REVIEW | WEB EXCLUSIVE Written by Tashi Donnelly (she/her) | @tashi_rd | Editor Ahead of opening night, I caught up with director Grace Augustine to talk about reimagining Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People for present-day Aotearoa. You can read that interview here. She told me the production was motivated in part by increasing nitrate contamination in our freshwater, and by a desire to create political theatre that asks audiences to think critically about the systems gove

REVIEW | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR Written by Trevor Pronoso | Letterboxd: @CleverGurl | Instagram: @trev.pro | Contributing Writer With Hasan in Gaza (2025) dir. Kamal Aljafari France / Germany / Palestine / Qatar / Switzerland, 106 mins Within the first 30 minutes of this film, I could already tell the differing cinematic temperaments of director Kamal Aljafari and his tour guide, Hasan Elboubou. Throughout With Hasan in Gaza, Kamal would often instruct Hasan to take

REVIEW | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist The first UniFest short film competition resembles the kind of combination between creative outlet and filmmaking practice which I would have adored during my studies. It’s reassuring to see a body of undergrads wishing for the same, taking that into their own hands – run by the students, for the students. Each entry was held down by only two creative constraint

POETRY | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR Written by Leva Kusari (she/her) | @levalol | Contributing Writer (Written in 2019) important to note This is NOT my type anymore My type My type My type wears Doc Martens Has a handlebar moustache he has “ironically” And pretends he doesn’t listen to Mitski anymore My type studied English lit at Victoria Or communications at AUT And is majoring in philosophy so he can quote Simone de Beauvoir without being pretentious Swears he’s movi

REVIEW | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR Written by Liam Hansen (they/them) | @liamhanse.n | Associate Editor It’s taken Paolo Bertolin, the New Zealand International Film Festival’s artistic director, a couple of years to find his footing away from the prestige of his homeland of Italy to the bonkers reality of New Zealand’s film industry. While the government struggles to comprehend the value of anything less than the millions generated by Peter Jackson and Taika Waititi as

SATIRE | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR Written by Nate & Nancy et al., 2026 | Contributing Scientists Ever since I discovered the concept of sexism at age 16, I have been trying to find ways to do my part to decrease its prevalence. My studies led me to a lot of places – queer theory, postpostmodern sixth-wave feminism, intersectional speciesism, and radical bioessentialist egalitarianism. Ultimately, I found out that the world is far too complex for one person to meaningfu

NEWS | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR By AUT Ventures University students have a perhaps slightly unhealthy habit of turning stress into humour. Whether it's joking about surviving on three hours of sleep, living off five coffees a day, or laughing in the face of looming deadlines, humour often becomes a way of coping with the realities of student life. At AUT's School of Art & Design, that same spirit once took physical form in something affectionately known as the "crying

FEATURE | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR Translated by Madita Petersen (she/her) | @maditaapetersen | Contributing Writer Original by Friedhelm Kändler One letter is missin. Lanuae becomes different. I think it is possible to live with what is missin. I think we can certainly do without one of the elements we use to communicate. Even so, despite this omission, we are still able to convey our thouhts and ideas. Ladies and entlemen, how important is the completeness of our wor

PROMOTIONAL | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR Tashi Donnelly in conversation with Grace Augustine | @tashi_rd | Editor Dr. Thomas Stockmann is the medical officer of his small-town’s new eco-spa. An upstanding member of their close-knit community, when Thomas discovers the town’s water has been contaminated, he raises the alarm. But his truth comes at a price, when those in power - including his own brother - try not only to discredit him, but to crush him. Flyleaf Theatre Co

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

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,"

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

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

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

POETRY / TE AO MĀORI | ISSUE SEVEN | MATARIKI Written by Koromiko Jacob-Williams (she/her) | @koromikoz | Contributing Writer We are star cluster, sisters He kohinga A collection of light with Magic dusted on eyelids the neon lights glowing Slowing Time We watch the sky blackout Midnight matching our cycles It is quiet and chaotic Te Marama, a guide We change We wane We take over the city connected Hei kotahi We return to each other under the blanket of hōtoke And