Once upon a time there was a country struggling over whether it should be known as Aotearoa or New Zealand. Then a joker by the name of Peter Jackson came along and turned the whole thing upside down. When the dust settled, Wellington had become Wellywood, and for a while Aotearoa New Zealand had become Middle-earth.

There also used to be a National Film Unit, owned by the New Zealand government. Now a beautiful, Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired building out in Miramar, a Wellington suburb, houses a postproduction facility called Park Road Post that can compete with any facility in the world in terms of equipment and staff. Once again, the name of Peter Jackson must be invoked.

And where the national government used to think of its association with filmmaking in terms of developing national identity and promoting immigration and tourism, well, now it thinks of its association with filmmaking in terms of national pride, tourism, and forex. Instead of propaganda, it thinks creative industries. If the country still gave knighthoods, it’s a cinch that Peter Jackson and Richard Taylor would have theirs. Meanwhile, Fran Walsh has collected almost as many honorary degrees as the country can make available; she’s been heard to say that she’s taught her children to call her Doctor Doctor Mama.

One hears rather less now of New Zealand following Australia’s model when it comes to developing filmmaking on a national level, and rather more about co-production agreements negotiated with various Asian countries keen to understand how a “Frodo economy” might work for them. Government officials associated with trade and economic development seek out connections with academics and artists, looking for synergies that promote New Zealand’s image as a socially progressive, technologically advanced country endowed with clean, green natural beauties and a splendidly interesting group of indigenous peoples who remain sufficiently exotic to merit a tourist’s interest in their own right.

Looking at the movie ads in New Zealand’s urban newspapers, one can usually find a New Zealand-made feature film on screen. As I write this, there are three – Perfect Creature, The Devil Dared Me To, and Eagle vs Shark – currently playing on commercial release in Wellington, following quickly on the heels of two others recently released. These particular films exemplify something new about New Zealand filmmaking that can’t entirely be attributed to Peter Jackson: the impact of digital technology and the growth of diversity.

Perfect Creature is Glenn Standring’s big budget film, made in association with a US studio; it looks slick and it features international stars, but it was also filmed largely in this country. In contrast, The Devil Dared Me To proudly harks back to the DIY tradition of larrikin films best represented by Goodbye Pork Pie, being full of stunts and bogan humor. However, unlike Geoff Murphy’s first feature, Devil can credibly posit a protagonist who dreams of being a famous stuntman – no longer an implausible fantasy in a country that has produced one of the world’s most famous stuntwomen, Zoe Bell (who has gone beyond her stuntwoman status to feature as herself in more than one film, thanks in part to Quentin Tarantino’s appreciation of her abilities). In another difference from Goodbye Pork Pie’s era, Devil has also benefited from a strategy of devolved production funding instituted by the New Zealand Film Commission some years ago. The executive producers – Leanne Saunders, Paul Swadel, and Ant Timpson – selected this project for development and production relatively independently of the Film Commission. They, like other producers who’ve successfully applied to the Commission each year, have been granted a set sum of money to allow them to solicit and approve a project or projects according to their own preferred criteria. What they are looking for from the outset differs from what, say, a similar production group involving Ainsley Gardiner and Cliff Curtis might be looking for. In fact, Gardiner and Curtis’ Whenua Films seeks to promote the expression of indigenous culture via film; how broadly they’re prepared to interpret this goal can be seen in their production of Eagle vs Shark, Taika Waititi’s first feature film. One thing’s for sure: With the commencement of broadcasting in 2004 by the Maori Television Service, there’s an ongoing venue for screening indigenous material in Aotearoa New Zealand.

It remains to be seen whether the directors of these films will continue to work in Aotearoa New Zealand. But it is no longer necessary, as it was in Roger Donaldson and Geoff Murphy’s day, to go to Hollywood in order to make big budget films (something else Peter Jackson has proved). Not is it necessary, as in Jane Campion’s case, to live and work in Australia in order to find the sort of personal freedom she craved when she left New Zealand. The country has changed, and what filmmakers can do has changed, from the digital technology that allows so many feature films to be made here to the subject matter that is now acceptable. Fifty Ways of Saying Fabulous, for example, needed cutting-edge postproduction technology to transform the anomalously green Otago hills back to their more usual brown; it is also about gay teenagers, which raised no particular eyebrows in a country that elected the world’s first transgendered parliamentarian.

These days, not only can my students aspire to careers in filmmaking, they may already have made a film or three. Ant Timpson has not only been producing films here. He initiated The Incredibly Strange Film Festival, which led eventually to an interesting situation involving the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards that threatened the financial viability of all film festivals in the country, in that the SPCS sought injunctions against films after they’d been announced and advertised but too late for a court to hear the case and lift the injunction in time to prevent crippling financial losses for the festival organizers. It took the social and legal clout behind the New Zealand Film Festival to defeat this practice, and Timpson’s Incredibly Strange Film Festival became That’s Incredible Cinema, scheduled as part of the NZFF. Even more importantly, in 2004 Timpson’s 48 Hour film contest initiated a whole new momentum among New Zealand’s aspiring filmmakers. Early winter each year, teams of filmmakers race through the 48 hours they are allowed to create a short film in whatever genre they have randomly drawn at the contest’s start. The contest is now national in scope, with the regional winners being broadcast in competition on television, the winner to be decided by the number of votes received via texting at the end of the show. For the last couple of years, Peter Jackson has added a film or two of his own selection as wildcard entries at the national level.

I could go on. After all, I haven’t begun to talk about the changes in media education in the country at all educational levels, nor the influx of us foreigners into New Zealand universities along with the rise of New Zealanders with graduate degrees in film studies who increasingly teach here as well as overseas. I haven’t mentioned the significance of films by Pacific Islanders such as No. 2 and Sione’s Wedding, nor the great work on Fourth Cinema and intellectual copyright done by Barry Barclay in the last decade, along with at least 2 significant films by him. I could write as much again about the rise of stars among New Zealand actors, figures who have enough international recognition that the New Zealand Film Commission can now market New Zealand films because they feature a Karl Urban or a Cliff Curtis. But I’d also have to talk about how the Film Commission increasingly markets films in terms of genre – instead, say, in terms of directors or of Brand New Zealand.

The last decade has also seen the loss of significant figures – John O’Shea, Jonathan Dennis, Don Selwyn, Tama Poata, among others. Fortunately, it has also seen the rise of new figures bound to be significant. Catherine Fitzgerald and Ainsley Gardiner are set to be major producers in the years to come. Niki Caro and Christine Jeffs are on their way as internationally recognized directors.

In 2001 the extent of changes in the local film scene was both already apparent and big enough to indicate a permanent change – what had largely been a haphazard collection of filmmaking efforts had turned into something like an industry. The newspapers regularly reported that top notch figures from film industries around the world were moving to New Zealand to live, but not all of them came because of The Lord of the Rings. For me, the day in 2001 when I realized the extent to which things had changed was the day I mentioned a member of the Film Commission’s Board to one of these film industry immigrants only to discover that he didn’t know anyone connected with the Film Commission – and it was obvious that he didn’t need to in order to continue working in film while living in New Zealand. In an era of digital technology, most of these new immigrants no longer needed to live near studios in California or Queensland or anywhere else. Bringing their own prior connections with filmmaking outside this country, they represented one end of a spectrum affected by digital technology. 2001 was also the year that the organizers of the New Zealand Film Festival commented on the number of homegrown digital features that had been submitted for their consideration, having screened a New Zealand digital feature for the first time the year before. In the wake of these screenings at the Festival and in the face of sheer numbers of applications, the Film Commission has had to adjust its thoughts on funding digital features. As it has in the past, the Commission keeps revising its operations to expand the possibilities available to New Zealand filmmakers, but it is no longer the only game in town.

In fact, what is probably the most important change in the last decade is the growth in diversity on all fronts of film culture in this country. In this case, there’s nothing negative about saying that we have been living in interesting times, with the prospect of more to come.

Harriet Margolis
Victoria University
Wellington, New Zealand

Created on: Sunday, 9 December 2007