Alex Lee

An Asian New Zealander, Alex is a film-maker who produces, directs and writes. He is passionate about story-telling and use of media to empower social change. Alex believes that the future of media is in cross-media which enables both practitioners and audiences to have a 360degree experience both in making and viewing media.

One of Alex’s passions is to enrich our community with more ethnic stories and to enable our media to be more representative of the community and wider world we live in. Diversity is a key motivator.
Alex is also involved in the film & TV industry, having set up the Documentary NZ Trust and the Asia NZ Film Foundation to help promote these various constituencies. He also sits on Film Auckland and until 2010, was an Executive Board Member of the Screen Directors Guild of NZ. Alex also co-directs the Documentary Edge Festival and Forum, New Zealand’s documentary film festival and industry event.

He is also active in performing arts, having also set up the Oryza Foundation for Asian Performing Arts, which advocates for better Asian participation in performing arts in New Zealand and directed the very popular “The Mooncake and the Kumara” at the Asian Tales season at the Herald Theatre.

Alex is also an actor/presenter and was previously, the Writer/Presenter on The World Today, a prime time nightly English language current affairs programme screened on Asia TV in Hong Kong as well a radio producer and host on Planet FM.

Currently, Alex is working on developing a new company, Inkubator Limited, a company set up to help mentor and create cross-cultural stories for production across a variety of media and platforms from big screen, TV, web, print, performance etc. It has a number of features, short, online and TV projects in development

In 2002, he returned to the University of Auckland to do a Masters of Creative & Performing Arts (Film & TV Drama Directing) and graduated with First Class Honours in September 2004. He wrote and directed Wong Cha Cha, a Creative New Zealand supported short film, completing it in February 2004. He has also been a line producer for overseas television and commercial productions. A short documentary Ma-kara at Makara Alex co-directed and produced was screened at the 2004 Warsaw International Jewish Film Festival, the 2004 Jewish Film Festival in Jerusalem, and DOCNZ International Documentary Film Festival 2005. He also produced the independent feature film The Last Magic Show which won Honourable Mention at the 2007 Dances with Films Film Festival in Los Angeles and Best Technical Contribution to a Digital Feature at the NZ Screen Awards 2007. It has been picked up Arkles Distribution Ltd. He is also the Executive Producer of Song of the Hunted, at Middle Kingdom fantasy feature film due to release in 2008. Currently, he is working on post-production of a documentary feature Musical Chairs, which he is the Co-Pro ducer and Director.

Alex is a director of T.A.G Creatives Limited (a management agency for actors, directors and screenwriters), Tamarillo Films Limited, Timeline Productions Limited and Smiley International Documentary Film Distribution Limited.
From 2004-2006, Alex taught Production Management to the postgraduate film students at the University of Auckland.

Alex is passionate about screen and performing arts as well as capturing our stories and realizing these stories honestly.