Jane Campion receives lifetime achievement gong, and teases a return to filmmaking

Jane Campion, director of landmark films such as The Piano and The Power of the Dog, remembers her first inklings that she wanted to be a filmmaker.

“I was at art school in Sydney in the ’70s; I went to film festivals and I saw every film that came out,” she said at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, where she received a lifetime achievement award on Friday night (Saturday AEST).

New Zealand director Jane Campion receives her lifetime achievement award at Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland.Credit: AP

“Cinema showed me there was an interesting culture out there and I wanted to be part of it,” she told the 8000-strong audience. “No, I was desperate to be part of it!”

Her earliest goal was to make one short film that could screen before the main feature. “I didn’t think of making a feature; that was too much. That’s the way it’s been with me. Just to go on to the next thing, a little bit more each time.”

The Piano, her breakthrough success of 1993, was shown in a midnight screening on Locarno’s huge outdoor screen in the town’s cobbled piazza. Campion, 70, says she never watches her own films.

“I was wondering why I find it so difficult,” she said at an earlier press conference.

Jane Campion (centre) directing Anna Paquin and Sam Neill in a scene from her 1993 film The Piano.Credit: Publicity

“I think there is such a period of intensity trying to bring them to the best evocation of themselves and I’m quite critical. So once you get there, you’re scared to look at it. I have had the experience of watching one of my films and going ‘Urggghhh’! I can be quite tough on myself.”

She admitted to another kind of discomfort with The Piano, which won the Palme D’Or at Cannes Film Festival and went on to win three Oscars, as it became a worldwide phenomenon.

“I thought it would be a small art film,” she said. She hadn’t expected that, decades later, people would be telling her it changed their lives.

“I’m a New Zealander, you know. We don’t take compliments. It’s like we can get arrested for thinking too well of ourselves. But basically, it doesn’t really affect me because I had some very difficult things happen. At the same time as The Piano was successful I lost a baby, so it didn’t feel like I had a great time. I was just struggling to survive, really.

“For me, I think I’m always in the next project, the hope and the dream of it. It took me a long time to realise The Piano wasn’t a burden, because people were always comparing everything else with that film.”

Her most recent film, The Power of the Dog, was her opportunity to move on. “But I feel grateful – very grateful – to have connected with any film as strongly as The Piano did with many audiences.”

The Power of the Dog, a psychological western shot in southern New Zealand, won her accolades as Best Director at the Venice Film Festival in 2021 and went on to gain 12 Oscar nominations, winning her a second Oscar as best director.

At the time, she thought that would be her last film.

“It was actually such a thrill to have a late-career success; it was a joy to work on that film and feel at the end that I could do anything I wanted. But what I wanted to do was a pop-up film school.

“The idea of giving back was really fun. I picked New Zealand because they didn’t really have a film school. And I wanted a free film school, to go back to what I thought were the halcyon days of the Whitlam government in Australia when they put a lot of money into education. For me, film school was free. I was paid to go: imagine that! And I know I wouldn’t have had my career without that support. I don’t know how I would have got it together to make the three short films that launched me without having had that advantage.”

Jane Campion with the Oscar for The Power Of The Dog in 2022.Credit: Getty

Over dinner before the award ceremony, Campion was locked in discussion with young Swiss director Laetitia Dosch about the exhaustive process of editing. She feels “like an auntie”, she says, to a rising generation of women directors gaining recognition and prizes.

“I’m excited. Not only do I feel the sisterhood is finally here, but I like the films and I’m inspired by them. And Greta Gerwig doing the Barbie story is fantastic. For once we have a film that is not about Marvel characters, but a humorous and very creative take on the Barbie and Mattel story – and she is the first woman who has really made a historic bundle.” Barbie has made $US1.4 billion. “It means women can finally be trusted with money!”

After working on her film school project, Campion imagined she would concentrate on yoga and qigong.

“That I’d develop my spiritual ideas, but that didn’t really happen much. Even though I had the time! But I’ve noticed a few ideas coming up, really surprising ones I can’t share yet.”

She knows that, with The Power of the Dog behind her, she is “in a good place” to get funding. She grins ruefully. “So I probably will keep going.”