We’re calling them ‘Sorta Unofficial’ because at the start of this journey we couldn’t afford a lawyer to work out whether we could call them the Official Awards or not. We also thought the Awards themselves should have a name — so we're calling them The Moas, named in honour of something extinct.

The previous awards (known as the AFTAs) covered both film and television. They were pretty swish affairs which were so big they needed two complete award shows to cover all the packages. Unfortunately the AFTAs pulled the plug on the film component for 2012 and we were suddenly confronted with the sad realisation that our country would not have an awards show. I mean who are we — Guam? So that’s when we thought, beep it, let’s just put one on. How hard could it be? Well it actually is a bit of work to put on an awards show and so we’re extremely grateful to the companies that put their hand up to help out. Huge thanks, of course, go to the NZFC without whom there would be no Moas this year.

The Moas are being put together by a few folks who genuinely think it’d be kind of embarrassing to not have some sort of celebration recognising what’s been achieved in film the past year or so.

We feel the industry is only as strong as the relationships contained within and so a night where we can celebrate each other’s talent is important. Of course, having your work nominated or even crowned ‘the best’ is a nice capper to the festivities.

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An Ant Timpson/Hugh Sundae production.