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Today saw the release of our Labour Day collection – below is the media release we put out that went to all our subscribers. If you’d like to be on the mailing list – you can check the “keep me informed” box on your profile or when you add a comment – or you can email us.
Workers of New Zealand unite!
While you’re relaxing this long weekend, take some time out to reflect on the reason you’re enjoying a holiday and check out NZ On Screen’s collection of Labour Day related titles.
Labour Day commemorates the struggle for an eight-hour working day. In 1840, carpenter Samuel Parnell won a world-leading eight-hour day for workers in the Wellington settlement: “It must be on these terms or none at all!”
The Labour Day collection brings together 11 titles that relate to Kiwi working life, from economic revolutions and industrial disputes to Gliding On. It includes several award-winning titles and some distinguished political documentaries.
The collection includes the John Bates documentary 1951 (about the 1951 waterside workers strike), which won Best Documentary and Best Director at the 2002 NZ Television Awards.
1997 TV Awards winner Revolution is also included. Produced by Marcia Russell, this four part series about the sweeping economic and social changes of the 1980s is available in full.
Campaigning filmmaker Alister Barry’s two highly-acclaimed political documentaries Someone Else’s Country (The Dominion: “alarmingly enlightening”) and In a Land of Plenty offer critical perspectives on the same era.
In the famous 1970 Gallery episode Brian Edwards resolves a long-running Post Office industrial dispute live on air.
The collection also shows classic National Film Unit titles – To Live in the City (1967), Railway Worker (1948), The Coaster (1950) and Coal From Westland (1943). To Live in the City follows four young Māori – Ripeka, Moana, Grace and Phillip – as they transition from school, whānau and rural life to the city.
Railway Worker covers 24 hours of work on the railways and was made by New Zealand’s first female director, Margaret Thomson. The Coaster was written by the poet Denis Glover and narrated by Selwyn Toogood and became famous as the film which led to Cecil Holmes losing his job, after its content riled unionist Fintan Patrick Walsh.
At the lighter end of the spectrum, the Labour Day Collection includes an episode of the 1981 comedy Gliding On (set in the classic public service workplace of the time), an episode from the 1987 drama series The Marching Girls (which features an industrial dispute), and cult 80s glitter soap Gloss – which was set in and around the office of a glossy magazine (definitely not a West Coast coal mine).
To mark Matariki NZ On Screen has today launched a special collection of iconic Māori television and films.
The collection has been curated by NZ On Screen’s Māori Content Curator Whai Ngata, the former Head of TVNZ Māori Programmes.
Ngata says it was a pleasure and a privilege to curate the Matariki collection. “As someone who has been heavily involved in Māori broadcasting through the years, I really appreciated the opportunity to work on a project celebrating achievement in this area.”
In making his choices for the collection, Ngata considered the significance of programmes in terms of both Māori social history and the development of Māori broadcasting, as well as the quality of the title itself.
“The titles I have chosen should not be seen in any order of merit, and the list does not detract in any way from the importance of and enjoyment given by many other programmes.”
The titles in the Matariki collection include the early 1970s documentary series Tangata Whenua, made by Michael King, Barry Barclay and John O’Shea, and acknowledged as the first time Pākehā television viewers got a significant window into the Māori world. Also from the 1970s, is episode one of the landmark drama series The Governor, which gave a then rare Māori perspective on our colonial history.
The long-running TVNZ Māori Programmes’ productions Koha, Te Karere, Waka Huia, and Marae also feature in the collection, as does TVNZ’s coverage of the Te Maori exhibition and Te Arikinui, Dame Te Atairangikaahu the Māori Queen’s Tangi.
Ngata acknowledges the talent of Māori entertainers on television, by including the work of Billy T James in his collection. He also includes the Māori biography series Pounamu, and the drama series Mataku, which told Māori supernatural stories.
The acclaimed New Zealand movies Ngati and Once Were Warriors are also in the collection. Ngata says of Warriors: “this movie has to be included for highlighting the problem of domestic violence, not only among Māori, but all societies. It gave a very strong message of the huge problem that transcends race and social status.”
