NZ On Screen honours director Tony Williams

NZ On Screen has just launched the Tony Williams Collection, a fantastic collection of commercials, documentaries and interviews recognising Tony Williams’ contribution to New Zealand’s ad and screen history.

Williams, via his TVC companies Sydney Film Company and Auckland Film Company, was behind the iconic BASF ‘Dear John’, Great Crunchie ‘Train Robbery’,Toyota Hilux ‘Bugger’, and Telecom’s ‘Spot the Dog’ TVC campaigns in New Zealand. His documentaries, The Hum, and Lost in the Garden of the World, are also on the site.  

But before that he was a documentary maker of some repute (and balls). Amongst his docos are ‘The Hum’, a fantastic look at sailing life in NZ via yachting legend Geoff Stagg, and ‘Lost in the Garden of the World’, which follows a small group of Kiwi filmmakers to the Cannes ’75 festival to find out what it takes to get a film made. They end up meeting – and talking with – Werner Herzog, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Dustin Hoffman, and the directors of cult classics Death Race 2000 and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Quite a feat. The latter doco has been doing the rounds of the fan-boy sites over the past few weeks.