Diverse Voices: Jade Jackson

Visual: Filmmaker Jade Jackson sits in a dark room with studio lights on her. She is wearing a black shirt. Throughout the interview, we switch from one camera angle to another, where the camera is zoomed to focus on her chest upward, with her head being the focal point. The other is zoomed out more, showing a table with interesting objects, such as a pink spiky ball, teapots, oranges, and candles. A hand places a card on a silver tray with her name on it.

Audio: My name is Jade Jackson. I am originally from Cannons Creek in Porirua, but I am based in Nelson at the moment.

The reason why I became a filmmaker?

I had spent a lot of time in my 20s really struggling with an identity crisis. When I was growing up being Samoan really wasn’t something to really be proud of.

You know, what I saw really scarred me as a kid, around racism. But also just like the jokes, you know, it was like, “It’s like Kiwi humour.”

And I don’t think a lot of people realised that, uh, it could be really damaging. So I hid that part of myself for a long time.

I remember from a really young age thinking that I’m brown, that that wasn’t a good thing. And I should probably be as white as I can be. Being really envious of my white friends and their families. And they just seemed so perfect.

I didn’t grow up in poverty whatsoever. Um, however, my parents didn’t have office jobs either. Um, and so. I experienced a lot of drugs and alcohol, you know, abuse in the family, really traumatic things.

I needed to leave everything. I needed to find myself and I couldn’t do it here in New Zealand. And I couldn’t do it around anyone that I was currently around.

So, I left my family, I left a partner, I left my friends, I left everything. A job. My career.

I went and basically sat on a beach in Australia for a year in 2018. Had some really hard conversations with myself about who I was, and who I wanted to be, letting go of my trauma, letting go of my childhood, and rediscovering myself.

And then that is when I... I think spiritually first rediscovered my Samoan heritage. And then after that, I started writing and I realised that I wanted to be a filmmaker. I knew that I wanted to tell stories and I wanted to inspire people with my story, or stories like mine. And I really wanted to immerse myself back into my culture and take my power back.

‘RAIDS’ came about. I’d just graduated from the New Zealand Film School. I wanted to see Pacific Islanders on the screen. I really just knew that was what I would... I wanted to do.

As I was kind of thinking about what I was gonna tell though, I really didn’t know. I had obviously these stories of my own experiences. I then found out about the dawn raids and the Polynesian Panthers.

And that’s what informed me to write a feature film called ‘Losa’. And ‘RAIDS’ was taken out of that, so that we could create a short film so that I could pitch for a feature.

I started asking people around me, everyone from film school, and I just got a crew together of people, I then reached out to the Porirua community.

They were amazing. They really backed me on this.

I was really nervous. I was really nervous, I was asking myself all of the questions that I think we all ask, you know, “Who am I to tell this story?”

And, “Why?” And I felt it was important. I felt like people needed to know about it.

I feel like New Zealand needed to get that out from under the carpet, and we really needed to look at our history and look at ourselves and who we are.

Suspenseful music plays.

Visual: ‘RAIDS’ trailer plays.

• A person knocks frantically on a glass door.
• A close-up of an old-school radio.
• A child lying in bed with a worried look on their face.
• A child huddles in the corner looking scared.
• A child running through a park.
• A hand reaching out of the darkness.

Text on screen: R A I D S

Audio: At the moment I’m working on the feature. So, we’ve obviously got ‘RAIDS’ that we’ve been pitching with, which is really exciting.

Off the back of being shortlisted for the Merata Mita Fellowship, we have been invited to apply to the Sundance Catalyst this year, which is really exciting. So, we’ll see! We might be making ‘Losa’ this year.

Visual:

A clip of card paper shows, written on it the credits. These are written below:

• Producer, Writer and Director: Pachali Brewster.
• Director of photography, editor and colourist: Ben Dickens.
• Featuring:
  • Oriwa Hakaraia
  • Jade Jackson
  • Aditya B. Parige
  • Kathleen Winter
  • Laura Yilmaz
  • Casey Zilbert
  • Raqi Syed and Missy Molloy as the facilitators
  • and Glen McLaughlin as the butler.
• Special thanks to
  • Massey’s School of Music and Creative Media Production
  • College of Creative Arts Toi Rauwhārangi.
• Production manager assistant, 1st assistant director, and Unit: Anna Valentine.
• 2nd camera operator: Elise Lanigan.
• 3rd camera operator: Nathan Roys.
• Sound Recordist: Jessy McNamara.
• Sound Recordist Assist and Sound Mixer: Matt Asunder.
• Art Department: Glen McLaughlin.
• Hair and Makeup artist: Serena Parsons.
• Stills photography: Celeste Fontein.
• Runner: Ivy Robinson.