
WHAT DREAMS MAY COME
Director VINCENT WARD has earned international acclaim
as one of New Zealand's most accomplished filmmakers with a reputation
for crafting films with a unique visual style. With his newest
film, What Dreams May Come, Ward again takes his audience
on a personal journey through unfamiliar lands.
Following in the spirit of Ward's previous films, Vigil, The
Navigator and Map of the Human Heart, Ward's latest directorial
effort is an epic love story of soul mates separated by death.
The story would inspire Ward to envision the afterlife as a painted
world, incorporating state-of-the-art, adapted and entirely new
technologies in an original, fully articulated, filmic view of
imagined realms that may await us after death.
Wards' films, shot in remote and extreme climes, have been described
as "at once epic and personal." Wards' critically acclaimed
first feature, Vigil (1984), the story of an imaginative,
isolated farm girl on the brink of puberty, was the first film
from his homeland to be selected for competition in the Cannes
Film Festival.
With each new film, Ward's imagined realms expand new territories
and grow increasingly unique and more poetic. He followed Vigil
with The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988), about a
young boy who digs a hole in medieval England and arrives in modern
day New Zealand. The film was also selected for competition at
the Cannes Film Festival. Ward's early two films garnered him
nearly 30 domestic and international awards, including the Grand
Prix at festivals in Italy, Spain and Germany, and Best Film and
Best Director at the Australian Film Institute Awards and the
New Zealand Film Awards.
Ward co-produced, directed and created the story for the critically
acclaimed Map of the Human Heart (1993), the story of a
half-Eskimo boy and his love for a half-Cree Indian girl. Cast
and crews flew by helicopter to shoot on Arctic ice floes 100
miles from the nearest community. After its debut at Cannes, the
film went on to earn wide critical acclaim and attract the attention
of a world-wide audience.
Ward originally trained as a painter at Canterbury University
Art School in New Zealand, and fell into film making unexpectantly
at 21, co-writing and directing a short film, A State of Sedge,
adapted from a novel by Janet Frame. The film, hailed by critics
for its visual power, won awards at both the Chicago and Miami
Film Festivals.
Ward lived for two years in an isolated Maori community while
filming the documentary In Spring One Plants Alone, exploring
the relationship of an elderly Maori woman and her 40-year old
schizophrenic son.
Ward has also been featured as an actor in the films The Shot,
Leaving Las Vegas and One Night Stand.
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