The Eternal City - Documentary

Disabled artists in Taiwan are redefining what dance can be - and John Ross and Paula Whetu Jones, two NZ film makers, are making the film that tells that story. The Eternal City documentary follows Resident Island Dance Theatre through the making of a groundbreaking international performance premiering in November 2026. 

We need $16,000 NZD to get our NZ production team on the ground in Taiwan for the next critical filming block.

To date, this project has been entirely self-funded and independently made because we sit between the recognised funding models as New Zealand film makers wanting to make a film in Taiwan.

Paula Whetu Jones — Producer

Paula is a filmmaker, writer, and producer with over two decades of experience in the New Zealand screen industry. She has been a wheelchair user for sixteen years and is constantly told what is and is not possible because of her disability, her age, because she is a woman, because she is Māori. She is constantly proving people wrong.

When John came to Paula and asked for her help, she watched what he had already captured -  the grace, the dignity, the tenacity, the pain that comes with simply wanting to express yourself. It was a no-brainer. She was hooked.

John Ross — Director / Cinematographer

John is a documentary filmmaker, but his connection to this project goes deeper than craft. These are his friends. He watched them creating something extraordinary and recognised that a documentary could take what is happening on the stage and in the rehearsal rooms, the streets and the daily lives behind it and share it with the world in a way a live performance never can. Because these people are his friends, he has access - the very foundation of a great doco. 

For John, this film is about freedom of creative expression. He believes everyone has the right to it, regardless of what the world tells them. That belief is his common ground with Resident Island Dance Theatre - and it is why he started filming.

Sasa Hsiao — Taiwan Producer

Sasa is the producer of Resident Island Dance Theatre and our essential partner on the ground in Taiwan. She coordinates local production, manages relationships with the company and community, and makes sure the filmmaking process respects the people at its centre. Without Sasa, there is no film.

• We need funds for flights to Taiwan and accomodation and travel within Taiwan for John and Paula. 
• We also need funds to pay our Taiwanese Fixer/translator.

Making a world-class performance is hard. Making one where everybody on stage has had to fight harder than most just to be in the room, that's something else entirely.

The Eternal City documentary is not about the show. It's about everything it takes to get there.

We are following Resident Island Dance Theatre, Taiwan's pioneering mixed-ability dance company through the full arc of creating their most ambitious work yet: an international co-production with New York disability arts ensemble Kinetic Light and Bay Area musician ONIKHO, premiering at the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts in November 2026.

That means we are there for the rehearsals that fall apart and the ones that click. We are there when the collaboration between artists from different countries, different bodies, and different creative languages finds its footing and when it doesn't. We are following the dancers through the streets of Kaohsiung, into their daily lives, through the obstacles that don't stop when the music does.

Ting-Yen, who has cerebral palsy, knows what it means to need the world to see you as a full human being. Jiahun is rebuilding her relationship with movement after a serious brain injury. Arwen carries the kaupapa of inclusion across Taiwan through the workshops he runs. A Liang would not accept that he couldn’t build the life he wanted. Zhong-An built an entire company on the same refusal.

These are not stories about disability. They are stories about blood, sweat, tears, and breakthroughs. All of it, on the way to a stage.

We are making this film because these stories deserve to exist beyond a single night of performance. A show plays and it's gone. A documentary lasts. It travels. It finds the people who need it most.

That's why we're going back.

We have a special relationship with Taiwan – we both know what it means to fight for the underdog. This documentary is a collaboration between a  film maker in a wheelchair, a Director DOP whose closest friends happen to be some of the most extraordinary disabled artists working anywhere in the world today, and the Taiwanese people who inspire the story. We are not outsiders looking in. Geography and language may separate us but this is our community. 

When this film is finished, it will travel. Film festivals, broadcasters, schools, disability organisations, arts communities across Taiwan and Aotearoa and internationally. It will find the disabled teenager in Tāmaki Makaurau who has never seen someone who moves like them treated as an artist. It will find the parent who didn't know what was possible. It will find the programmer who never thought to include a disabled-led work in their season - and make them think.

Authentic representation of disabled people in film and on screen is still rare. Stories that centre disability not as tragedy, not just as inspiration, but as a genuine and powerful creative force - rarer still. This film does that. These artists do that.

Your backing does more than get us on a plane. It says that Aotearoa New Zealand, a country that knows something about fighting to be seen and heard, stands behind this story. We will help to create an international conversation about bodies, art, and what freedom of expression actually means.

The performance happens once. The film lasts forever.

Back us.