Reviewed by Helen Martin

While documentary is becoming harder and harder to fund, New Zealand’s documentary makers are hanging in, as this year’s line-up in the Documentary Edge Festival shows.

The 9 NZ films in the programme, all with an interesting story to tell, all fine examples of the craft, are reviewed in alphabetical order below.

 

Dirty Bloody Hippies
NZ 2009 funding NZ On Air prod co Big Pictures Co Ltd for TVNZ prodWilliam GrievedirDan Salmon camera Jake Bryant, Rewa Harre edTim Woodhouse sound Eugene Arts original music Stephen McCurdy original guitar Martin Wynch research Kirsten Warner, Jane Dowell narrator Rachel House. 50 minutes

Commissioned by TVNZ, delivered in December 2009 but never screened on television for lack of a documentary slot, this work is a great demonstration of the cultural value of documentary.

Beautifully directed and edited, Dirty Bloody Hippies combines contemporary interview footage with a wealth of archival material, threaded together with a nicely judged narration. The brainchild of producer William Grieve, the documentary canvasses Aotearoa’s version of the heady hippy days when, for a short time, people had a go at making their own rules for living and dreamed they could change the world, rejecting ‘the establishment’, liberating themselves from the strictures of ‘straight’ society and ‘getting back to basics’ in communes where self-sufficiency and respect for the planet were the order of the day.

From the standpoint of current neoliberal ideology, where power is in the control of people who generally know the cost of everything and the value of nothing, despite that some of the views now sound quaint, and at times even smug and pretentious, watching this documentary is a timely reminder that materialism is not the only value in town.

Those interviewed, now well into middle age and mostly no longer living the hippy lifestyle, are all eloquent chroniclers of the time. As Tim Shadbolt says, most were middle class intellectuals, so they know how to talk. The summation of all the interviews, many with a flavour of the war story about them, gives a pretty sharp picture of the political, intellectual, social and spiritual zeitgeist from 1969 and through the 1970s and of why, in the end, the dream ended. Some original hippies still live the alternative lifestyle (atRainbow Valley, for example) but in the end human nature scuttled most of the communes as jealousies, conflict, drugs, and freeloading took their toll, parents worried about the kids’ schooling and, often, the most committed people left.

The archival material is pure gold. Some comes from television archives, for example from the wonderful 1971 doco Getting Together, directed by Tony Williams and produced by JohnO’Shea. There’s excellent use made of footage from Dale Farnsworth’s Nambassa Festival (1980) and from Roger Donaldson’s second film Start Again (produced by Bob Harvey and Warwick Brock), a documentary about hippiedom made in 1969. The Start Again footage gives us an inside look at the current thinking “Everyone wants a way out” and “We’re not going to give up no matter what” and includes priceless images of the efforts of the communes to follow hippie guru Timothy Leary as they ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’.

And the music works well. With music the universal voice of the movement and with the costs of acquiring the rights prohibitive, Stephen McCurdy has composed an authentic-sounding soundtrack that conveys the flavour without any direct borrowing from the tracks of the times.

The film has to date screened only at the Alberquerque Duke City DocoFest. Congratulations to the festival for getting this treasure off TVNZ’s shelves and onto our screens.

 

Donated to Science

NZ 2009funding NZ On Air, Paul Trotman and family prod coPRN Films prodsPaul Trotman, Helen Nicolson for TV3 dirPaul TrotmanDP Stephen Downesed Stuart Waterhousesound Alan Gerrie, Rudy Adrianoriginal music The Sound Room. 80 minutes

When a friend was dying in January, from her Auckland Hospital bed she described her post-death plans to me thus: “Once I’ve become a carcass they won’t have far to take me because my next stop is next door at the Auckland Medical School. All they’ll have to do is wheel me along the corridor and I’ll be there.” As a woman who donated gallons of blood in her long lifetime, she was pleased that science would find a further use for her after death.

Apart from being told that her ashes would be returned to the family in two years’ time, we had only the vaguest idea of what would happen to her body in the interim. Now, having seen Donated to Science, I regret not having caught it when it screenedinNovember 2009 as partof TV3’s Inside New Zealand series – this is one of those documentaries that takes you deep inside places you could never go on your own.

The structure is clear and simple. With no voice over narration needed, three brave people who have signed up as donors talk with honesty and humour about their lives, their imminent death, and their feelings about their decision to donate their bodies to Otago Medical School. (Auckland and Otago Medical Schools are among the few in the world that still have a comprehensive human body dissection programme.)

Riveting progressive interviews with students, staff and the donors’ families are intercut with this, along with fascinating footage of the progress of two of the donors’ bodies from embalmment, through their two-year dissection (with no part left unexamined) and on to final cremation of the body parts.

What makes the film so enlightening is that, while there’s a lot of factual information shared, the real story is an exploration of the relationship between the medical students and the bodies they dissect, all the while overseen and commented on by the people the cadavers once were. As the students openly discuss their fears and hopes their thoughts are compelling, their revelations very moving. Most striking is the idea, conveyed by all the students, that the donors and their families have bestowed on them a priceless gift, that of the opportunity for profound learning. Donated to Science is a tour de force which refreshes your faith in human nature.

This wonderful film comes to the festival backed by huge critical and popular acclaim. For researchers, teachers and students there’s the added bonus that an extended version is available as a resource for medical conferences and for anatomy classes in medical schools around the world.

And, says director/producer Dr Paul Trotman in his interesting account of the film’s genesis and production, the sequel is on its way.

 

Hiding Behind the Green Screen

NZ 2010 funding Shell Companies dir/prod Paora Joseph co-prods Anand Rose, Janine Martin exec prods Rob Murfitt, Lou Roebuck DP Jan Steffeneds Tracey Egerton, Janine Martin sound Dave Carnahan music mix Dave Carnahan, Rio Hunuki-Hemopo, Francis Kora. 48 minutes

You might think an educational documentary campaigning to turn young people off cannabis and onto creativity would be on a hiding to nothing in terms of connecting with its target audience, but this film is no Reefer Madness. My favourite in this festival, Hiding Behind the Green Screen is, in many respects, nothing short of a revelation.

A collaboration between the justice and the health systems, production ofHiding Behind the Green Screen wasdeveloped from an idea by Judge Rob Murfitt (who describes cannabis as a ‘saboteur’) and supported by the Taranaki District Health Board. And while its focus is very local, its potential to be used as an inspirational community teacher is global, no question.

As elsewhere, cannabis use is widespread in Taranaki and the downstream effects of addiction, as described vividly by the film’s protagonists, can be devastating – violence, prison, depression, psychosis. In this film four brave, articulate young Maori, all with a track record of using cannabis heavily as an anaesthetic/sedative, gather at Parihaka Marae for the journey of a lifetime. Guided by highly skilled empathetic staff from Waves Youth Health Centre (Clinical Psychologist Paora Joseph, who directed and produced the film, Community Nurse Lou Roebuck and Youth Facilitator Alistair Gager) and by empathetic musicians Rio Hunuki-Hemopo and Francis Kora, they tell their stories, share their deepest fears, laugh and cry. All these men have in common the passion to rid themselves of the addiction curse and replace it with the clarity of mind they need to make the music they love.

One of the film’s many strengths is in how the back story – the ongoing, devastating effects of colonisation and the Taranaki Land Wars – is gently woven into the fabric of the narrative, given eloquent visual representation by the mat Kuia Maata Wharehoka and a group of young women quietly weave as the men talk. Also providing a visual prompt, and used as a recurring motif, is the wall hanging, placed near the men as they talk, reminding them and us of the positive values worth clearing the mind for – tupuna, awhi, aroha, wairua, mauri…

Watching the young men turn their thoughts around as the film progresses is like witnessing alchemy and, as the transformation works its magic, they express their deep understanding of the journey they’re on in the music they make together – “tastes like sweet honey, this herbal could hurt you, gotta find the right track”.

After taking trips to the Taranaki Youth Court to talk with Judge Rob Murfitt, to Taranaki Base Hospital to meet mental health clinical director Samir Heble and to Taranaki Prison, the journey ends at a stream on Mount Taranaki, where Rio, Francis, Waiata, Danny, Mark and Lani cleanse themselves of the negatives they have identified as the source of their addiction – disconnection, discontent, apathy, fear, confusion, loneliness… and talk hopefully about a brighter future. “I don’t want to do it any more. It’s too much work”, says one, “I broke down the wall,” says another, and another “I feel new. Time to change.”

 

I am the River

NZ 2010 funding NZ On Air prod co Razor Films for Maori Televisionprod Mark McNeill dirs Luigi Cutore, Mark McNeill DP Renaud Maire ed Irena Dolsound Lloyd Canham music Dave Alley.

In the late 19th century William Partington spent some 10 years travelling up and down the Whanganui River photographing local Maori, creating what amounted to an astonishing body of work. As a professional photographer, Partington hoped to both provide for a tourist market eager to snap up images of exotica, while at the same time capturing a way of life and a people reportedly doomed for extinction.

Fast forward to 2001 and a descendant of Partington, sorting through her deceased mother’s belongings, finds an old cardboard suitcase full of the photographer’s Whanganui work in the form of prints and glass plate negatives. Thinking little of it, beyond that there might be some money to be made, Edith and John Bell acquire the services of Webb’s auction house to organise a sale.

As explained to documentary filmmakers Luigi Cutore and Mark McNeill in this beautiful film, Peter Webb and an auctioneer, blown away by the quality and extent of the collection, set about organising and advertising the auction, including production of a catalogue. And the rest is history, as whanau of one of the subjects, learning via the media both about the photographs’ existence and about their imminent sale, make it their business to bring their tupuna, and those of their Whanganui iwi, back where they belong. “They’re not just photos,” says Ken Mair, “they’re us and we’re them.” It was a big take, one says, but it had to be done.

Commissioned by Maori Television and screened by MTS in February 2011, I am the River is a brilliant exposition of two very different world views shown with absolute clarity. In the world of commerce, represented by the businessman, the auctioneer, the vendors and the shadowy prospective buyers, the photographs are commodities to be bought and sold. In the Maori world they are taonga, precious images that connect people to their histories, palpably creating their tribal narratives.

Rather than tell this story sequentially, Cutore and McNeill have embedded events in a much deeper, fuller narrative – that of Whanganui River and its importance to the iwi, for whom the river and its environs have always been their spiritual home. Using this relationship as the film’s spine, Irena Dol’s very fine, subtle, editing deftly brings together a wealth of footage – including interviews with iwi members who tell their tupunas’ stories while lovingly holding their photos, cleverly cut montages of the photos themselves, and archival and present day footage.

I am the Riveris an engrossing thriller, a poetic visual essay and an important social document. Co-director/producer Mark McNeill believes that what the photos reveal about Maori and Pakeha history could, at a later date, be further investigated in a much more complex film. Something to look forward to.

(Meanwhile, it’s interesting to note Webb’s are auctioning The Kulpa Collection, a collection of precious Maori and other indigenous photographs, some by William Partington, in March 2011.)

 

Is She or Isn’t He?

NZ 2010 funding NZ On Air prod co The Docufactory for TVNZ dir/prod/camera/sound Justin Pemberton ed Cushla Dillon sound design Beth Tredray original music Stephanie Brown animations Edward Hoyle. 71 minutes

When filmmaker Justin Pemberton accepted the invitation to document a male acquaintance’s journey on the road to becoming the woman he believed himself to be, he had no idea that the filming alone would take five years. Nor could he have known that the journey, always rocky at best, would take such an unexpected and surprising twist at the end.

Graham/Ashleigh is a perfect subject for a film of this nature – very articulate, witty, argumentative and not at all fazed by Justin Pemberton’s camera. Growing up with 12 siblings in small town Whangarei, Graham decided early that while he had the body of a male his mind was female and in his teens began seriously exploring the idea of gender reassignment.

Unusually in a fly-on-the-wall doco, filmmaker Pemberton is often part of this story as, from behind the camera, he questions Ashleigh (her persona for most of the film), forcing her to dig deeper into her motivations, becoming more involved as filming progresses, to the point where on camera he offers literature on the gender reassignment operation and the advice that Ashleigh would benefit from doing some proper research.

This lack of practical action on Ashleigh’s part is symptomatic of the wider issue, which is that while she seems strong in her convictions (“I’m not trying to look like a woman, I think I am a woman”) and dogged in her determination to follow the path she has chosen, she’s actually very vague on the specifics. She likes the fantasy aspect of it (her role models are Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor) and enjoys playing with the superficial signs of womanhood (the hair, the make-up, the clothes), but often her conversations with Pemberton focus more on her discomfort with transgender and gay identities. Watching the film you become intrigued by this interaction of filmmaker and subject, wondering finally how much Pemberton’s probing had a bearing on Graham’s final decision.

The structure of the film works well. The journey idea in the narrative is reinforced by frequent driving sequences which reflect Ashleigh’s desire to move on into the next phase of her life. The sequential nature of the narrative is punctuated by Edward Hoyle’s wonderful, Disneyesque animation segments which provide a visual manifestation of Ashleigh’s fantasies and Stephanie Brown’s soundtrack is a nicely evocative musical accompaniment.

Commissioned by NZ On Air and screened on TV One in June 2010, this documentary is a very sobering reminder that undergoing the radical surgery required for gender alignment is not a decision to be taken lightly.

 

Landscapes at the World’s Ends

NZ 2010 pro/dir/ed Richard Sidey music Boreal Taiga. 30 minutes

Landscapes at the World’s Ends was originally an exhibition piece, designed to project onto three 4×3 screens. For the festival version, which is beautifully accompanied by Boreal Taiga’s evocative ambient score, all three screens are incorporated in a single 16×9 frame, producing a triptych montage of video and stills. In half an hour of sheer viewing pleasure the viewer, becoming a virtual polar tourist, is taken on a breathtaking visual journey to the Earth’s Polar regions.

Nature photographer and filmmaker Richard Sidey’s time as an artist-in-residence and participation in Theme Media’s Polar Arts Program, Silversea Expeditionsand Quark Expeditions gave him the ideal platform from which to share his experiences of the beauty and rhythms of Antarctica and the Arctic Circle.

With three screens and two formats (still and moving) to play with, Sidey has carefully constructed an aesthetic and enlightening montage where sea birds, whales, penguins, walruses and the mighty landscape itself go about their unassuming business. Like a fat old man, a massive sea lion reaches to scratch its back; a polar bear rolls happily in the snow; the Aurora Borealis dances its ghostly dance of light. Superb.

 

Lest We Forget: New Zealanders Telling Their Holocaust Stories

NZ 2010 funding NZ National Commission for UNESCO prod co AC Productions prod Boyd Klap QSO dir Anna Cottrell camera Ivars Berzins, Stephen Press, Isaac Spedding ed Murray Ferguson sound Tony Spear music David Ironside archive Anne Frank House with Freda Narev, and Bob Narev, Steven Sedley, Dora Suuring, Mieke van der Schaaf, Joel Porus. 30 minutes.

Anna Cottrell adds another valuable New Zealand documentary to her already considerable body of work in this quiet but powerful exposition of stories told by Kiwis with strong Holocaust connections.

Watching survivors Freda and Bob Narev tell their stories to a group of Marlborough Boys College students at the Wellington Holocaust Research and Education Centre there’s a strong sense of the impact the stories are having on the young audience, many of whom will be hearing about the Holocaust for the first time. Asking their questions the boys are awkward and shy, but you can see they really want to know as they thirstily drink in the answers.

In interviews with other survivors Ian Fraser gently leads them through their stories with a good listening ear and a quiet empathy. It’s fascinating, for example, hearing the story of Doris Suuring, who escaped from a concentration camp and joined the dangerous but hugely rewarding Dutch Resistance. With a mind like a steel trap and a great sense of humour, 95-year-old Doris is riveting.

Supported by well-chosen archival footage and a handy map, the sum of this documentary’s parts adds up to a very rich addition to the Holocaust history library. As it’s of good ‘lesson’ length and is nicely structured to hold the viewer’s attention, Lest We Forget will also no doubt have a long life as a teaching resource.

 

The Jade Bell Story

NZ and Canada funding Martyn Element prod co Borderless Productions Ltd execprod Martyn Element prods Qiujing Wong, Kimberley Buchanandir/DP Dean Easterbrook eds Catherine Blair, Mike Hardcastle, Dean Easterbrook story consultant Ian John sound Greg Junovich original music Jade Bell. 70 minutes

Serving as both an inspirational story and a cautionary tale, The Jade Bell Story was shot in Canada and has a Canadian subject, qualifying for inclusion in the New Zealand section of the festival because the makers of the film are New Zealanders and, although their canvas is distinctly global, their not-for-profit organisation is based in New Zealand.

The film’s focus is Jade Bell, a Canadian rendered blind, mute and immobile at the age of 23 as the result of a drug overdose. The narrative includes a carefully constructed piecing together of Jade’s childhood and adolescence, offering causes of his choice of the self-destructive path of hard drug abuse: from birth, the determination to do what he wanted, regardless of consequences; the divorce of his parents when he was young and vulnerable; a lot of unsupervised free time; and a series of deaths, including the death of a close friend through drugs.

Much of this story is told by Jade himself, seated in his wheelchair and speaking through a computer to invariably enthralled audiences – young people in schools, adults in public theatres and prisoners, always with the message that, if they don’t want to end up like him, they’d be wise to keep away from drugs and tap into their creativity instead.

Pulling himself out of despair, Jade was determined to turn personal tragedy into a force for good and with sterling support from a lot of extremely dedicated people (among them his formerly estranged father and his gutsy partner) he has become a published poet, a composer (writing the music in this film, for example) and a public speaker, the voice of Jade’s KIDS Foundation, a registered charity which works to prevent substance abuse and drug addiction among children.

This is a totally absorbing film, both because Jade’s story is told so well, and because Jade himself is a thoroughly likeable human being, witty, talented and smart. He never asks for pity. He just asks to be heard.

 

Stand Up

NZ 2010fundingSelf-funded dirs/eds Luke Wheeler, Peter Simpson camera Daryl Harbraken sound John Gray musicChris Morphitis, Tom Skinner, Black Dahlias, The Broadsides.57 minutes

While there are huge benefits in having your film funded, a state enjoyed by Luke Wheeler and Peter Simpson in making their first two docos, Four Geese in a Flock (awarded Best New Zealand Documentary in the 2006 festival) and Rev Therapy (a finalist in the 2009 festival), in Wheeler’s view the freedom you get when you’re working independently is some compensation.

With no funding but with much patience and perseverance, Wheeler and Simpson began shooting Stand Up with the idea in mind that they would follow the fortunes of a few rookie comedians and find out what makes for success. Over time the project morphed into an intimate and valuable examination of and insight into the stand-up phenomenon as it has evolved in New Zealand from zero to a thriving industry. The comedians were very generous with their time, says Wheeler, and the filmmakers shot many hours, from which they distilled the essence of the New Zealand stand-up story.

In a nicely edited mix of interviews stand-up’s evolution is described progressively by the comedians themselves, with the likes of Brendhan Lovegrove, Dai Henwood, Jeremy Corbett, Jan Maree, Te Radar, Mike King and others riffing on the early days (starting in the 1980s), how they got involved (many started gigging at university), the venues (Auckland’s Classic is ‘the ultimate comedy venue’) and the horrors of their first gigs (“We were kind of Monty Python fans without the talent”).

They talk a lot about the terror of getting up on stage for the first time, the need to work really hard and long if you’re going to make a success of it and the joys and miseries of stand-up as a career choice. They’re deadly serious about all this – Brendhan Lovegrove is convinced, for example, that “being good at something is a choice you make” – but they’re all on form with the sparkle and wit needed to keep the tone light and engrossing.

What all the comedians have in common is a burning drive to perform – it’s like a drug, apparently, with the comedian always looking for the next laugh – and a shared pleasure in a career which, while it doesn’t pay that well (as Mike King says, “You can make tens of dollars a year in this game”), never feels like work.

Interviews with founder-owner of the Classic Comedy Club Scott Blanks add a deeper and very useful perspective – described as ‘the godfather of local stand-up’ there’s nothing Blanks doesn’t know about the scene and he’s more than willing to share.

And threaded through all this is an evolving (and visceral) stand-up success story, as Reuben Lee and Danny McCrystal go through the horrors of their rookie paces, ending up, in the space of a year, doing sell-out gigs at the Comedy Festival.

With its punchy score and wealth of fabulous material (including archival footage provided by TVNZ in a contra deal), Stand Up captures the culture so well it could be used as a training film for comedians – except that, as most of them say, all you really need to get started, and to hang in there, is to be mad.