New Zealand has a strong history of documentary production, both for television broadcast and as feature films. Annie Goldson has written that the documentary genre has a special place in New Zealand’s culture and society, because it has always been linked to the project of modern nation building. A landmark in the history of New Zealand documentary was the establishment of the New Zealand Film Unit (NFU), during World War II, to create the Weekly Review newsreels which screened in cinemas and illustrated the New Zealand war effort and, subsequently, its post-war economic recovery. In the last two decades, New Zealand has generated a number of ‘quality’ television documentary series which specifically address the history of national culture and society, including The New Zealand Wars (1998), Frontier of Dreams (2005) and Fifty Years of New Zealand Television (2010). Alongside these ‘high-production’ series, shifts in broadcasting policy and funding during the 1990s saw the rise of the ‘fast-turnaround’ television documentary; one-off programmes which often take a ‘light-hearted’ look at aspects of ‘Kiwi’ culture, or charismatic individuals; popular factual series and reality TV series.
Visit NZ on Screen and search 'Weekly Review' or other documentaries cited.
1 | Using Annie Goldson’s article as a starting point, research one aspect of the history of documentary production and reception in New Zealand.
Suggested topics: the films of the NFU; the influence of British filmmaker John Grierson and his principle of ‘civic education’; political documentaries of the 1970s and 1980s; the role of television documentary in the representation of New Zealand history; the extent to which television documentaries produce and reinforce notions of ‘kiwi’ identity; a director study of a key New Zealand documentary maker – for instance Merata Mita, Gaylene Preston, Annie Goldson, Leanne Pooley, Kay Ellmers, Dan Salmon, Pietra Brett-Kelly or Justin Pemberton.
See: Annie Goldson, ‘A Look In: Documentary in New Zealand’ in Television in New Zealand: Programming the Nation, edited by Roger Horrocks and Nick Perry (Oxford University Press: Oxford and New York, 2004). 240-254.40-254.
