By Emma Kelly

In the early 1960s a small boy liv­ing at The Her­mitage Hotel at Mt Cook was sent to board­ing school in Christchurch. Being a boy who liked to be with his fam­ily where he could play with dolls or sit in the dark watch­ing 16mm films with the hotel guests, he did not get along with the oth­ers at school. He felt threat­ened and bul­lied and so he escaped as often as he could to the ele­gant sur­round­ings of the Regent The­atre to watch films, often attend­ing “the 11 o’clock, 2 o’clock, 5 o’clock… to… envelop myself in other worlds”.

Later his uncle Ron O’Reilly, head of Christchurch Library and him­self an avid film soci­ety mem­ber and mod­ern art col­lec­tor, would drive him around the Can­ter­bury plains describ­ing films he’d seen such as Antonioni’s Blow Up. Through these expe­ri­ences the boy devel­oped an “addic­tion” to film which was to shape his life and his career. His name was Jonathan Den­nis.
 
Gareth Watkins has cre­ated a new radio pro­gramme about Jonathan to mark the 10th anniver­sary of his death from can­cer on Jan­u­ary 24 2002. Start­ing with a record­ing Watkins made with inter­viewer Eliz­a­beth Alley in Jonathan’s home a month before he died, he has re-edited this piece into a multi-layered sound­scape rem­i­nis­cent of The Film Show Radio NZ film reviews Jonathan became well known for in the 1990s. It is rich with sounds from films such as the chop­ping of wood from Mana Waka (1990, directed by Mer­ata Mita, edited by Annie Collins and pro­duced by Jonathan Den­nis and the NZFA), sound effects of a rotary dial tele­phone as Jonathan describes being banned from access to the tele­phone at board­ing school, and the music Jonathan loved.

Jonathan Den­nis was the found­ing direc­tor of The New Zealand Film Archive/Ngā Kaiti­aki O Ngā Taonga Whitiāhua. The pro­gramme reflects both Jonathan’s diverse con­tri­bu­tion to NZ film her­itage and also the close friend­ship shared by Eliz­a­beth, Gareth him­self and Jonathan. The self reflex­iv­ity of the piece is touch­ing as it reveals Gareth’s desire to cap­ture the sounds of Jonathan at the type­writer, or in the kitchen, “so I can remem­ber”. We hear Eliz­a­beth Alley, the con­sum­mate pro­fes­sional inter­viewer cry­ing as she tries to ask Jonathan, her friend and inter­view sub­ject, about his can­cer, which he knows will soon kill him.

In the 1970s Jonathan was involved with exper­i­men­tal the­atre com­pany Ama­mus with Sam Neill, Anna Cam­pion, Paul and Denise Maun­der and oth­ers and also worked for the Film Soci­ety (mostly, he said, “so I could pro­gramme films I wanted to see”). Con­cur­rently an older gen­er­a­tion of film­mak­ers and pro­duc­ers, as well as archivists and arts admin­is­tra­tors, was under­tak­ing a cam­paign to pres­sure the gov­ern­ment into sup­port­ing the cre­ation of a Film Com­mis­sion to help the devel­op­ment of the nascent film indus­try. It was decided in 1978 that the then interim Film Com­mis­sion would be respon­si­ble along with National Library, Archives and oth­ers, to pro­tect the nation’s film heritage.

As the momen­tum devel­oped, Jonathan and Clive Sowry (the only pro­fes­sional film archivist in the coun­try, employed by the National Film Unit) began to inves­ti­gate the state of the nation’s film her­itage, parts of which were stored in bunkers at Shel­ley Bay in the form of nitrate film, which is flam­ma­ble. They were con­cerned by the dete­ri­o­rat­ing images they found and responded by cre­at­ing a pub­lic­ity cam­paign to sup­port the devel­op­ment of a Film Archive. Jonathan’s expe­ri­ence in the­atre was a great skill, and aided him in the ongo­ing media cam­paign on radio, tele­vi­sion and news­pa­pers, which was nec­es­sary to ensure the Archive as a char­i­ta­ble trust received enough funding.

Film pro­ducer Brid­get Ikin notes, “Jonathan was a mar­vel­lous show­man. His gifts were his pas­sion­ate enthu­si­asm for – cou­pled with his phe­nom­e­nal knowl­edge of – films. And then there was his deter­mi­na­tion to share his pas­sion, by cre­at­ing spe­cial film events around the coun­try. I’ll never for­get some of the screen­ings of restored early Māori films that I was lucky enough to attend, in remote marae and halls. The excite­ment in the audi­ence was pal­pa­ble. He always made these events spe­cific and imbued with mem­o­rable meaning.”

After receiv­ing a QEII Arts Coun­cil grant to study film archiv­ing, Jonathan and his part­ner Fredrik Hen­dricks spent a cou­ple of years vis­it­ing the great­est film archives in North Amer­ica and Europe as well as Egypt. Upon their return in 1981 to NZ, Den­nis became the first employee (and found­ing direc­tor) of the New Zealand Film Archive, sup­ported by a board of film cham­pi­ons and volunteers.

As Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus Roger Hor­rocks says, Jonathan was an “unsung hero of the film cul­ture”. He goes on to explain, “Peo­ple know Jonathan but his con­tri­bu­tion was much greater than peo­ple acknowl­edged. He made a great con­tri­bu­tion through his love of film as art. That’s what the term ‘film cul­ture’ implies. It’s not a term that’s wide­spread because the film world is now very com­mer­cial. Jonathan really under­stood the art of film, and loved the tra­di­tion of film cul­ture, which the Euro­peans, espe­cially the French, had devel­oped. Jonathan was a real cineaste. For exam­ple he was pas­sion­ate about Bres­son, who was truly a ‘film-maker’s film-maker’. We urgently need more Jonathans!”

In addi­tion to his love of film, Jonathan devel­oped a sense of the impor­tance of the bicul­tural insti­tu­tion dur­ing the 1980s. With the help of early film star and kau­matua of the NZFA Wita­rina Har­ris (Ngati Whakāue), Jonathan and the Archive began ten­ta­tively to reach out to Māori com­mu­ni­ties to receive guid­ance in the appro­pri­ate process for archiv­ing of Māori images and asso­ci­ated mate­ri­als. Witarina’s voice can be heard talk­ing dur­ing the pro­gramme. She and Jonathan took New Zealand films to the US, Hawaii, Poland, Ger­many, France, Eng­land and Italy to pro­mote the lit­tle known film his­tory of our coun­try, “warm­ing” them before each screen­ing with Witarina’s knowl­edge of Māori culture.

Other impor­tant guid­ing fig­ures for Jonathan were film­mak­ers Mer­ata Mita (Te Arawa te iwi, Ngati Pikiao te hapù) and Barry Bar­clay (Ngati Apa te iwi) who as part of the Te Manu Aute col­lec­tive of Māori com­mu­ni­ca­tors chal­lenged the Archive to become a truly bicul­tural entity. Part of the process included the addi­tion of the Māori name for the Archive, and the intro­duc­tion of “Kaiti­aki” (Guardian) agree­ments to ensure both phys­i­cal and spir­i­tual safety of Māori images. By the end of Jonathan’s nine years at the Archive a bicul­tural frame­work was in place which stands strong today.

Film­maker and aca­d­e­mic Ella Henry remem­bers Jonathan from this time as some­one who she enjoyed work­ing along­side, and as a Pākehā who sup­ported Māori regain­ing con­trol of Māori images.

24 Frames: The Great­est Love Story Ever Told cap­tures the enthu­si­asm and pas­sion Jonathan felt for film and his strong sense of place in Aotearoa. Through this new radio pro­gramme made 10 years after Jonathan’s death, an oppor­tu­nity arises to enjoy and reflect upon both Jonathan Den­nis’ con­tri­bu­tion to the cre­ativ­ity of the archive through his many works using archival records, and to ask a wider ques­tion of the place of the New Zealand Film Archive in the national con­scious­ness. For if an archive is a biog­ra­phy of the nation, what does our national film col­lec­tion say about us today?

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24 Frames: The Great­est Love Story Ever Told will be broad­cast on Radio NZ Con­cert, 7pm Thurs 19th Jan and 2pm Sun 22 Jan; and on Radio New Zealand National, 4.06pm Sun 22 Jan and 9.06pm Tues 24 Jan.

Ko Ingar­ihi, Ko Air­ihi, Ko Koti­mana ōku iwi. Ko Emma taku ingoa. Emma Kelly was born in Aotearoa of Eng­lish, Irish and Scot­tish descent. She is a PhD stu­dent in the School of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies at AUT writ­ing a the­sis enti­tled The Adven­tures of Jonathan Den­nis; a crit­i­cal biog­ra­phy of the found­ing direc­tor of the New Zealand Film Archive Ngā Kaiti­aki O Ngā Taonga Whitiāhua.