Talkin bout my generation

Two weeks without the internet is a long time, especially when so much is happening. The ministerial review has just published the submission's it's received on its website. Ant Timpson has made the case for a NZ Film Month. But what I want to focus on today is Matthew Horrocks and his Notes for a New New Zealand Cinema.

Matthew Horrocks worked at the Commission for a few years mostly in development and is now on the other side of the fence as an independent producer. In his Notes he sets out the basis of why filmmaking in NZ isn't as rosy as some people would like you to think it is. There is a lot to be said about his thoughts but what really struck me upon first reading was this paragraph.

"The key cause of the situation in which new filmmakers are not making new films is that in the absence of a clear set of ideas about the types of films we want to make we "new" - though not necessarily particularly young - aspiring feature filmmakers, have for some years now been proving spectacularly unable to generate a healthy supply of film projects that are demanding to be made because we are having real problems finding and developing cinematic stories that just have to be told on film."

I don't think I've ever seen this idea articulated before. To put it simply, most of the ideas that have come to the commission in recent years from filmmakers are crap. That's very harsh. But it should be. I am also part of the problem. I've known a bunch of filmmakers since I moved to Auckland in 1999. We're mostly all in our mid 30's now. Apart from a handful of digital features we have very little to show for our efforts. We know our stuff, have fairly good taste, but have failed to make a mark. Why is this?

Horrocks says "The challenge is cultural. It has arisen because a number of the various streams of ideas to do with identity - national, masculine, feminine, gay and Maori - that have nourished the development of our film culture thus far have to a certain extent run their first course. That they are not being replenished is in turn reflective of the type of crisis of values, meaning, and identity that grips a culture, and a person, that is struggling to make a difficult transition from one era of development into another"

That is pretty heavy stuff and not the intellectual debate you see coming from within the NZ film industry very often. It does have a strong whiff of truth about it. It encapsulates the gnawing feeling that many of us have had watching our films in recent years. Let me use Eagle vs Shark as an example. It's the first film that came to mind so I'm certainly not trying to be dismissive of the work Taika Waititi and his producer Ainsley Gardiner have done. However, that film is basically an American independent quirky romnatic comedy. Now, the problem with doing this is that every film can't be made to stand for the whole. Eagle vs Shark can't represent an argument about the whole NZ film industry. What is interesting is what the films of my generation look like. What they look like is probably other people's films or the filmmaker's own navels.

Horrocks again "I think we need to blast the way we think and talk about films far out beyond the self-referentiality that occurs so often when we discuss films only in relation to other films. Lets discuss films in relation to the true source of all film material - life."

It astounds me that more filmmakers don't look at the newspaper for their next story. There are amazing stories happening all the time in NZ. The feature film idea I'm working on is based on an incident that occured just last year. Why aren't we all mining the news? I think there is more to this than simple laziness.

There is something going on with my generation of filmmakers. Our post-84 liberal minded socially conservative genreation. We don't really remember pre 1984 NZ. We don't remember what it was like to live in an effectively socially democratic country controlled by the state. We don't remember what it was like when pretty much everyone had a job and lived in an egalitarian nation. We don't remember what it was like to have only very limited job prospects (maybe civil service if you went to uni). We don't remember what it was like to not have to lock your door at night. We do have a collective consciousness because when we were young we all watched the same two tv channels and went to see Top Gun and The Goonies at the movies or watched Olly Olson After School. We may have faint memories of the Springbok tour of 1981 when people got pissed off at each other and expressed it. But that might seem like a world away now. Very few of us get really annoyed at anything political. Very few of us are angry about politics in any way although you may be annoyed that (new) Labour ran out of ideas last year and we decided to let the other team have a go again. When I think about the group of filmmakers I know well, they simply don't care about politics. They couldn't care less. What bothers me about that is that it tells me you have absolutely no interest in how we got to our current state of affairs. It tells me that you think that "stuff happens" that you have no control over. That you naturalise the world. That things just are because that's the way they are. You can't tell stories if you don't know how to structure them. It makes sense that you can understand the stories that happen around you if you understand the structures that created them. I can see why you wouldn't notice if a story occurred that raised profound questions about the current state of the country and its people. The problem is - that's the good stuff. The Godfather is just a gangster film if you don't place it in the context of what it tells us about the place of immigration and commerce and violence in the nation building and (maybe) collapse of America.

If you care about all this I suggest you read Notes on a New New Zealand Cinema. The debate about the future of NZ film is happening now.