1982: Peel (short) (+scenarist/scriptwriter). 1984: Mishaps of Seduction and Conquest (video short) (+scenarist/scriptwriter); Passionless Moments (short) (co-director, co-scenarist/scriptwriter); Girls Own Story (short) (+scenarist/scriptwriter); After Hours (short) (+scenarist/scriptwriter). 1985: 2 Friends (for Australian TV). 1989: Sweetie (co-scenarist/scriptwriter). 1990: An Angel at My Table (for Australian TV; edited version released theatrically). 1993: The Piano (+scenarist/scriptwriter). 1996: Portrait of a Lady. 1999: Holy Smoke! (+scenarist/scriptwriter). 2003: In the Cut (+scenarist/scriptwriter). 2006: The Water Diary (+scenarist/scriptwriter). 2007: Chacun son cin?ma ou Ce petit coup au coeur quand la lumi?re s'?teint et que le film commence (To Each His Own Cinema) (segment "The Lady Bug"). 2008: Cinema16: World Short Films (V); 8 (segment "The Water Diary"). 2009: Bright Star (+scenarist/scriptwriter).
1999: Soft Fruit (executive producer). 2006: Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story (producer).
Became interested in filmmaking and began making short films, late 1970s; short film, Tissues, led to her acceptance into the Australian Film and Television School, 1981; took job with Australia's Women's Film Unit, 1984; directed an episode of the television drama Dancing Daze, 1986; short films Peel, Passionless Moments, and Girls Own Story released theatrically in the United States, 1989-90.
Diploma of Merit, Melbourne Festival, and Palme director'Or, Best Short Film, Cannes Film Festival, for Peel, 1983-86; Unique Artist Merit, Melbourne Festival, Best Experimental Film, Australian Film Institute, and Most Popular Short Film, Sydney Festival, for Passionless Moments, 1984-85; Rouben Mamoulian Award, Best Overall Short Film, Unique Artist Merit, Melbourne Festival, Best Direction and Screenplay, Australian Film Institute Awards, and First Prize, Cinestud Amsterdam Festival, for Girls Own Story, 1984-85; X. L. Elders Award and Best Short Fiction, Melbourne Festival, for After Hours, 1985; Golden Plaque, Chicago Festival, and Best Director and Best TV Film, Australian Film Institute, for 2 Friends, 1987; Georges Sadoul Prize, Best Foreign Film, Best Film, and Best Director, Australian Critics Awards, New Generation Award, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and Best Foreign Film, Independent Spirit Award, for Sweetie, 1989-90; Byron Kennedy Award, Special Jury Prize, Annual Elvira Notari Award, Si Presci Award, O.C.I.C. Award, Best Film for Young People, Cinema & Ragazzi, Otto Debelius Prize, Berlin Festival, Critics Award, Toronto Festival, and Best Foreign Film, Independent Spirit Award, for An Angel at My Table, 1990; Academy Award, Best Screenplay, Academy Award nomination, Best Director and Screenplay, New York Film Critics Circle, Best Director and Screenplay, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Best Director and Screenplay, Australian Film Institute Awards, Best Director and Screenplay, Australian Film Critics, Best Director, Guild of Regional Film Writers, and Best Screenplay, Chicago Film Critics, for The Piano, 1993.
Wellington, 30 April 1954.
Victoria University, Wellington, B.A. in structural arts; Chelsea School of Arts, London, diploma in fine arts (completed at Sydney College of the Arts); Australian Film and Television School, diploma in direction.
Parents are opera/theater director Richard Campion and actress/writer Edith Campion; married television producer/director Colin Englert.
Whatever their quality, all of Jane Campion's feature films have remained consistent in theme. They depict the lives of girls and women who are in one way or another separate from the mainstream, because of physical appearance (if not outright physical disability) or personality quirk, and she spotlights the manner in which they relate to and function within their respective societies.
Campion began directing features after making several highly acclaimed, award-winning short films which were extensively screened on the international film festival circuit. Her first two features are alike in that they focus on the relationships between two young women, and how they are affected by the adults who control their world. Her debut, 2 Friends, was made for Australian television in 1985 and did not have its American theatrical premiere until 1996. It is a depiction of the connection between a pair of adolescents, focusing on the changes in their friendship and how they are influenced by adult authority figures. The narrative is told in reverse time: at the outset, the girls are a bit older, and their developing personalities have separated them; as the film continues, they become younger and closer.
Sweetie, Campion's initial theatrical feature, is a pitch-black comedy about a young woman who is overweight, overemotional, and even downright crazy, with the scenario charting the manner in which she relates to her parents and her skinny, shy, easily manipulated sister. The film was controversial in that critics and viewers either raved about it or were turned off by its quirky nature. While not without inspired moments, both Sweetie and 2 Friends lack the assurance of Campion's future work.
The filmmaker's unequivocal breakthrough as a world-class talent came in 1990 with An Angel at My Table. The theatrical version of the film is 158 minutes long and is taken from a three-part mini-series made for New Zealand television. An Angel at My Table did not benefit from the media hype surrounding The Piano, Campion's 1993 international art house hit, but it is as equally fine a work. It is an uncommonly literate portrait of Janet Frame, a plump, repressed child who was destined to become one of New Zealand's most renowned writers. Prior to her fame, however, she was falsely diagnosed as a schizophrenic, passed eight years in a mental hospital, and received over 200 electric shock treatments.
Campion evocatively depicts the different stages of Frame's life; the filmmaker elicits a dynamic performance from Kerry Fox as the adult Janet and, in visual terms, she perfectly captures the essence of the writer's inner being. At the same time, Campion bitingly satirizes the manner in which society patronizes those who sincerely dedicate their lives to the creation of art. She depicts pseudo-artists who would not know a poem from a Harlequin Romance, and publishers who think that for Frame to truly be a success she must have a best-seller and ride around in a Rolls Royce.
If An Angel at My Table spotlights the evolution of a woman as an intellectual being, Campion's next work, The Piano, depicts a woman's development on a sexual and erotic level. The Piano, like The Crying Game before it and Pulp Fiction later on, became the cinematic cause celebre of its year. It is a deceptively simple story, beautifully told, of Ada (Holly Hunter, in an Academy Award-winning performance), a Scottish widow and mute who arrives with her nine-year-old daughter (Anna Paquin, who also won an Oscar) in remote New Zealand during the 1850s. Ada is to be the bride in an arranged marriage with a stern, hesitant farmer (Sam Neill). But she becomes sexually and romantically involved with Baines (Harvey Keitel), her illiterate, vulnerable neighbor to whom she gives piano lessons: an arrangement described by Campion as an "erotic pact."
Campion succeeds in creating a story about the development of love, from the initial eroticism between the two characters to something deeper and more romantic. Ada has a symbolic relationship with the piano, which is both her refuge and way of self-expression. The Piano is an intensely haunting tale of exploding passion and deep, raw emotion, and it put its maker at the forefront of contemporary, world-class cinema. Campion's most recent project was a period piece, Portrait of a Lady, based on a Henry James novel.?ROB EDELMAN