Indie Kiwi Kids Music Songwriter And Director Wins A NASA Award At Houston Cinema Arts Festival

Dreaming of Jupiter and winning in film with the musical story of NASA’s Juno spacecraft, Independent kids music songwriter and director Claudia Robin Gunn has won the special category prize for ‘Best Production using 100% NASA Archive footage’ at the 2020 NASA Cinespace programme at Houston Cinema Arts Festival in the USA.

Won for the music video for her song of the same name ‘My Name is Juno Hello Jupiter’, this production traces the incredible story of the NASA Juno spacecraft through the medium of song, using image sequences taken by the JunoCam, and other NASA archive material.

Songwriter and director Claudia says, “I had read about this film festival several years ago, and when I set about creating the songs for my kids music album Little Wild Universe (made with funding from NZ On Air), I was inspired by all these NASA videos that I just wanted every kid I know to sit down and watch. It seemed a perfect fit to pay homage to these astounding missions using the actual archive material. When you look at the images taken by JunoCam, they are nothing less than works of art. Having this acknowledgement from NASA and Cinespace and Richard Linklater himself (judge) is a real honour”.

“My dream is to keep creating interesting content for kids that brings arts and sciences together. Thanks Tongal and NASA Johnson Space Centre and Houston Cinema Arts Society for this opportunity to work with the amazing archive that has been collected over the years. And thank you to New Zealand on Air who supported the creation of this album.”

A collaboration between NASA Johnson Space Centre and Houston Cinema Arts Society, Cinespace is a short film competition giving filmmakers around the world a chance to share their works inspired by and using actual NASA imagery. This is the 6th year the competition has been run.

Claudia’s film was competing with more than 300 entries from around the world. The film has been screening at the Houston Cinema Arts Festival’s online event in November 2020 along with the 12 other finalists, and is now available to view by the public on Vimeo, on Claudia’s Youtube channel and will soon be available via TVNZ On Demand.

This award caps off a productive year for this independent songwriter – the Little Wild Universe album and video series has been followed up by the release of 25 track songbook and double album “Sing Through The Year – A Little Wild Childhood’, with funding from Creative NZ, two singles in support of the NZ Robin Toutouwai for Bird Of The Year, co written with her sister Melissa and a new single with fellow kindie songwriter Michal Amy Bush, appropriately titled ‘Look Up, Slow Down’, that was written via Instagram messages prior to New Zealand’s first lockdown.

While she plans to take a breather this Christmas, this mum of two is not planning on slowing down anytime soon, with new videos and album projects in the works for 2021.

My Name is Juno Hello Jupiter – a short film and music video on Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/480072960

Visit Cinespace: https://www.cinespace.org/

Little Wild Universe – funded by NZ On Air, produced by Tom Fox at The Sound Room https://open.spotify.com/album/3zz0uMOHpkE3mDEeQb3Y5l?si=IqdiYSRYTluVTLhygt--CA

Little Wild Music YouTube:
https://youtu.be/18f3F2SbweU

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