Horrocks, RPointon, Susy2020-07-082020-07-082006https://hdl.handle.net/2292/52122Full text is available to authenticated members of The University of Auckland only.This thesis examines the emergence of a New Zealand film industry during the period from 1960 to 1984, with particular emphasis on the upsurge after 1970. My first aim was to document this remarkable upsurge of activity, since many of the details of exactly what occurred - and how - have never previously been recorded. My second aim was to analyse these events as a unique case study in cultural innovation. In exploring the factors involved, I paid particular attention to the counter-culture (or cultures) of the 1960s and 1970s, which formed the social base for many of the early films and helped to shape their unusual production methods and content. A second factor was New Zealand cultural nationalism, a tradition on which the new wave drew extensively, though it also updated and extended that tradition in new post-colonial directions. (One of its overdue tasks was coming fully to terms with the Maori dimension of the country's culture and history.) The complex interaction between these two major factors - nationalism and the counter-culture - helped to shape the distinctive character of the local industry. The thesis also considers a number of other factors such as the emergence of 'art house' cinemas, the new styles of film from Europe and the U.S.A., the earlier tradition of New Zealand filmmaking, the existing media institutions (such as the National Film Unit and the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation television system), and the general political environment in New Zealand (including the influence of Labour Prime Minister Norman Kirk and National Prime Minister Robert Muldoon). Local changes are related to overseas developments such as the Anglo-American countercultures of the '60s, and the growth of filmmaking in the neighboring country of Australia. The evolution of a loose community of amateur film-makers into a professional industry with an infrastructure of specialised skills and facilities was a complicated process involving a difficult campaign for the establishment of a Film Commission and many debates about the overall aims of the industry. There were conflicts between cultural and commercial, local and international, mainstream and minority, and public and private sector priorities. As the industry developed, there were shifts of power from the communal group to the individual director (or auteur), and then from the director to the producer and (to some extent) the investor, marketer, and public funder. Within the industry these changes remain controversial to this day, and one aim of the thesis is to cast some historical light on them. I would describe my project as a grass-roots history, involving many years of fieldwork (going in search of interviews, visiting film companies and public institutions, and tracking down films and documents). My thesis is an eclectic mix of cultural and industrial history - necessarily so because I am describing a complex medium (filmmaking) and a complex phenomenon (a community that developed into an industry but continued to be seen by many of its members as something more than an industry). In addition to using various methods of textual, social and organisational analysis, my thesis also draws on participant observation since I worked full-time in the industry during much of the period under examination.Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.Restricted Item. Full text is available to authenticated members of The University of Auckland only.https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htmThesisCopyright: The authorQ112868644