Strange Film Festival way back in 2003. It was a throwback to the weekend filmmaking that I did with friends when I was a teenager.

I remembered the joy of making something in one weekend and then showing it to others. It was raw and unfiltered filmmaking. Rough as guts but always memorable. An accelerated, time constrained and hopefully fun version of what working in the 'real world of filmmaking' might eventually be. It all began as a fun sidebar to all the festival hijinks that were happening that year. We had 44 teams take part which seemed like a lot at the time. The finish line was the Chinatown Cinema in downtown Auckland and from the moment I saw Jaquie Brown in tears at the finish line, I knew we had captured lightning in a bottle.

The heats really cemented it as everyone turned up and packed the cinema to overflowing. The final was a huge night at the Civic and it's never been the same since.

It's been a pleasure to watch many filmmakers evolve through participation in the competition - from starry eyed greenhorns to savvy professionals, who have since built careers in the industry. At its core the comp is still very much the same beast - one weekend to exhaust yourself creatively and try to remember to have fun.

I truly believe the competition is crucial to the creative landscape of New Zealand - the proof is in the pudding they say - it's also been cited by everyone from the NZFC, NZONAIR, Sir Peter Jackson, The Minister of Broadcasting and our PM as an important part of our creative culture. 

We have a large list of talented folks who all cut their teeth in the competition and have since gone on to direct major TV and feature films. It's not the only pathway for people to make inroads into the industry but it's definitely the #1 way for relationships and foundations to be laid for a healthy creative community. And for purely selfish reasons, I've also made numerous friendships and industry pals through the competition existence and I doubt I'd be where I am with my career without the support of many folks.

I've never personally participated in the 48HOURS. I feel I'd already been through that trial by fire as the inspiration for starting the competition here. But maybe it's that I sense deep down that I couldn't pull off half of what some of the folks do in this competition and maybe - just maybe - I don't think my ego could handle such a crushing public defeat.