OCCASIONAL PRODUCTIONS

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Occasional Productions is a boutique production company run by Dr Annie Goldson. Its focus is character-driven feature documentaries that explore social and human rights issues with depth and insight. Occasional’s documentaries span fundamentalism and genocide, the digital age, the refugee experience, sexuality, mortality, and identity. Complex issues are a specialty. 

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Occasional’s work has attained extensive critical and commercial success, receiving more than 50 international and domestic awards at film festivals like Hotdocs (Toronto), IDFA (Amsterdam), SXSW, Melbourne, Los Angeles and Hawaii.  Its films have opened theatrically in the US, Australia and New Zealand and aired on prestigious broadcast and streaming outlets, including HBO, Hulu, PBS, BBC, ARD, CBC, TVNZ, TV3, Maori TV, Israeli TV, CCTV, S-ABC, ABC, and SBS, reaching millions of viewers. 

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ANNIE GOLDSON, ONZM

 

As the owner of Occasional Productions, Annie has been producing, directing, writing and EP-ing documentary for more than 30 years. 

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Highly regarded internationally, she is frequently invited to exhibit at A-list film festivals. 

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Annie’s films have generated scholarly articles praising them for their depth and power. Belinda Smaill (Monash) argues they “engage in rigorous historicizing (and) expand a sense of moral connectedness”; Robert Rosenstone (CalTech) lauds Annie for her “extraordinary clarity and insight”; while Allan Wright (Canterbury) highlights her “insightful reflexivity”. 

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In addition to running Occasional, Annie is also a Professor at the University of Auckland | Waipapa Taumata Rau in Communication, where she did her PhD. She is also a scholar, publishing chapters in books and journal articles, including in Studies in Documentary Film, Screen, and Social Text. Her monograph Memory, Landscape, Dad and Me, written to accompany an early film Wake, was published by Victoria University Publications. 

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An active film industry member, Annie has served on advisory boards for several key organizations, including NZFC | Whakaata Taonga, Creative New Zealand, the Screen Directors’ and Editors Guild, Expanding Documentary Conferences and the Documentary Edge Festival. She is a patron of the Africa Film Festival. 

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Annie received an ONZM for Services to Film, is a Fellow of the Royal Society | Te Āparangi, which awarded her the Aronui Medal for Excellence in Humanities in 2021, received the Dame Gaylene Preston Arts Laureate Award for services to documentary film in 2023, and was the DocEdge Superhero that same year.