James Cunningham (director)
James Cunningham (born 1973) is a New Zealand film director and animator. He has directed and written three award winning animated theatrical shorts. He is based in Auckland, New Zealand.
Infection competed at Cannes International Film Festival 2000, Sundance Film Festival 2001 and 20 other international Film Festivals. Infection is the most successful short ever made by the New Zealand Film Commission in terms of sales and A-List Festival selection.
Delf was selected for the Saatchi & Saatchi new directors Global showcase in 2000 and won numerous awards. Delf is an acronym for digitally engineered life forms.
Blinder was released theatrically in New Zealand with In the Company of Men.
James has recently taken up the role of 3D Course Leader at Media Design School, the premier Animation and Visual Effects new media school in New Zealand. Prior to that he was Head of 3D at Digital Post working on Visual Effects for local and international TV Commercials, and he was a technical director on The Lord of the Rings at Weta Digital. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography and a Master of Fine Arts in digital animation from Elam School of Fine Arts (Auckland, NZ).
James has a film-making partnership with producer Paul Swadel that spans 14 years. James and Paul are developing an indie performance capture driven CGI film Marshal, and are post-producing a proof of concept short film Poppy , that was shot on the Weta Digital motion capture soundstage. Poppy features Matthew Sunderland Winner of Best Actor Award at the 2008 NZ Screen Awards [1].
James Cunningham is based in Auckland, New Zealand.
Filmography
Director
- Poppy (2009): director
- Infection (2000): writer, director
- Blinder (1998): writer, director
- Delf (1997): writer, director
Music Videos
- Drive, Strawpeople (2000): director
- It's Not Enough, Strawpeople (2000): director
- Signals, Elleven (2004): director