Being Chinese

Helene Wong was born in Taihape, New Zealand, and grew up in Lower Hutt, near Wellington. After graduating in Sociology from Victoria University of Wellington, she worked in the Public Service, becoming in 1978 social policy adviser to Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon, and the first woman to be appointed to his Advisory Group.Her career then took a different turn as she followed her love of theatre, working as an actor and director before moving into film and television in the mid-1980s. She was appointed as the first script development executive in the NZ Film Commission, then worked as a freelance script consultant on several short and feature-length projects, including Illustrious Energy, Leon Narbey’s acclaimed feature film about Chinese goldminers in Otago.Helene then wrote and directed documentaries for television, notably Footprints of the Dragon, about Chinese in New Zealand, for the series An Immigrant Nation. It was among the ten top-rating documentaries of 1995. The following year, she became a film critic with the New Zealand Listener, a position she still holds.Helene has taught classes in scriptwriting, film criticism, cultural identity and the media; judged numerous industry awards; served on the jury of the Asia-Pacific Film Festival in Auckland in 1996; and, from 2000 to 2006 was a member of the board of the NZ Film Commission. Helene Wong is now a full-time writer and occasional actor.