1987 Barry Barclay's film Ngati, screenplay by Tama Poata and starring veteran actor Wi Kuki Kaa, was released to critical acclaim and some box-office success. Ngati is recognised as the first feature film to be written and directed by a person of Māori descent. Merata Mita was the first Māori woman to write and direct a dramatic feature film, when she directed Mauri in 1988. An accomplished documentary film-maker, Mita made landmark documentaries including Bastion Point: Day 507 (1980), about the occupation of land there, and Patu! (1983), a film about the controversial and violent anti-apartheid protests during the 1981 Springboks rugby tour from South Africa. The late 1980s saw the reinvention of the New Zealand short film, beginning with Alison Maclean's Kitchen Sink. Instead of trying to be short features focused on dialogue and character, the new shorts tried instead to "push the envelope" in terms of visual design and cinematic grammar. An explosion of visually rich and compelling works emerged that seemed to have more in common with European art-house cinema than Hollywood. Key examples of these are: The Lounge Bar (The Front Lawn), Kitchen Sink (Alison Maclean), A Little Death (Simon Perkins; Paul Swadel), Stroke (Christine Jeffs), La Vie en Rose (Anna Reeves), A Game With No Rules (Scott Reynolds), Eau de la vie (Simon Baré), O Tamaiti (The Children) (Sima Urale)—which won the Silver Lion Best Short Film at the Venice Film Festival—and Two Cars, One Night (Taika Waititi), which was nominated for the Best Short Film Oscar. International breakthrough: 1990–2000 The early 1990s saw New Zealand film gain international recognition, most obviously with Jane Campion's The Piano (1993), which won three Academy Awards. Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994) and Lee Tamahori's Once Were Warriors also received international acclaim and high grosses in a number of countries. The Piano and Heavenly Creatures showed an increasing tendency for New Zealand films to be partially or completely funded by overseas production companies, and star non-local actors (for example, Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel in The Piano, and Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures). This did not stop the migration of New Zealanders to the United States: Tamahori, Melanie Lynskey of Heavenly Creatures and Canadian-born Piano star Anna Paquin are now all primarily based in America. A notable exception to the migration tendency is Peter Jackson, who has continued to make films in New Zealand. Jackson's career began with low-budget