SCREEN 21

Inspired by being confined to a room while in isolation and watching online content during the early days of the pandemic, SCREEN 21 is about acknowledging that while New Zealand is a beautiful country, we also need to pay the same amount of attention to the issues in our community as we do to Aotearoa's natural environment. New Zealand has developed a tendency to over-rely on our picturesque landscapes as the foundation for our culture. However, we are doing this at the expense of the well-being of many kiwis who live in our country. The arrival of the pandemic exposed this tendency and acted as a catalyst for the realization that New Zealand needs social and cultural change. SCREEN 21 showcases New Zealand’s traditional cultural cornerstone in our natural environment, and interacts with our neglected cultural artifacts in the form of two kiwis who talk about their experience of COVID-19, their vulnerabilities, what drives them, and what they want to see for the future of New Zealand, in an effort to persuade Kiwis to rethink the composition of our culture going forward. The story is told through the lens of Josiah Wood; a documentary filmmaker in the University of Auckland SCREEN Production class of 2021.