It's one of the Big Three European Film Festivals, along with the fiercely business-like Cannes Festival, and the more high-minded Venice one.

Along the South Island's rugged West Coast live a community of people whose self-sufficent way of life is being captured on film before it passes into history.

New Zealand is hosting the World Science Fiction Convention later this year. This is a major event for fans of traditional sci-fi, fantasy, horror, speculative fiction and all the other sub-genres of fiction unhindered by time and space.

Eamonn Marra accompanies his debut novel 2000ft Above Worry Level by saying that it'll be the last time he writes about depression.

When you think of the skills of movie stunt performers, you usually think of breathtaking leaps and spectacular fight scenes. But Ashlee Fidow is also required to free-dive, to abseil, to fall off galloping horses and down stairs and a host of other daunting tasks.

It's been a closely guarded secret, but the anonymous donor behind the country's richest literary prize is anonymous no longer.

105 years after it opened, the Hawke's Bay Opera House's multi-million-dollar earthquake strengthening and refurbishment are about to be revealed.

Borni Te Rongopai Tukiwaho is heavily involved in Te Pou Theatre and the Hobson Street Theatre Company that works with Auckland's homeless while also running Atawhai, a two month-long mental health awareness festival. But, as he tells Lynn Freeman, running the Auckland Fringe Festival brings its own combination of chaos and challenges, including how to stand out from a growing number of festivals in the City of Sails at this time of year.

Wellington writer and performer Freya Daly Sadgrove has just published her first poetry collection, and is already hard at work turning it into a stage show. Lynn Freeman talks to Freya about her life and her often confronting poetry. Head Girl by Freya Daly Sadgrove is published by Victoria University Press. Freya's appearing at both the Newtown Festival and at the writers event in the New Zealand Festival in Wellington.

Rachel Marlow is one of this country's most in-demand lighting designers, and co-founder of design company Filament Eleven 11. She works on everything from straight theatre productions to outdoor music festivals. Rachel Marlow's latest work is her own creation - an ambitious lighting and sound installation that draws from the Brothers Grimm cautionary tale The Old Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle.