Telling the stories of Post-war Cretan Female Migrants in New Zealand

An oral history and digital storytelling project

Telling the stories of Post-war Cretan Migrant Women in Aotearoa New Zealand

An oral history and digital storytelling project

Co-Producers

Dr Evangelia Papoutsaki is New Zealand Greek citizen, born on the island of Crete.  She is an international scholar with an interest in migrant/ethnic/diasporic communities, islands and social change communication. She has extensive research experience with oral history projects and has been trained by the NZ Oral History Association. She was one of the principal researchers for a NZ Dutch immigrants oral history project commissioned by Dutch Museum Trust Board in 2008 and recipient of funds from the Jack Ilott Fund for the same project and lead researcher for a Pacific Islands diaspora project. She co-designed the original oral history of this project and co-produced the audio-visual recordings of the second phase of the project. Evangelia is co-convenor of Small Island Cultures Research Initiative (SICRI) and is co-curating the content of its digital platform involving creative media. She has designed and delivered a series of oral history workshops with the Waiheke Adult Learning Center, funded by Creative Communities. See here about Evangelia.


Athina Tsoulis was the co-producer and film director of the project.  Born in Greece and raised in Adelaide, Athina Tsoulis began making films after she moved to Auckland in the 1980s. She has dramatised the lives of Greek families in 1950’s and 1960’s New Zealand and has also worked on projects with members of various immigrant communities – Samoan and Indian – empowering them to tell their stories. Black comedy The Invisible Hand was invited to multiple festivals, including Clermont-Ferrand. Long keen to tell women’s stories, Tsoulis made her feature film debut in 1998 with edgy comedy I’ll Make You Happy. Her follow-up, small town drama Jinx Sister, starring Sara Wiseman, was Qantas-nominated for the Best Low-Budget Feature of 2008. Third feature Stars in Her Eyes (2016) involved both screen industry veterans, and students from Unitec — where Tsoulis tought directing for a number of years.  See here about Athina

Online resource co-producing

Christos Montes is a New Zealand Greek citizen and an award-winning NZ media professional with a cinematography and video editing background. In the initial phase of this project, Christos edited the trailer of this project under the guidance of the co-producers.
For this phase of the project he provided the media archive sorting, audio media grouping, categorizing and editing together for each subject. He also did the video media editing in coherent clips per subject and created a specific YouTube channel for the project while transcoding and uploading the video files to YouTube. Christos also did the website development and is responsible for the hosting and maintenance of this online resource. See here for more information about Christos

Film crew

Rewa Harre is a NZ camera operator and cinematographer whose work encompasses documentary, short films, commercials, and a long run of dramas for the big and small screen. Harre has worked extensively with director Sima Urale — shooting her acclaimed short film O Tamaiti, and winning a Qantas Award in 2009 for Urale’s debut feature, Apron Strings. Harre made his own feature debut back in 1998, when he shot romp I’ll Make You Happy. He went on to Geoff Murphy’s last dramatic feature, Spooked (2004) and a run of television work, including The Brokenwood Mysteries and One Lane Bridge. In 2021 he won an NZ TV award for The Gulf. Rewa was the cameraman for this project. See here for more about Rewa

Pia Harre Sound recordist.

Transcribers-Translators

Ilias Pavlidis, Georgia Kalatzi, Lucy Anastasiadou-Hobbs

Special Acknowledgments

Nikos Petousis : Former honorary council of Greece for his generous support and archival material sharing.

The families of the women, both in Crete and in Aotearoa New Zealand for their generous hospitality and support.

The Greek and Cretan communities in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

National Oral History Association of New Zealand (NOHANZ) for the oral history training and support in the early stages of this project.

A New Zealand Cretan
war connection

A micro-study of Greek female immigrants to NZ in the 60s
by Associate Prof.
Evangelia Papoutsaki