ABOUT HAPPEN FILMS

The aim of Happen Films is to showcase and demonstrate inspiring solutions to the multiple global crises we’re facing today. We’re currently living through an exceptional time in human history, where what we’ve known as normal is breaking down due to environmental, cultural, and social limits being reached. This overlap of climate change, peak oil, financial instability, environmental destruction, and inequality have created the conditions for a massive global shift in the way we relate to the world and each other.

We need to transition to not just living ‘sustainably’, but in a way that heals and regenerates the damage that’s been done. So how do we go about doing this? Exploring this question is what Happen Films was founded upon and is what drives us to do what we do. The solutions are out there and people are pioneering this transition. We want to find these people and share their stories in order to inspire others to make change in their own lives and in their communities.

Those ‘others’ include ourselves: each of our interviewees has inspired us to make important changes not just in our personal lives but in the way we operate Happen Films. To learn more about how we operate, check out the How is Happen Films Funded? page. If you’re keen to support our work, visit the Support page.

Jordan Osmond

Jordan grew up in Ballarat, Australia. A budding photographer, in his mid-teens he was struck by how documentary films were having an impact on how he saw the world and how he lived his life. Impressed by what an effective medium for change they were, he wanted to get behind the camera and have a positive impact on the lives of others.

His first feature film, A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity, co-directed with Samuel Alexander, has received over 3.5 million views on YouTube and continues to be shown at community events and festivals around the world. Having teamed up with Antoinette in Happen Films, the pair set out to make a series of short films that ended up becoming a second feature film, Living the Change. He is director, writer and cinematographer, as well as editor of nearly all of the Happen Films productions, working from his home base in northern Victoria, Australia.

Antoinette Wilson

Born in Tasmania, Australia, raised in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand, Antoinette left university for a career in book publishing that lasted 20 years.

A journey of exploration into the connections between personal and planetary health led her to transition to work in an organic market garden, complete her Permaculture Design Certificate, and eventually to participate in the documentary film A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity, during which she saw the extraordinary capacity of film to educate and inspire. She and Jordan teamed up in Happen Films that year, 2015, and she brought her production and story-editing skills over from the book industry to research, write and produce their films. She lives in a tiny house on wheels in the Moutere Hills, at the top of Aotearoa’s South Island, where she spends her spare time in the garden, in front of a movie, or reading a book.

Anna Veale

Growing up in Ōtautahi Christchurch listening to Radio New Zealand and pottering in her mother’s vegetable garden Anna developed a love for the environment and public broadcasting. After graduating with a broadcasting degree she worked as a sound technician for Radio New Zealand, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision, and the BBC World Service in London. Her passion for gardening was further explored during a two-year sabbatical to Central America to help set up an eco-lodge in the mountains of Nicaragua. Anna first worked with Happen Films in 2019 as the sound operator for Fools and Dreamers. In 2021 she joined the team part time and now fills the role of Editing Assistant alongside her soundie role when she’s able to join on film shoots.

Nick Tucker

Born and raised into traditional farming practices in southern England, Nick’s love for the outdoors – and the plants and creatures that live there – began early. A childhood spent helping out on the farm was followed by the study of agriculture at college, then a career that morphed from practical farming to farm business consultancy to marketing support within the UK agricultural sector. Transplanting to New Zealand in 2005 set in motion events that eventually led Nick to re-evaluate society’s reliance on intensive farming practices, and his role within that sector. It’s an evolution that continues to this day, with recent years seeing a growing interest in lower impact living, reduced consumption and the need for truly regenerative alternatives to the habits and practices we currently call ‘normal’. Already a fan of Happen Films’ work, Nick now gets to use his skills in communication, positioning and strategy to directly support the production and promotion of Happen Films content. He does that, and his other work supporting the expansion of regenerative agriculture in New Zealand, from his off-grid home just outside Kaeo in the Far North of Aotearoa New Zealand.