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The Filmmaker
Jane Campion was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1954. Her parents, Edith and Richard Campion, studied theatre at RADA and later formed the New Zealand Players with the idea of touring professional theatre throughout the country. Later they turned to farming on a mixed sheep and cattle property that ran from the main road north to the beach at Peka Peka.
Campion studied Anthropology at Victoria University in Wellington and then painting at both Chelsea School of Arts in London and Sydney College of the Arts. While at the Australian Film and Television School, Campion completed three shorts films, Peel, A Girls Own Story and Passionless Moments co-authored with friend Gerard Lee. Peel won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Sweetie, co-written by Gerard Lee, was her first feature film, followed by An Angel At My Table and The Piano, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993, as well as eight Oscar nominations and three Oscars including Best Screenplay (for Campion) in 1994.
Subsequent features were Portrait Of A Lady, Holy Smoke, co-written with Anna Campion (currently being adapted for the stage) and In The Cut. Bright Star is the first feature after Campion’s four-year break from 2003 – 2007 and is written by Campion from an original idea. Campion is currently in development with 2B Films, Pathé and Screen Australia to make Runaway, an adaptation of an Alice Munro story.
Director’s Notes The film is in itself a kind of ballad, like Keats’s 'Eve of St Agnes' – it is a story about the love affair of Fanny Brawne and John Keats. The story progresses in verses charting their increasing involvement and attachment as well as their deepening difficulties. The storytelling’s restraint mimics Fanny’s own life restraint, the passive waiting fate of any young woman of her time: the life amongst the family, her obsession with sewing, the restrictions on her activities and her chaperoned outings. Against all these restraints, her determined passion for John Keats expressed through the notes she left under his pillow or by presenting herself at his window when he was sick, seem all the more remarkable. The most important quality of this story was to get across the intimacy of the characters to the viewer. Rehearsal was very important for this as it helped the actors to establish a subtle Being. Both Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish have a particular delicious charisma which, through the rehearsal period, they gave their characters claim to. The more real they are, the more the mystery of their unique personalities is allowed to fascinate us, capturing our imagination and our hearts. I see the world of Keats and Fanny as light filled, literally leaking light, and even though the film ends with Keats’s death, the lamp lit by his poetic genius and unique spirit cannot be extinguished. It is Bright Star’s ambition to sensitize the audience, to light the lamp. Jane Campion, writer and director
"Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art - Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors- No-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever-or else swoon to death." - John Keats, 1819
Filmography
Cinema16: World Short Films (video short) – Director - 2008 8 - Director (segment "The Water Diary"), Writer (segment "The Water Diary") – 2008 To Each His Own Cinema - Director (segment "The Lady Bug") - 2007 Silence (short) - Dedicated With Love To - 2007 Flame of the West (short) - Special Thanks - 2007 The Water Diary (short) - Director, Writer (writer) - 2006 Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story (documentary) – Producer - 2006 Everything Goes (short) - Special Thanks - 2004 Somersault - Script Advisor (Aurora) - 2004 We Don't Live Here Anymore - Special Thanks - 2004 In the Cut - Director, Writer (screenplay) - 2003 Soft Fruit - Executive Producer - 1999 Holy Smoke - Director, Writer (written by) - 1999 The Portrait of a Lady – Director - 1996 Muriel's Wedding - Special Thanks - 1994 The Piano - Director, Writer (written by) - 1993 An Angel at My Table – Director - 1990 Sweetie - Director, Writer (screenplay) (story), Casting Director - 1989 The Audition (short) – Actress - 1989 After Hours (short) - Director, Writer (writer) - 1984 A Girl's Own Story (short) - Director, Writer (writer) - 1984 Mishaps of Seduction and Conquest (video short) – Director - 1984 Passionless Moments (short) - Director, Writer (writer), Producer, Cinematographer, Camera Operator - 1983 An Exercise in Discipline - Peel (short) - Director, Writer (writer), Editor - 1982
