Peter Jackson, surely the ultimate in local-boys-made-good, wowed the world with the first instalment of his adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
Praised at premieres in London and New York, the most important one, he said, was Wellington.
Jackson is the new face of Kiwi culture,
proud of his heritage and his home but footing it on the world stage with a world class product.
Tanya Carlson, Anika Moa and Sheila Laxon were women stepping into the spotlight.
Ms Carlson, a designer with a quiet style, has been building a reputation for easy elegance, but it took the inaugural New Zealand Fashion Week in October for her to really shine, when Hilary Alexander, fashion editor of the Daily Telegraph in London, labelled her designs "brilliant". Her company was also named one of our fastest-growing businesses.
Singer-songwriter Anika Moa became the first local act to sign to a big international label - Atlantic Records - without a strong career at home.
Trainer Sheila Laxon took on the Australians and won when her horse Ethereal was first past the post in the Melbourne Cup. She was transformed, overnight it seemed, into the darling of the racing world.
There was another change in store for the media world, with long-time top-rating TVNZ newsreaders Judy Bailey and Richard Long slipping behind TV3's Carol Hirshfeld and John Campbell in the popularity stakes with the under-49-year-olds.
In the arts, we lost two of the old guard of New Zealand music and literature. In June, composer Douglas Lilburn died, aged 85, while poet Allen Curnow died in September, aged 90, at the end of a 70-year poetic career. The two had collaborated on several projects, including Landfall in Unknown Seas, on the 300th anniversary of the discovery of New Zealand by Abel Tasman. Lilburn set Curnow's poem to music.
2001 – The year in review
