Rate My Professor Gwen Isaac

Gwen Isaac is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Music and Screen Arts at Massey University’s College of Creative Arts, Toi Rauwhārangi. She leads the Bachelor of Screen Arts (Hons) Documentary and Factual major and teaches film production with a focus on documentary and factual filmmaking, theory and practice. Her teaching integrates practical production skills with the theory and history of documentary filmmaking. Isaac holds a Bachelor of Communications Studies from Auckland University of Technology (1996) and a Certificate of Media Law for journalists and broadcasters from Skillset in the UK. Prior to her academic role, she spent a decade creating television formats and directing factual and documentary series for broadcasters in the UK and USA, including projects for BBC Scotland, NBC USA, BBC World News and ITV London.

Isaac is a practising documentary filmmaker whose works include the feature documentaries Ms. Information (2023), selected for Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival and FIFO Tahiti, and Where There is Life (2017), which premiered at the New Zealand International Film Festival and earned her the Best First-Time Director award at the London Independent Film Awards. Her short documentaries include Tokyo Woman (2021), selected for international festivals and awarded Best Sound and Music at the Wildsound Festival, and Siouxsie & the Virus (2020), which won Best Film in the Long Story Shorts Competition. Her research interests encompass feminism, documentary, Japan, auto-theory and science stories. She maintains professional affiliations with Women in Film and Television NZ, the Directors and Editors Guild Aotearoa and other industry organisations. Isaac regularly contributes to public discussions on documentary production and feminist filmmaking.