Biography
Jane Campion was born into a successful, creative family in Wellington, New Zealand—her parents were theatrical innovators who founded that country’s first professional theatre company, The New Zealand Players.
Campion studied at Victoria University in Wellington, completing a BA in Anthropology in 1975, before crossing the Tasman Sea to study painting at the Sydney College of the Arts. Campion began making films in the early 1980s, the first of which, Peel (1982), won the Palme d’Or for Best Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival. From this early success Campion completed two more AFI award-winning shorts—1983’s Passionless Moments and A Girl’s Own Story (1984).
Her feature debut, Sweetie (1989) was particularly noted for the bright colouring and oblique composition of its visual design. While recognising the grotesque nature of the suburban environment, it introduced a recurring theme of female mania to her oeuvre. Sweetie competed for the Palme d’Or at that year’s Cannes film festival, and won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film and the AFI Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Based on the autobiographies of fellow New Zealander and writer Janet Frame, An Angel at My Table (1990) won several awards, both in New Zealand and internationally, including the Grand Special Jury prize at the Venice Biennale and the FIPRESCI prize at Toronto, which firmly put Campion on the international map.
Her most highly-regarded film, The Piano (1993) was awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes that year (sharing the prize with Chen Kaige’s Farewell, My Concubine), and won three Oscars®, including Best Screenplay. Campion was also nominated for Best Director for this film, thus making her only the second woman ever to be nominated for that particular award.
Wooed to Hollywood, her adaptation of Henry James’ novel, The Portrait of a Lady (1994) maintained an antipodean connection with Nicole Kidman in the lead role. It was nominated for two Oscars®, but drew criticism for its faithfulness to the original source. Holy Smoke (1999) filmed in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges, and In the Cut (2003), an erotic thriller based on Susanna Moore’s best-selling novel, continue to feature Campion’s signature strong-willed female protagonists. While not necessarily a ‘feminist’ filmmaker, Campion is regarded among the world’s foremost women directors in terms of both subject matter and practice.
