Cinema at the Periphery

Cinema in a Settler Society: Brand New Zealand

despite the apparently bleak outlook for a pluralistic and diverse world film culture, globalization cannot simply be reduced to a new manifestation of hegemonic domination and control. Peripheral cinemas face a constant struggle to secure a visible share of their own domestic markets. They also must compete in the global arena, thus exacerbating the difficulties of sustaining small national traditions that can engage in a fundamental way with the specificity of national formations while guaranteeing alternative perspectives , stories, and representations from those produced by Hollywood and the other major players. The situation is altogether more complex, with alternative opportunities emerging that have been mobilized to the benefit of some of the smaller film-producing nations. A good example is provided by danish cinema and the transformation in the levels and popularity of local production in denmark over the last ten to fifteen years. As Mette Hjort argues, this has been brought about via a combination of enlightened cultural policy on the part of the danish government, including substantial levels of state funding and concerted artistic leadership from the preeminent figures in the industry such as Lars von Trier.1 Hjort notes that “the New danish Cinema is in many ways a small nation’s response to globalization, an instance of globalization and a dense and complicated site for the emergence of alternatives to neo-liberal conceptions of globalization or cinematic globalization on a Hollywood model.”2 Not only are danish films holding their own in the local market, they have also enjoyed a strong international presence at film festivals and via specialist distribution and exhibition circuits. Moreover, the danish-initiated dogme 95 phenomenon—described by Hjort as “a small nation’s response 67 Duncan Petrie Cinema in a Settler Society Brand New Zealand 01 Iord_Part 1.indd 67 12/17/09 10:11 AM 68 d u N C A N P E T R I E to Hollywood style globalization”—has constituted a distinctive “brand” of international filmmaking with its rules-based “vow of chastity” and low-fi aesthetic.3 While over two hundred productions from thirty countries have been awarded a dogme certificate, the initiative maintains a strong association with its danish origins.4 This chapter will examine another small and peripheral cinema, that of New Zealand, which has also recently enjoyed an unprecedented level of international visibility and success, if not quite on the same scale as denmark. However, New Zealand still provides an interesting case study of a national cinema that highlights some of the opportunities and constraints deriving from the consequences of globalization within the motion picture industry. until the late 1970s there was no such thing as a New Zealand national cinema. Feature production had been sporadic since the silent period and only seven dramatic feature films were made between 1940 and the mid1970s . The only regular and stable form of filmmaking in New Zealand during the period was the documentary and newsreel output of the National Film unit, established in 1941 following a report by John Grierson. But during the 1970s an independent production sector began to emerge led by a new generation of ambitious and rebellious young filmmakers who wanted to create cinematic fictions that would tell different kinds of New Zealand stories from those churned out by the National Film unit. This resulted in the production of a number of independently financed low-budget feature films,5 by far the most significant of which was the political thriller Sleeping Dogs (1977), directed by Roger donaldson and starring Sam Neill and the American actor Warren Oates. This privately financed production not only proved to be a great success in New Zealand, it was also distributed internationally and was the first New Zealand feature film to open in America. In addition to “doing it themselves,” the nascent independent production community had also been active in a campaign to persuade the government to create a source of public support for filmmaking, which culminated in the setting up of an Interim Film Commission in 1977, paving the way for the establishment of a permanent body, the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC), the following year.6 With an initial modest fund of NZ$640,000 (u.S. $480,000),7 the NZFC provided the resources by which a moderate but bona fide New Zealand national cinema could become a reality, with an average of four or five features a year being supported. Three decades on, the number of films being produced remains fairly constant, although there...