Deputy Prime Minister Bill English will hear why the film industry is vital to the electorate he represents, from the film-making community itself, in Queenstown tomorrow.
About 50 film industry representatives are expected to attend the private forum at the five-star Sofitel Queenstown Hotel and Spa.
Sofitel general manager Wouter de Graaf will welcome attendees, then Queenstown Lakes Mayor Clive Geddes will give his address.
Queenstown producer and director Julian Grimmond will speak in his role as chairman of Film New Zealand.
Accor Hospitality New Zealand and Fiji vice-president Paul Richardson, a board member of Tourism New Zealand, is to attend.
Film Otago Southland executive manager Kevin Jennings will host the function, in association with Sofitel, which is targeting visiting film-makers.
Mr Jennings said he hoped Mr English, as MP for Clutha-Southland, recognised the industry within his electorate and saw it as capable of helping the country out of the recession.
"The agenda really is for the industry to meet Mr English, and for him to put faces to names and get an idea of the broad reach the film industry has in our region, that it goes beyond people who work on the set," Mr Jennings said yesterday.
"It's all the external suppliers and all the other businesses in the region that benefit from the industry.
It's the trickle-on effect that comes into the region and creates jobs that reach beyond the industry itself."
More than $37 million was pumped into Otago-Southland last year, on a par with 2007, according to Statistics New Zealand.
The forum will be held amid location shooting in the hills of Wakatipu for the New Zealand and United Kingdom co-production of Tracker, an action thriller.
