Who is Dame Jane Campion? A brief biography of Glenorchy's own star behind the silver screen

Glenorchy residents are proud of their famous daughter...

Dame Jane Campion is a highly acclaimed director; the brains behind award-winning films and the blockbuster crime thriller series Top of the Lake - which was shot right here at the top of Lake Wakatipu.

She has a home here - up in the beautiful Rees Valley - and visits several times a year.

If you visit Glenorchy then you might here her name mentioned, so here's a short biography of the Glenorchy's lady behind the silver screen.

Inspiring

Stare out any window in Glenorchy and it's hard not to be inspired.

The jagged mountains, mirror-like Lake Wakatipu, lush green woodland and snow-capped mountains are, simply, inspiring.

It's no surprise then that film directors, including New Zealand's James Cameron, the man behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and some from further afield, have time and time again chosen this area as the spot to shoot some of Hollywood's biggest films.

But it was a multi-award winning hit on the small screen that was crafted by a local inspired by the most inspiring of surroundings, that Glenorchy and it's small community of 300 people is perhaps most proud of.

Dame Jane Campion's crime thriller Top of the Lake was a huge hit in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. It won awards in all three countries and was nominated for countless more. 

The director lives, at least for some parts of the year, at a property up in the Rees Valley, Glenorchy and says the area's stunning landscape and small-town community inspired her highly acclaimed work.

'It's a detective story thats's very much influenced by the landscape around Glenorchy and explores the ideas about paradise and community,' she told Queenstown's Mountain Scene after it emerged filming was to begin for the fledging series in 2010. 

Campion says the beauty of Glenorchy inspired her to write the hit Top of the Lake series

The Piano

Campion, who was awarded her Royal honour in 2016, was born in Waikanae in the South of the North Island and shot to fame for directing the 1993 blockbuster The Piano.

The Academy-Award winning 1993 film was set on New Zealand's west coast and told the story of a mute piano player and her daughter during the mid 19th century. It revolved around the musician's passion for playing the piano and her efforts to regain her beloved instrument after it's sold.

That work brought Campion deserved acclaim and set the ball rolling on a career which has seen her direct titles such as Holy Smoke! and Bright Star.

The Piano won Campion critical acclaim

Glenorchy life

It was announced in 2010 that Campion would film her new series Top of the Lake in Glenorchy.

She's a local in the area, of sorts. Based for a long-time in Sydney, Campion has a holiday cottage on the high country Rees Valley Station further up the road from Glenorchy, where she's lived and written on and off over the years. Her daughter went to school in the town.

It was her appreciation of the landscape here and her want to give something back to the local people that sealed the deal for her choosing Glenorchy as the place to shoot Top for The Lake.

She told Mountain Scene in 2010 that the people of Glenorchy had been so kind to her and her family it was nice to give something back. 'When I get the chance, it's nice to bring what I do here.'

In another interview with the New Zealand Herald in 2013, she said: 'I don't think you are really a local until you live there all year round. I am certainly very attached, after 40 years of coming and going and my daughter going to school there, even. I feel very privileged to have some strong connections to at least a couple of families in the area.'

Top of the Lake

On the surface Top of the Lake is gritty crime drama that deals with the disappearance of a pregnant 12-year-old girl called Tui in a remote, fictional, New Zealand town.

But deeper down its also a battle of the sexes. It stars a female lead detective battling against men in her personal and private life as well as young Tui, a pregnant child who is unwilling to divulge who the father is. It's a theme that has been evident in many of Campion's previous works.

Thankfully, Lake Top, as the small town is known in the drama shares little more than the scenery with real-life Glenorchy and the fact its Kiwi community living at the end of the line.

Campion told the New Zealand Herald: 'It's more about a community at the end of the line, at the edge of things. People who have chosen to live as far away from the centre as they can ... and often they do it because they are in love in the landscape.

'It's called Lake Top deliberately because it doesn't represent any town I know, and we want to take people away from thinking this really goes on there. I know it doesn't really go on there.'