Kirsty MacDonald

Kirsty MacDonald is an Auckland University Film Studies post-graduate student, who has directed several award-winning documentaries. Kirsty has a background in music and performance, as a member of a Wellington-based travelling theatre company, and as a solo and group performer of original acoustic music in the United States and New Zealand for fifteen years. She has performed in and produced five albums, as well as co-creating several animated shorts for New Zealand’s International Puppet Festival.

Her documentaries include: Black and White (2006) exploring the potent collaboration between intersex activist Mani Bruce Mitchell and acclaimed New Zealand photographer Rebecca Swan; Good For a Girl (2005), a portrait of the New Zealand Women’s Boxing Champion; and I Can Read You Like a Book (2003), an examination of the way in which one woman “performs” her gender and identity.

At the DOCNZ festival 2006 Kirsty MacDonald won the award for Best emerging New Zealand Film maker 2006 & her film Black and White won the award for Best New Zealand short Documentary.