arts and culture

Reeling Them In

November 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Helen Watson White

Whatever It Takes: Pacific Films and John O’Shea 1948–2000 by John Reid (Victoria University Press, 2018), 462pp, $60

Whatever It Takes is an apt title for John Reid’s story of the formation of Pacific Films, an enterprise that dared to dream in an age when dreaming was expensive. The No. 8 wire mentality, necessitated by insufficient funding for almost any part of independent film-making, is exemplified in countless ways in this account, from the building of a camera dolly with bicycle wheels, to the capture of the 1953 Royal Tour on three cameras simultaneously, by mounting them on the same frame, the results of the shoot destined for three different agencies, each paying for a share of news footage of the glamorous royal couple ‘abroad’. [Read more…]

Tasman Crossings

October 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Lucy Sussex

West Island: Five twentieth-century New Zealanders in Australia by Stephanie Johnson (Otago University Press, 2019), 284pp. $39.95

In the nineteenth century Australia and New Zealand were termed ‘the Seven Austral Colonies’. They comprised seven different entities, linked by geography and a common coloniser. Passage between them was frequent, with colonial book companies opening offices, say, in Dunedin, Hobart and Melbourne, and magazines like the Australian Journal having both New Zealand distribution and content. Travel might have taken longer, but the relationship was closer. [Read more…]

A History of Historicisation

August 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Caitlin Lynch

Filming the Colonial Past: The New Zealand wars on screen by Annabel Cooper (Otago University Press, 2018), 322 pp., $49.95

Over the past few years in Aotearoa New Zealand there has been increasing demand from high-school students, iwi representatives, academics and musicians alike for a more nuanced, meaningful acknowledgement of the colonial conflicts of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and their legacies. Annabel Cooper’s Filming the Colonial Past: The New Zealand wars on screen is part of the answer to that demand. Cooper’s book is not a war history; aside from a succinct, three-page overview of the New Zealand Wars in the introduction, the book’s focus begins in 1925, nearly a decade after their (debatably) final conflict. Instead, and equally as important, the book is a history of historicisation: of how the New Zealand Wars have been remembered, negotiated, re-enacted, represented, viewed, taught and mythologised through film and television over the last century – and by whom. [Read more…]

Impure First

July 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Robyn Maree Pickens

Gretchen Albrecht: Between gesture and geometry by Luke Smythe (Massey University Press, 2019), 303pp., $80

Gretchen Albrecht: Between gesture and geometry has the heft and appearance of a monograph accompanying a major retrospective exhibition by an important senior artist. If such a retrospective at one of the country’s major public galleries is not in the planning stages, then this publication surely serves as a timely reminder of Albrecht’s significance as a New Zealand artist. [Read more…]

The Grit that Makes the Pearl

May 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Tasha Haines

The Writing Life: Twelve New Zealand authors by Deborah Shepard (Massey University Press, 2018), 463 pp., $49.99

In her introduction to The Writing Life, Deborah Shepard highlights the determination and passion of the twelve writers she interviews and curates into this collection. Shepard has selected a diverse group covering many genres: from writing for children, to many approaches to the novel, poetry and non-fiction. The writers are Joy Cowley, Marilyn Duckworth, Tessa Duder, Chris Else, Patricia Grace, David Hill, Witi Ihimaera, Fiona Kidman, Owen Marshall, Vincent O’Sullivan, Philip Temple and Albert Wendt. [Read more…]