Eight Books on NZ Film
I’m in the book business now so, cannily, Graeme asked me to write something on New Zealand’s books about film. The only problem with that as a challenge is that recent publications are thin on the ground. Almost all of the books I’m going to mention here are now only available from a used book dealer or your local library.
The best in recent years is Whatever It Takes (VUP, 2018), John Reid’s definitive and beautifully illustrated history of John O’Shea and Pacific Films, but I know that Waka has already covered that in some depth in these pages, so I won’t try and follow in his much more knowledgeable footsteps. What I will say about the Reid book is that one of its themes is the downright obstructive policies of successive New Zealand governments seemingly determined to prevent the foundation of a sustainable feature film industry in this country. It’s almost as if they were worried what filmmakers might say about them. Tourism marketing was one thing, but social criticism? Beyond the pale.
Geoff Murphy’s autobiography, A Life on Film (HarperCollins, 2015), is a rare first-person narrative from that ‘golden age’ of Kiwi cinema that O’Shea’s pioneering work did the groundwork to create. (Although, much like the New Zealand cricket team and boomer nostalgia for Lance Cairns, it could be argued that we are in an actual ‘golden age’ right now.)
In these pages, Waka (again!) reviewed Murphy’s book through a lens of camaraderie but concluded like this:
“This book does discuss the ins and outs of the film business and does get past those ‘bastards at the Film Commission’ – but what does a memoir like this one do? At best it reminds us how we got here and at its least it encourages us to have a life that we own. But most importantly it keeps the notion of ‘national cinema’ alive, something that can be quickly lost to the nation in one generation with a Hollywood blockbuster mentality – which is why you should buy it. Go on. Go out and get it now!”
I’m not sure why publishing books about New Zealand film should be such a hard road nowadays. I’m personally very surprised that no one has produced a quickie biography of Taika Waititi, unless he’s announcing projects so fast these days that he’s too much of a moving target.
Over the years I’ve been sent a few books about NZ film for review and usually didn’t because most outlets weren’t that bothered (or in the case of my short stint at ONFILM, the magazine folded before I could get a review into print). So, here’s an attempt to rectify that and maybe point you at some books you don’t already have.
One of the best books I’ve read about the movie business is Kristin Thompson’s The Frodo Franchise (Penguin, 2007). Subtitled “How The Lord of the Rings Became a Hollywood Blockbuster and Put New Zealand on the Map,” it’s a history of that groundbreaking production (and by extension Peter Jackson’s career, the development of Wingnut and Weta, etc.) but it’s also extremely interesting in how it follows the huge amounts of money that it made and then the impact of that money.
Because New Line ceased to be an independent outfit shortly after Rings, and Warners were soon throwing their weight around during the extensive pre-production on The Hobbit, it’s easy to forget that Rings was the result of scrappy outsiders rather than Hollywood establishment. One detail that isn’t often recognised: New Line pre-sold the rights to Rings to independent distributors, many of whom hadn’t dealt with anything that size before. The resulting boatloads of money meant that those distributors (like Zentropa in Denmark and the Swedish Film Institute) were able to put money into increased local production. Lord of the Rings was good for indie filmmaking in Mexico, Argentina, Scandinavia, and Asia but here in NZ the distribution dollars went to Roadshow and bankrolled Australian production instead of ours.
A book I’d love to see updated is **Shot in New Zealand: The art and craft of the Kiwi cinematographer **(Random House, 2007) by Duncan Petrie, if only because it stops before digital capture really got going and is therefore now a fascinating museum piece. I’m sure most readers of NZTECHO have a copy of this on their shelves already but for those that don’t, it features chapters on 12 (all male) cinematographers in alphabetical order from Attewell to Toon. Petrie interviews all of them, and many of their collaborators, to produce an excellent guide to the storytelling (and practical) challenges that being a local cinematographer involves. It’s particularly pleasing that Petrie recognises television and commercial work, even though the focus – and the gorgeous illustrations – prioritise features.
Despite the best efforts of university leadership, we still have film academics in this country and they still get to publish every now and then. A striking example is Dan Fleming’s _Making the _Transformational Moment in Film: Unleashing the Power of the Image (with the films of Vincent Ward) (Michael Wiese Productions, 2011). The title alone seems designed to put off the casual reader but the very handsome publication could easily live on a coffee table to be flicked through idly while your Netflix is buffering.
In the book, Fleming uses Ward’s films as a way into a big discussion of film technique, comparing frames and sequences from The Navigator, River Queen and (strikingly) Map of the Human Heart, with other films from every era, and even storyboards for other unmade Ward films. Colour, composition, construction, and music are all up for discussion as examples of the ‘transformational’ that Fleming is interested in.
I once aspired to be a film academic and this is a very good example of why I wouldn’t have made it. I love the idea of this book – and the visual execution – but I can’t read more than a few sentences before the density of the prose (and the many references) overwhelm me.
Also in the academic world, I want to give a shout out to Dr. Miriam Ross of Victoria University, who moved halfway around the world in the early 2010s to become the global expert in stereoscopic cinema – because at the time The Hobbit and Avatar were leading the charge for 3D as a filmmaking technique – only to have 3D disappear from relevance around the time she published her book, 3D Cinema: Optical Illusions and Tactile Experiences (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
She’s not too downhearted though – she’s now experimenting with vertical cinema (i.e., what happens when you hold your phone in portrait rather than landscape mode) and remains great podcast talent.
Arguably, the most successful book about New Zealand film is Ian Brodie’s** The Lord of the Rings Location Guidebook** (HarperCollins, 2003, updated 2011), a book that has filled Christmas stockings the world over and inspired many thousands of pre-Covid visits to Aotearoa. In 2005, Bob Harvey (who was then mayor of what was then Waitakere) produced a book called White Cloud Silver Screen (Exisle Publishing) with photographer Tony Bridge, which was also focused on locations.
The result is very odd – Bridge’s photography is perfectly lovely but nothing that you wouldn’t find in a high-end New Zealand landscape calendar. The photos aren’t even of specific locations from films; they are of other places that are in the same vicinity: the view of Auckland from the top of the Sky Tower, for example, references Merata Mita’s Patu in which a very different Auckland featured. The main connection to local cinema appears to be Harvey’s nostalgic memoir of filmgoing in the introduction.
Finally, a truly essential book (even though it desperately needs an update or, even better, a sequel). Current mayor of Whanganui, Hamish Macdouall, is a confirmed cinephile and a magnificent maker of lists, so his **101 Essential New Zealand Films **(Awa Press, 2009) is elevated by the absurd levels of diligence he put into its construction. He spent many hours in the Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision archive watching every rare and out-of-print short film and documentary in order for his hundred to be definitive, and I think he pulled it off.
It’s still available direct from the publisher (forty bucks – bargain!) and literally every home should have one.
