Chelsea Winstanley: 'Don't put your own dreams aside'

On the hit movies What We Do In The Shadows and Jojo Rabbit, producer Chelsea Winstanley and writer/director Taika Waititi - her former husband - worked together as a filmmaking team.

In early 2020, after their marriage had "imploded spectacularly", Winstanley left Los Angeles and battled feelings of shame as she threw herself into making TOITŪ Visual Sovereignty.

"I've supported others to make their stories and have their dreams. This is kind of like supporting my dream... For anyone who thinks that they have put their dreams aside, your dreams are just as important, too," she tells Saturday Morning.

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Winstanley and Waititi have two daughters from their seven-year marriage.

At the 2020 Academy Awards - where Jojo Rabbit scored six nominations - she became the first indigenous female producer nominated for Best Picture while he won Best Adapted Screenplay.

But behind the scenes, the marriage was collapsing as Winstanley could no longer tolerate her own creativity taking a back seat.

"I think I was married to someone who really was just on their own buzz, and [had] tunnel vision for whatever reasons," Winstanley told Anika Moa on RNZ last year.

Flying back to New Zealand after her separation from Waititi, Winstanley felt shame and humiliation as she served out her two weeks in a quarantine hotel.

"Coming home and having to kind of reinvent myself after being associated with someone public, it's a journey in and of itself."

Making a documentary about an Auckland Art Gallery exhibition, though, seemed to Winstanley like it would be "smooth sailing".

" I just thought I was going to have the most amazing, magical, celebratory time. That's all I thought I was in for."

TOITŪ Visual Sovereign - which is screening in Auckland and Wellington this August as part of the NZ International Film Festival -follows art curator Nigel Borell as he prepares for the opening of the Toi Tū Toi Ora exhibition..

The film shows Borell navigating Covid-19 disruptions and "institutional resistance" from within the Auckland Art Gallery, Winstanley says, and for her, its key moment is when he decides he can't stay on as curator.

"You can't help but understand that that struggle is actually beyond the four walls of the gallery and perhaps in other institutions around our country,

"It's an opportunity for us as Māori and Pākehā to really examine our relationships and not to be afraid. Don't be afraid of Māori being in positions of shared power, or just maybe being in charge of their own Tino rangatiratanga [sovereignty] as they should be."

The most important thing to know about Borell, Winstanley says, is that he is an artist.

"Māori artists, or any artists, actually, they are the bravest people in the world to me because they are always speaking to truth or having a response to what's going on in the world at the time. "

Although Winstanley was "a little bit worried" about how the Auckland Art Gallery and other stakeholders would receive TOITŪ Visual Sovereign, their feedback on the film has been really positive, she says.

"I think what has happened since within the gallery is just wonderful. The relationships have changed for the better, to be completely honest. It's so, so wonderful to see."