Abstract:
This thesis is an exploration of radical left documentary-making in Aotearoa New Zealand. It pays particular attention to the documentaries Fighting Back (1949), Wildcat (1981), Even Dogs Are Given Bones (1981), Patu! (1983), and Someone Else's Country (1996). Because of the close relationship that documentaries bear to what Bill Nichols has termed the "real historical world" and their tendency to be associated with articulations of social change, this genre was well placed to record and debate the period that saw New Zealand transformed from a welfare state to a free-market economy, and saw class analysis challenged by the development of identity politics. The year 1981 holds a central importance for this thesis as an historical crossroads where various tendencies meet (or collide). The documentaries provide many insights into the political complexity of this period. In general, each chapter of the thesis focuses on one documentary case study, structured in two parts. The first part explores political contexts and economies of production, and the second part focuses on textual readings with an emphasis on how the texts draw upon contexts and interact with them. Interviews with documentary-makers and various kinds of contextual information are used to explore such issues as funding, production methods, and interaction with communities. Because access to television broadcast has been a continuing problem in this country, alternative methods of production and distribution have developed. Accordingly, the thesis covers such topics as collective, non-hierarchical methods, and do-it-yourself ('DIY') approaches to technical and resource problems. The discussion draws on theorists such as Jodi Dean, Guy Debord, Nancy Fraser, Antonio Gramsci, Stuart Hall, Bruce Jesson and Raymond Williams, and looks back to the ideas of Sergei Eisenstein, John Grierson and Dziga Vertov, among others. Concepts used in the analysis of the documentaries include "hegemony", "the politics of realism", "bearing witness", "articulation", "reflective solidarity", and "structure of feeling". Radical documentary has been a small, struggling but resilient tradition in New Zealand, playing an important role in broadening the range of political debate within what is, in some respects, a conservative society. We can learn much about how history has shaped and informed the present from documentary engagement with the ways in which oppositional, emergent, and residual discourses have interacted with dominant or hegemonic discourses in this small country.