Cinema Of Unease
Sunday 22 February at 9.30pm
Ex-pat actor New Zealander Sam Neill takes a personal journey through the history of New Zealand cinema, starting from around 1950. We are left in no doubt that this take is as viewed from his driver's window.
He argues that New Zealand cinema reflects a lonely place. He sees the desolate roads of Aotearoa as symbolic of the role that journeying plays in this nation's narratives - both physically and metaphorically. He holds movies like Good Bye Pork Pie up as examples.
In the second half of this 50-minute documentary, Neill argues that New Zealand's national cinema gains distinction by its performers as much as its auteurs, such as the archetypal "man apart" Bruno Lawrence. This recurring "man alone" figure (based on the book) is hand-in-hand with the image of the road and the promise of freedom and anarchy that it represents. Neill sees cinema as a reflection of a nation.
The old cultural cringe of film in New Zealand was slowly being broken down, giving rise to a cultural renaissance of film. Around this time, Vincent Ward helped bring New Zealand cinema into an era of art-house. Film also began to reflect more political commentary and a sense of Maoridom and Polynesia started to really surface.
Neill's sometimes pretentious one-sided view of New Zealand's national cinema is peppered with some quirky funny moments in his narration. Whether one agrees with his analysis of New Zealand as a place of psychological distress, he puts forward an argument worth watching.
Who knew that in the ten years following this documentary, New
Zealand film would rise to the meteoric heights that it has
internationally.