Campion, Jane (redirected from Jane Campion)

Campion, Jane, 1954–, New Zealand film director, b. Wellington; grad. Victoria Univ., Wellington (1975), Sydney College of the Arts, Australia (1979), Australian School of Film and Television, Sydney (1984). Campion, who both wrote and directed most of her early films, is particularly adept at depicting the plight of women who live outside society's norms. She made short films, e.g. the prize-winning Peel (1982), before embarking the feature-length, darkly comic Sweetie (1989). Campion won substantial praise for her next feature, An Angel at My Table (1990), a sensitive portrait drawn from the autobiographical writings of fellow New Zealander Janet Frame. It was, however, her following film, The Piano (1993), that brought Campion broad international acclaim. A moodily romantic, lushly sensual, and gorgeously photographed tale of love and obsession in mid-19th-century New Zealand, it won many awards including a best original screenplay Academy Award. Her later films include Portrait of a Lady (1996), Holy Smoke (1999), and In the Cut (2002).

Bibliography

See Jane Campion: Interviews (1999), ed. by V. W. Wexman; study by I. Gatti (1998); film documentary by Albert Maysles (2001).

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Campion, Jane

(born April 30, 1954, Wellington, N.Z.) New Zealand film director. After training as a painter in Australia, she studied filmmaking and made several notable short films. Her first feature, Sweetie (1989), was followed by the successful An Angel at My Table (1990). She wrote and directed the internationally acclaimed The Piano (1993) and directed The Portrait of a Lady (1996) and Holy Smoke (1999).