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A recovering misogynist's defense of women's sports no one asked for
BREAD & CIRCUSES | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Luke Fisher (he/him) | @lukefish7 | Sports Columnist Annotated by Tashi Donnelly (she/her) | @tashi_rd | Editor Statistically, women’s sports aren’t as good as men’s. * *Starting strong with what is arguably the worst opening sentence we've ever published. The ball hits the back of the net with less ferocity. The runaway tries are scored at a less-than-blistering pace. The sixes sail over a boundary rope dragged closer to
Luke Fisher
Aug 48 min read


How an AUT Graduate Is Redefining Storytelling Through Gaming
FEATURE | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Alejandro Davila & Faeborne For most students, gaming is a way to procrastinate after class, unwind with friends, or disappear into another world for a few hours. For AUT Creative Technologies graduate Alejandro Davila, however, it eventually became something much bigger: an opportunity to create immersive worlds of his own. Enter the world behind Alejandro’s screen: Faeborne. Faeborne is a story-driven action-adventure game following an elven
AUT Ventures
Jul 272 min read


One Moon: It’s 33 Degrees Today. Are You Wearing Enough Clothes?
It’s 33 Degrees Today. Are You Wearing Enough Clothes? ONE MOON COLUMN | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Priscilla Zhang (she/her) | @p.zhangxy | Columnist Every morning, before I even look outside my window, I look at another season. It appears on my phone. My mother has a habit of telling me the temperature back home. I think it is her way of sharing something real, something happening around her body, across the 6,000 miles between us. "Yesterday was so hot and stuffy,"
Priscilla Zhang
Jul 273 min read


Screens, addiction, and being helicopter-parented by an LLM
FEATURE | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Polly Wenlock (she/her) | @p0lly2001 on Substack | Contributing Writer The artistic capacity of the human brain is, sorry - WAS a marvel. Every book, movie, show, artwork, song, recipe, blah, blah in history was born of human creativity, Until now. Screens are nullifying the power of the human mind: We’re getting dumber. Like any good thing in the modern world, it was only a matter of time until the brain too was retailed to the hig
Polly Wenlock
Jul 272 min read


Kōrero Toi: On the responsibility of the artist
ARTS | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Ethan Morais (he/they) | Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Pikao, Ngāti Hori ki Kohupatiki, and Malayali | @morais.ethan | Contributing Writer The camera is the defining tool of our times. To re-present the world in images is to set the parameters of the world, and to shape our collective understandings of it. Because of this, we as artists must be conscious of how and why we use the lens; we must ask ourselves what world we want to make. - The cam
Ethan Morais
Jul 272 min read


Screens Aren't the Problem. We Are.
FEATURE | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Ishani Mathur (she/her) | Contributing Writer There was a time when waiting simply meant waiting. Sitting in the car before driving home. Standing in line for your morning coffee. Walking to class. Lying in bed before sleep found you. Looking out the window on the bus. Today, those moments rarely exist. We press play. We scroll. We search. We consume. Not because we have to. Because we can. Somewhere along the way, we stoppe
Ishani Mathur
Jul 273 min read


Sophia He
Jul 270 min read


In With The New Blood - An Interview with Dave Oshry
INTERVIEW | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by James A. Glass (he/him) | @magicalflamebow | Contributing Writer In today’s video game climate with big studios pressing down on consumers, it’s important that we champion independent creators and studios. I talked with Dave Oshry, CEO and co-founder of New Blood Interactive (NB) where he discussed how the studio operates, what he considers indie, and the current game dev landscape in Aotearoa. James: How does New Blood support dev
James A. Glass
Jul 274 min read


Rendered Futures: Drawing Architecture
INTERVIEW | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Micheal McCabe in conversation with Skye Lunson-Storey (they/them) | @uku_rangi | Arts, Culture, & Te Ao Māori Editor Rendered Futures: Drawing Architecture was an exhibition curated by Micheal McCabe and Kim Paton. Held in 2025 at Objectspace in both Tāmaki & Ōtautahi, it charts five decades of architectural drawing in response to today's stylised digital render. Skye: Rendered Futures as an exhibition, quote, "brings together drawings from
Skye Lunson-Storey
Jul 277 min read


Rick’s Reel Recommendations | 3 Films on Screens
FILM COLUMN | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist Millie Lies Low (Michelle Savill, 2021) As everybody’s third or fourth choice for a Commonwealth nation — including ourselves, judging from how many of us move to Australia — it’s perhaps not as much a mystery where all the self-diagnosed ‘imposter syndrome’ in New Zealand comes from, especially if you’re competing with your colleagues for the best opportunities. The
Ricky Lai
Jul 274 min read


Nostalgia in Aotearoa, New Zealand’s Screen Production
Nostalgia in Aotearoa, New Zealand’s Screen Production ARTS & CULTURE | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written By Ivy Lyden-Hancy (she/her/ia) | @tekaraipiture | Contributing Writer “Trees. Birds. Rivers. Sky. Running with my Uncle Hec. Living Forever...” - Ricky Baker on Hunt for the Wilderpeople Moe mai ra, Sir Sam Neill (Uncle Hec) 1947-2026 Nostalgia in Aotearoa is a memory carved into the bones of our people. Māori and Pasifika screen production holds our mamae through media. No
Ivy Lyden-Hancy
Jul 273 min read


Indie animation studio One-Eyed Rat is what we’ve missed in the moonlight
FEATURE | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Liam Hansen (they/them) | @liamhanse.n | Associate Editor Between the corporate skyscrapers of Wynyard Quarter sits Media Design School at Strayer, the polytechnic that has spent the century so far cementing its place in the resumes of animators, game developers, and designers. From an outsiders perspective, it does the trick - like the other creative schools across Aotearoa, the amount you put into your education determines what you
Liam Hansen
Jul 275 min read


ERROR 404: OFFLINE WORLD NOT FOUND
EDITORIAL | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Tashi Donnelly she/her | @tashi_rd | Editor Your connection to reality has been interrupted by doomscrolling, binge-watching, and opening seventeen tabs you intended to read. Please do not attempt to disconnect. Click CONTINUE to proceed with Debate: Screens. Loading Debate: Screens… Please wait. I’ve tried writing this editorial over, and over, and over again. The problem is that there are no outside perspectives anymore. Screens
Tashi Donnelly
Jul 273 min read
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