Arezou Zalipour

Arezou Zalipour is an Associate Professor in Screen Production and Cultural Studies at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand. Arezou is a screen researcher-practitioner who has worked in a variety of roles in higher education in Asian countries and New Zealand for more than 20 years. Arezou is the theorist of ‘Asian New Zealand Cinema’ (2015) and a pioneer of diasporic film and filmmaking in New Zealand.  Her recent book Migrant and Diasporic Film and Filmmaking in New Zealand (2019) expanded her research on Asian New Zealanders' films and filmmaking by engaging the screen production and practices of the Pacific communities in New Zealand.

Arezou was the director, curator and concept developer of the (In)Visible New Zealand Film Festival, the first of its kind to showcase New Zealand's multi-cultural films on the big screen. She launched Onscreen New Zealand Diversity in 2017, the first website to bring these films together in order to promote and encourage future generations of filmmakers and storytellers who share ethnic migrant consciousness.

Her research interests cluster around the intersections of (i) screen practice, representation, industry, and the relationship between the screen and the viewer, (ii) racism, ethnicity, multiculturalism, indigenous-migrant relationships, diaspora and diversity, and (iii) practice-based research, creativity and imagination.