Film Commission to end core funding for 10 screen guilds, including Ngā Aho Whakaari

The New Zealand Film Commission will stop paying operating money to 10 screen-sector organisations when their current contracts run out on 30 June 2027, RNZ reported. The commission's Core Funding Programme provides just over $1 million a year. The commission said the programme has run in different forms for more than two decades.

IF Magazine, citing the NZ Herald, listed the 10 recipients:

• DEGANZ
• Equity NZ
• the New Zealand Writers Guild
• SIGANZ
• Ngā Aho Whakaari
• the Pan-Asian Screen Collective
• the Pacific Islands Screen Artists
• Script to Screen
• Spada
• Women in Film & Television NZ (WIFT)

Most get $100,000 a year. Ngā Aho Whakaari, which represents Māori screen practitioners, gets $120,000. That's the largest single grant in the programme.

Chief executive Annie Murray told RNZ the commission would put its public money into "fewer, but higher-impact investments". The commission's own funding was cut 5 percent this financial year after a 2 percent cut the year before, and it expects another 5 percent cut next year.

"Our sources of funding have been frozen for many years, and the impact of inflation means we can do less with the money we have than we could 10 years ago," Murray said.

She didn't pretend the decision would land softly. "It's a tough day for the screen sector; we acknowledge that. We've been signalling this decision for the past year and we've now communicated the decision with eight months' notice."

According to IF Magazine, the commission's board decided that ongoing operational funding was "no longer the most effective way" to deliver its mandate. Commission staff met the 10 organisations directly to tell them. The organisations can still apply for targeted industry-development money through the commission's existing programmes. The commission has also offered to support independently facilitated discussions, led by the sector, on how the groups might coordinate and advocate together. Taking part is voluntary. Murray told RNZ the commission is also looking for new money for New Zealand film, from investors, local organisations and New Zealanders living offshore.

Irene Gardiner, president of the producers' body Spada, told RNZ the decision was "disappointing but not surprising".

"We understand the pressure they're under, but the whole sector is under pressure, and this decision will have ramifications across the sector," she said. Spada will survive without the money, she said. Her concern was for others: "I really feel for all our colleagues at the other guilds, some of which are smaller guilds who represent really important, specialist parts of the sector like our Māori, Pacific Island, and Asian screen practitioners."

Those three groups are Ngā Aho Whakaari, the Pacific Islands Screen Artists and the Pan-Asian Screen Collective. Between them they lose about $320,000 a year. None of the published coverage so far includes a response from Ngā Aho Whakaari, Equity or the Writers Guild.

For WIFT, the cut means jobs. Executive director Patricia Watson told RNZ that most of the organisation's funding comes from the programme. "I will lose my job, as will probably many of the EDs of these organisations. We will move to contract work."

WIFT has been here before. Watson said it lost its operational funding from the commission 10 years ago. It also gets money from Foundation North, and plans to apply for project-specific grants and grow its membership. She put the industry's full-time workforce at 12,000 people, citing official statistics.

Gardiner tied the cut to the wider industry. "If you don't have a strong domestic industry, you can't feed the international industry that works here and makes a lot of money for New Zealand," she told RNZ.

Spada's written statement, published in full by IF Magazine, made a more pointed argument. It said the decision was "another reminder of the need to strengthen the foundations of our domestic screen industry", including "a modern regulatory framework for international streaming platforms, so that services benefiting from New Zealand audiences also contribute to the creation of New Zealand content."

Other arts funders are turning down more groups than they fund. Creative New Zealand's own figures show that 450 organisations applied to its Arts Organisations and Groups Fund 2026, asking for more than $254 million. It offered $116 million over three years to 183 of them.