Category Archives: Digital Media Production

Congratulations Leleiga for scholarship win!

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Leleiga

Leleiga Taito reads her work at a recent Creative Writing Student Writers Read event at Massey Wellington campus.

Congratulations to Expressive Arts student Leleiga Taito who has just been announced as the winner of a $5000 scholarship to research safety communication on Mt Ruapehu in 2015.

Leleiga is currently finishing her final year of the Bachelor of Communication (Public Relations and Expressive Arts), and will start postgraduate studies (BC Honours) in 2015. Her Honours research project (supervised by the School of English & Media Studies and co-funded by GNS and Massey University through the Joint Centre for Disaster Research) will be a real-world life-saving project that looks at how to improve safety awareness for mountain users, particularly about the risks of lahars and avalanches.

Leleiga will have the opportunity not only to investigate practical safety communication challenges in depth, but also to develop creative multi-media solutions to the communication challenge. She has past experience of similar projects during her Bachelor of Communication (BC) studies, and will now extend these skills in-depth with her Honours research.

Leleiga’s prior study achievements include creative writing, digital media production, media releases, strategic communication plans, and service learning for community organisations.  For example, she created an awareness campaign for the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation in her second year of the BC. She says “Through my research I discovered that breast cancer education and prevention messages were not reaching Samoan women. I conducted a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research methods to establish why women in this culture were not receiving these messages. After compiling the information that was gathered I then made suggestions on what appropriate communication strategies could be put in place. I also implemented tactics, where I created four pieces of collateral to encourage Samoan women to have mammograms. One of the communication materials was a web video with Winnie Laban sharing her experiences with breast cancer.”  You can see Leleiga’s excellent breast cancer awareness video assignment, with compelling personal interview testimony from Winnie Laban, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzoX3Nd97so&feature=youtu.be

During her Honours year Leleiga will, under the supervision of her research report supervisor (Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley from the School of English and Media Studies) prepare a comprehensive qualitative investigation of mountain user culture and the communication norms and needs that exist around safety issues. She will have the opportunity to research in the field, living at Mt Ruapehu to gather data during the ski season. Part of her reporting for the research project may also take the form of a creative output (such as a short documentary film) that could in itself provide a useful way to respond to the research challenge by building awareness of relevant safety issues and responses.

Associate Professor Tilley said Leleiga’s success was indicative of the value of the public relations/expressive arts combination in a communication degree. “Most real-world research problems or workplace communication challenges are multi-faceted, and need both a scientific and a creative response to generate understanding and solutions. I think we are really seeing, with the success of our Bachelor of Communication students who all have both a business and a humanities preparation, just how valuable this is for the next steps after a three-year degree, whether that step is further study or the workplace.”

Associate Professor Tilley said study of Expressive Arts (which can include diverse combinations of different digital media production, creative writing and theatre papers) was proving particularly useful for students. “We live in a multi-modal world. Seldom is any public communication these days just a written brochure or poster. Inevitably there are multi-media and social media dimensions. And the work that students do in learning scripting, dialogue, filming, directing, lighting, editing and a whole range of production, post-production and performance-related skills in Expressive Arts sets them up really well for this kind of work after graduation.”

Leleiga’s scholarship includes $5000 for fees and stipend, plus additional coverage of direct costs of her research including accommodation and other research expenses covered at Mt Ruapehu. Other BC students have also been involved in the wider research project – click here for a previous story about the project and click here for a link to a Radio New Zealand story about the project.

Mega-month of activity for August research roundup

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terrors of uncertainty

Associate Professor Joe Grixti’s book Terrors of Uncertainty has been re-released, along with other classic humanities texts, as part of the Routledge Revivals series

From Gothic and horror fiction to e-waste and the grand successes of The Naturalist, it’s been another very busy month for EMS research and scholarship – check out our news in this latest Research Roundup!

• Dr Erin Mercer co-edited a special issue of M/C – A Journal of Media and Culture on the Gothic, and published an article on the difficulties faced by contemporary New Zealand writers attempting to use the Gothic genre without reactivating colonialist tropes of haunting Maori, skeletal remains and a Gothicised New Zealand landscape. In the issue’s editorial, titled ‘Gothic: New Directions in Media and Popular Culture’ Dr Mercer and co-editor Dr Lorna Piatti-Farnell of AUT discussed the continuing importance of the Gothic mode in contemporary culture and how that mode is constantly evolving into new forms and manifestations. They argued that the “multi-faceted nature of the Gothic in our contemporary popular culture moment is accurately signaled by the various media on which these special issue essays focus, from television to literature, animation, music, and film. The place occupied by the Gothic beyond representational forms, and into the realms of cultural practice, is also signaled, an important shift within the bounds of Gothic Studies which is bound to initiate fascinating debates. The transformations of the Gothic in media and culture are, therefore, also surveyed, so to continue the ongoing critical conversation on not only the place of the Gothic in contemporary narratives, but also its duplicitous, malleable, and often slippery nature”. Check out the special issue at http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/showToc/current along with Dr Mercer’s article on Supernaturalism and Settlement in New Zealand Gothic Fiction – tantalisingly titled “A deluge of shrieking unreason” at http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/846

• Dr Radha O’Meara and Dr Alex Bevan were co-organisers of a symposium entitled Loops and Splices: Changing Media Technologies, on August 1st 2014. The symposium explored a recent turn in media scholarship that uncovers the overlooked and under-examined media technologies that contribute to historical and contemporary practice. Papers looked at how different media technologies have functioned in relation to historical and social practices, aesthetic traditions and specific cultural moments. Keynote speaker Prof Ian Christie (Anniversary Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College, University of London) presented on ‘Denying depth: uncovering the hidden history of 3D in photography and film.’ English and Media Studies staff were also well represented as presenters at the symposium (more below). You can see EMS staff member Dr Sy Taffel’s blog about the symposium at http://mediaecologies.wordpress.com/

• Dr Sy Taffel presented a paper entitled “ArchEcologies of Ewaste” at the Loops + Splices Symposium. The paper explored how media archaeology and media ecologies can be complementary methods in examining a range of issues pertaining to materiality and the damaging effects of the toxic digital detritus that we discard. He focused particularly on ewaste in New Zealand, where there currently is no mandatory (or even free) nationwide ewaste collection scheme, unlike in the EU where the WEEE directive mandates that all ewaste is recycled in high tech local facilities. More than 80,000 tonnes of ewaste annually enter New Zealand’s landfills, adding noxious elements like mercury, arsenic and lead to the soil and water table. Dr Taffel argued that ideas from media archaeology (a way of exploring past technology with a view to creatively reassembling and reusing technology rather than seeing earlier products as obsolete) combined with media ecologies (a reincorporative model of cyclical technological redesign) could point us towards a new age of ‘repair’ ethos, where waste was reduced and new designs resulted from the creative clash of old and new. You can see Dr Taffel’s presentation at http://prezi.com/iap-xqlsvb2o/archecologies-of-e-waste/

• Dr Kevin Glynn presented on “Technologies of Indigeneity: Māori Television and Convergence Culture,” a research focus that has emerged out of his Marsden-funded project working with Dr Julie Cupples (University of Edinburgh) on ‘Geographies of Media Convergence: Spaces of Democracy, Connectivity and the Reconfiguration of Cultural Citizenship.’ Dr Sy Taffel reports on his blog that “the paper focused on New Zealand media representations of the Urewera raids of 2007, and a more recent case where Air New Zealand, who prominently feature Maori iconography in their branding, terminated an interview with a woman for having a ta moko (traditional body markings), which they claimed would unsettle their customers. The paper explored impacts associated with the introduction of Maori TV and social networking software such as Facebook and Twitter on the ability of Maori to represent themselves and partake in mediated debates surrounding cultural identity”.

• Dr Allen Meek presented at Loops and Splices on “Testimony and the chronophotographic gesture.” The paper addressed the role of gesture in Holocaust testimony. Specifically it looked at some sequences from Claude Lanzmann’s long documentary film Shoah. Dr Meek argued that most scholarship has tended to discuss this film in terms of the transmission of the trauma of the Holocaust from the survivor to the viewer. Instead, he drew on the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s essay on gesture to develop a different reading of Shoah. Agamben argues that photography and the moving image have taken the autonomy of human gesture away from the individual person. When human gestures and movements are recorded they become a form of visual information that can be used for purposes of political control and economic exploitation. Dr Meek’s paper showed how Holocaust testimony forms part of a larger history of recorded gesture in the cinema that we need to consider if we are to understand its relation both to the Nazi system of power and to our recording and viewing of testimony today.

• In other recent research highlights, Associate Professor Joe Grixti’s book Terrors of Uncertainty: The Cultural Contexts of Horror Fiction has been re-released as part of Routledge’s ‘Revivals’ series of classic and important books. Routledge Revivals is a programme designed to reissue a wealth of out-of-print and unavailable titles written by some of the leading academic scholars of the last 120 years. To date, the programme includes titles by the likes of Sir Andrew Motion, Hermione Lee, Zygmunt Bauman, Karl Jaspers, Malcolm Bradbury, Simone Weil, Emile Durkheim, Charles Kindleberger and W. Arthur Lewis, now along with our own Head of School of English & Media Studies, Dr Grixti. Terrors of Uncertainty covers horror fiction from Frankenstein and Dracula to Psycho and The Chainsaw Massacre, illustrating how horror fiction has provided our culture with some of its most enduring themes and narratives. In selecting the text for reissue Routledge notes that: “Considering horror fiction both as a genre and as a social phenomenon, Joseph Grixti provides a theoretical and historical framework for reconsidering horror and the cultural apparatus that surrounds it. First published in 1989, this book looks at shifts in the genre’s meaning – its fascination with excess, its commentaries on the categories and boundaries of culture – and at interpretations of horror from psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, cultural and media studies”. Terrors of Uncertainty brings together a provocative range of perspectives from across the disciplines, which combine to raise important questions about the relationship between fiction and society, and the way in which we use fiction to resolve or evade our fears of uncertainty. Available in both hardcopy and e-book at: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138794511/

• Essential New Zealand Poems: Facing the Empty Page was recently published by Random House featuring work by a number of staff and PhD students from the School of English and Media Studies: Dr Ingrid Horrocks, Dr Jack Ross, Tim Upperton, Sarah-Jane Barnett, and Aleksandra Lane. Ingrid Horrocks and Aleksandra Lane were named by reviewer Philip Matthews in the Dominion Post as two of half a dozen of “the best of a new and younger generation” of poets to whom readers should “Pay attention now and in the future” (Your Weekend, Dominion Post, 5 July 2014, p. 27).  For more information, go to the publisher’s site at http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/siobhan-harvey-harry-ricketts-and-james-norcliffe/essential-new-zealand-poems-9781775534594.aspx

• A launch event for Essential New Zealand Poems – Facing the Empty Page held at PNCC Library on 7 August featured local poets Johanna Aitchison (former Visiting Artist and Tutor) and Tim Upperton (Tutor and current PhD stuent) in conversation with Harry Ricketts, poet, academic editor, reviewer and cricket writer. Johanna, Tim and Harry discussed and read from the recently published ‘Essential New Zealand Poems’ edited by Siobhan Harvey, Harry Ricketts and James Norcliffe (another former Massey University School of English & Media Studies Visiting Artist).

• A creative essay by Dr Ingrid Horrocks which forms a key part of Maddie Leach’s collaborative conceptual art project if you find the good oil let us know, features until September as part of the Walters Prize exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery. See our previous post on this fascinating artwork and Dr Horrocks’ involvement here.

• Associate Professor Lisa Emerson along with Massey colleagues from Education and Communication ran multiple workshops in the lower North island for tertiary teachers on Literacy in the Transition to Tertiary Education. These presentations are based on their research, funded by the government’s Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) fund, on transitioning into tertiary study through academic literacy development, and were supported by Ako Aotearoa.

• Dr Thom Conroy launched his book, The Naturalist, on Friday 15 August – the book then spent several weeks at Number One in the NZ Bestseller list. See previous post here. See also: Thom’s interview with Kim Hill, available at: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/20145074/thom-conroy-channeling-dieffenbach

• Senior Tutors Joy Green and Tim Upperton launched their books as part of the Kete Series – Manawatu Poetry at the PNCC Library on Poetry Day – Friday 22 August 2014. This series, published by HauNui Press features Joy’s and Tim’s poetry collections as well as that of Leonel Alvarado, School of Humanities. See more here.

• Dr Thom Conroy spoke on the Intersection between History and Fiction in Historical Fiction at Te Papa, 28 August.

• On August 25, two final-year undergraduate Bachelor of Communication students from CoHSS participated, with Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley, in an applied communication research project involving collaboration with Massey’s Joint Centre for Disaster Research, the Department of Conservation and Geological and Natural Sciences. The project, which involves gathering data on Mt Ruapehu to help understand and improve lahar warning and mountain safety communication effectiveness, was reported on Radio New Zealand’s Our Changing World Science and Environment program, see more here.

• Associate Professor Angie Farrow won won ‘Best Drama Script’ for her new play ‘Leo Rising’ at the Auckland Short and Sweet Festival 2014.

New creative activism paper launching 2015

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Creative ProcessesMassey University’s School of English & Media Studies will lead the way in Aotearoa/New Zealand arts education by launching a new paper in creative activism in 2015.
Launching simultaneously at Wellington and Auckland campuses in first semester 2015, 139.333 Creativity in the Community will immerse teams of students in the art and science of creative communication for social change, with guidance from experienced Expressive Arts educators. Students will be able to make a film or documentary, stage a collaborative community theatre event, use creative writing, or combine all of these, to work with a community group on a real issue.
Wellington course coordinator Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley said “communication activism pedagogy is an emerging trend internationally. It involves teaching students to apply their creative communication knowledge and skills to work with community partners to promote social justice.”
“We are seeing increasing application by social justice groups in Aotearoa of the power of the arts to drive change – for example Women’s Refuge is working on a giant statue of Kate Sheppard made up of the voices of people who want to stop domestic violence, and Greenpeace has been staging performance art all over the country with a lifesize polar bear. Not to mention the amazing work that theatre practitioners, such as the group Te Rakau Hua o Te Wao Tapu Trust to name just one, have been doing for a long time because of the recognition of the power of theatre to change lives.”
The Creativity in the Community course will equip students to plan, implement and evaluate these kinds of applied arts projects, giving them hands on experience in delivering creative activism but also requiring them to understand the ethical and managerial dimensions.
“Our Expressive Arts students already have a strong foundation in devising projects that use creative writing, theatre and multimedia by the time they reach third-year (see for example at left a student multimedia/theatre performance addressing issues of identity and binge drinking, from Wellington Creative Processes students 2014).  This paper enables them to capstone that training by taking it to the next level, working with a community partner.”
Dr Tilley said there was a strong research and scholarship base behind creative activism that students will connect with in ‘Creativity in the Community’ to understand how to make their arts interventions effective and compelling.
“Internationally, students have worked on issues such as gender inequality and violence, ethnic and racial prejudice and discrimination, and health disparities and issues affecting those who live in poverty. Our students will research their communities and team up with local NGOs to choose projects that respond to genuine need. We know that this benefits the students as well as the communities, as service learning has been proven to develop skills in teamwork, project management, risk assessment, communication, professionalism and a host of other competencies that will ensure our students hit the ground running when they enter the workforce. A big plus of creative activism pedagogy is that it also develops students as engaged citizens who feel empowered to use their voice effectively to create a better world.”
Dr Tilley will coordinate Creativity in the Community at Wellington, while at Albany campus it will be led by Dr Rand Hazou, a specialist in applied and documentary theatre who has international research links with social justice theatre projects, as well as strong connections with theatre-for-social change groups in the Auckland region.
“We are really looking forward to launching this project and seeing the students’ learning come to life in real social change,” Dr Tilley said.

Links:
139.333 Paper Information for 2015: http://www.massey.ac.nz//massey/learning/programme-course-paper/paper.cfm?paper_code=139333
Bring back Kate campaign: http://www.3news.co.nz/Kate-Sheppard-statue-nears-completion/tabid/423/articleID/354173/Default.aspx
Theatre as a tool to transform: http://artsaccess.org.nz/theatre-as-a-tool-to-transform

Cinephile: Simon Sigley

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transnat_film_culture

Transnational Film Culture in New Zealand is a niche publication, written because its author loves film.  Film was the most important medium of the 20th century, Simon Sigley says, “a protean cultural phenomenon with huge industrial and aesthetic ramifications”, and he is fascinated by its changing cultural status in his native New Zealand, the more so because for around a decade he lived in a country where film has always been given its intellectual due: France.  A film viewed in the cinema, the environment for which it was crafted – is special. Nothing, says Sigley, compares with that visceral, embodied experience of cinema, that moment when lights dim, the chatter stops, the sound swells and the movie begins.

See more at: http://definingnz.com/cinephile/#sthash.JavN9hOg.dpuf

 

New works explore contemporary identity challenges

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Eden2Three brand new devised theatre/multimedia works that premiered at the Arts on Wednesday Wellington Student Theatre Showcase last week were united by a focus on identity challenges for young people in a digitised 24-hour-networked world.

In a confronting piece called ‘Bad Days’, students  Eden Cowley (pictured left, as ‘Jessie’), Maggie Tweedie, Khawa Khoshaba, Virginia O’Connor, Nadia Stadnik, and Razvan Grigore, all from the second-year Expressive Arts paper Creative Processes, scripted a series of contrasting identities depicted on and off social media such as Facebook, to explore contemporary struggles between appearance and reality, masked and unmasked personae, pride and vulnerability.  Juxtaposing stylised live action with large-scale multimedia work, their performance traced a typical ‘night out’, contrasting glamorised full-screen images of partying and friends with a more sobering reality of anxiety, self-doubt, depression and next-day regrets by the actors on stage.

The second work, called ‘Ear Ear’, took a more humorous approach yet still explored compelling issues of inclusion and exclusion, and the interaction between the human body and modern technology. Shaqaila Uelese, Kathleen Masoe, Genevieve Coleman, Leleiga Taito, Mallory Mackenzie and Rachel Templeton devised an original and highly satirical ‘self help group’ scenario, where all the participants were ears, seeking help for abuse at the hands of their head-phone-wearing, ear-piercing humans.  Technically sophisticated, the piece was carefully timed so that the human actors appeared to manipulate images on the scene, creating a seamless choreography of live bodies and fantasy images, such as talking ears.

The final item of the show, ‘The Gift’, offered a film-noir-style exploration of creativity, in which two muses (Stevie Greeks and Azeem Balfoort) were followed by the camera as they explored the minds of artists and attempted to sway them into either darkness or light.  Jack Biggs as The Poet, Kit Jenkins as The Musician, Kim Parkinson as The Painter, and Fraser Baker as The Sculptor gave convincing portrayals of artists struggling with issues of creativity, individuality, plagiarism, self doubt and yet often finding renewed life-force in their art.  ‘The Gift’ was directed by Oscar Mein, who received an award for ‘Best Student Director’ after the show.

JackJack Biggs, as ‘The Poet’, struggles with writers’ block.

Filmmaker featured in Capital Life

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Massey student and documentary filmmaker Norman Zafra is profiled in this week’s ‘Capital Life’ column in Wellington’s Dominion Post newspaper.

Zafra’s documentary, ‘A Friend in Sight’ is a Festival Selection in the upcoming  Documentary Edge Film Festival Wellington screenings in June.

Billed as Australasia’s premiere international documentary festival, the ten-day screen-fest features cutting-edge new documentary films from New Zealand and the world.

Zafra’s film captures a special relationship we don’t normally see on film, the bond between a woman and her seeing-eye dog.

Norman_RadhaHe is pictured at left with Massey University lecturer Dr Radha O’Meara who supervised his work on the film, which was completed as part of his postgraduate assessment in the School of English & Media Studies postgraduate paper ‘Media Practice and Global Culture’.

See the full Capital Life story at:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/capital-life/10091929/A-sight-for-the-big-screen

And the festival screening times at:
http://documentaryedge.org.nz/2014/wgtn/film/friend-in-sight#screeningTimes

 

International recognition for Expressive Arts student

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shaqYou may have seen talented musician and composer Shaqaila Uelese featured on TV1 (Tagata Pasifika), TV3 (news) or in North & South Magazine and newspapers nationally, or heard her on the radio.  She’s been all over the media this week for her fantastic piano playing, and her selfless service as a volunteer and fundraiser.

The Massey Wellington student garnered the widespread media attention after her original interpretation of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody went viral on YouTube with more than 700,000 views – and was shared by Brian May, the original Queen guitarist, on his own page.  Shaq is currently playing concerts around the North Island and in September, she will play by invitation at an event in Australia.

If you are in Wellington, you can see Shaq play in person next week, as well as perform as an actor in a show she has co-written, as part of the May 28 Arts on Wednesday Wellington student showcase.

Shaq is part of a student team from the class Creative Processes, who have devised an original multi-media performance piece, called ‘Ear Ear’, to premiere at Arts on Wednesday next week. Appropriately for a musician, the show explores the importance of sound in our world and provokes empathy with those who live with hearing loss, through a dramatic exploration of auditory deprivation.

It is one of three innovative new experimental works to premiere at the free lunchtime show, from 12.30 to 1.30 in 5D14 Theatre Lab.

Shaq is no stranger to using her artwork to draw attention to important causes and perspectives. Over the past year, in honour of her late father, she’s been travelling around New Zealand, along with a support crew including other students from her Massey Wellington classes, to play public koha piano shows to raise money for the Cranford Hospice and Cancer Society NZ – Wellington Division.  Her Play for Life piano marathon has raised more than $6,000 so far.

See more at:

http://www.facebook.com/PlayforLifePiano 

http://www.facebook.com/Shaqmistro

http://www.facebook.com/WellyArtsWednesdays

See the Bohemian Rhapsody video and Dominion Post story at:  http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/capital-life/10039996/Pianists-public-performance-pays-off

See the 3News interview at: http://www.3news.co.nz/Kiwi-pianist-finds-a-kind-of-magic/tabid/418/articleID/345282/Default.aspx

Radha O’Meara, Media Studies lecturer, researched why we love to watch cat videos.

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images

New research from Massey University has discovered why cat videos are more popular than, say, dog or baby videos: the latter are equally “cute”, but comparably far less popular.

The answer, according to Massey University media studies lecturer Radha O’Meara, who viewed hundreds of cat videos online in conducting the research, is in the watching.

“Ultimately cat videos enable viewers to carry out their own surveillance, and we do so with the gleeful abandon of a kitten jumping in a tissue box.”

However, Dr O’Meara said this carelessness was an illusion for the viewer, who’s online viewing was tracked and sold as consumer data.

 M/C – A Journal of Media and Culture publication

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School of English and Media Studies nominate honorary doc for NZ cinema’s ‘rascal of the realm’

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Film director Geoff Murphy

Honorary doc for NZ cinema’s ‘rascal of the realm’

Wellington film director Geoff Murphy is to receive an honorary doctorate in literature from Massey University – although he thinks “rascal of the realm” would be a more fitting title.

Mr Murphy, 75, is a legend in New Zealand cinema. He has directed 18 films and is best known for pioneering a renaissance in New Zealand cinema in the 1980s with three genre-challenging hits – Goodbye Pork Pie, Utu and The Quiet Earth. While all different, they were each profoundly New Zealand films, attracted large domestic audiences and are widely credited with helping dispel cultural cringe towards domestic films.

Mr Murphy says he was surprised and pleased to be offered a Doctor of Literature (Honoris Causa), which he will receive at a graduation ceremony for Massey’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences next Wednesday in Palmerston North.

“It’s nice. It’s an honour. I appreciate it. It means I can put ‘Dr’ in front of my name. It’ll be good when I’m arguing with the city council,” he says, with a wry comment on how he has been endowed with honours recently after three decades of being “conspicuously ignored”.

Associate Professor Joe Grixti, head of Massey’s School of English and Media Studies, which nominated Mr Murphy honorary doctorate, describes him as “a leading pioneer of New Zealand’s new film industry” who “richly deserves to be honoured for his outstanding contributions to the national culture and heritage”.

Last year Mr Murphy, who is also a script writer, editor and musician (a founding member of Blerta), was recognised as one of New Zealand’s 20 greatest living artists, being named as an Arts Icon by the Arts Foundation. In January he was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to film.

He says making a feature film and completing a doctorate are comparable in that they are both “fantastic feats” that require enormous passion and faith. “It’s amazing you get it done at all. A film can be 18 months of hard yakka. It takes over your life. And it changes in the process of making it. At the end of it you are emotionally, intellectually and physically exhausted.”

Murphy grew up in Highbury, Wellington, lived briefly in Palmerston North as a child and was educated at St Patrick’s College in Wellington. After a year studying engineering at Victoria University, he opted to train as a schoolteacher and taught at Newtown and Lyall Bay primary schools for a decade.

His first foray into film was when he worked on The Magic Hammer, based on a musical he had written for one of his classes. At the time, he was also part of a local jazz club with a group who would become the prominent filmmakers of their era, including Bruno Lawrence, John Charles, Alun Bollinger and Martyn Sanderson. When they formed the Bruno Lawrence Electric Revelation and Travelling Apparition (Blerta) and went on tour in 1971 Mr Murphy was aboard as trumpeter, filmmaker and explosives expert. The ensemble of musicians, actors and filmmakers set out to create films based on New Zealand stories rather than those provided by imported movies.

He made films throughout the 1970s, including working with the legendary comedian John Clark on Dagg Day Afternoon, but his big break came with Goodbye Pork Pie (1981), a low-budget comedy involving a madcap journey from Auckland to Invercargill in a stolen yellow mini, starring Bruno Lawrence and Kelly Johnson. It was New Zealand’s first home-grown blockbuster and the first Kiwi film to screen at the Cannes Film Festival.

Then came Utu (1983), directed and co-written by Mr Murphy and sometimes described as a “Māori western”. It centres on a New Zealand Wars tale of Te Wheke, a warrior who seeks revenge (utu) after British soldiers kill his people. Utu screened outside competition at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival, and received critical acclaim in the United States.

A new digitised director’s cut of the film, Utu Redux, was launched last year, and will be shown at a special screening in Cinema Gold on the evening of the graduation. Mr Johnston, who also starred in Utu and is now a lawyer in Whangarei, will speak at the conferment of the degree.

The Quiet Earth (1985) a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story also stars Bruno Lawrence and is based on a novel of the same name by Dr Craig Harrison, who lectured in English at Massey University’s Manawatū campus.

When asked what he makes of the current film scene locally, he says there are “too many distractions”. While full of admiration for the phenomenal global success of the Lord of the Ringsblockbusters (he was second unit director on all three), he does not regard them as New Zealand films. “They obscure the view.”

Despite his success in the 1980s, he and his creative cohorts continued to struggle for funding, prompting him to take up offers of work in Hollywood where he stayed for the next 12 years to direct a number of big budget movies, including Young Guns, Under Seige 2 and Freejack. It was a backward step creatively, but a necessary one financially, he says.

His formative years as a film director and encounters with the-then New Zealand Film Commission left him bemused about a system employing public servants to assess and administer funds for creative projects. “You have to ask what qualities and expertise would a public servant have when they are looking at what it takes to make a film. You need people with massive amounts of talent, energy, perseverance, and you need to be a risk-taker. It’s not the same list as what a public servant has. They are different beasts.”

His ultimate message to aspiring filmmakers is: “Believe in yourself.” Even if it means the powers that be think you’re a rascal.

 Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey says conferring the honorary doctorate on Mr Murphy is a fitting way to celebrate the kind of determined, innovative spirit that Massey University champions. “What Geoff Murphy achieved through film was to challenge the status quo and to inspire a fresh vision of New Zealand culture and history through his compelling, comical and dramatic stories and characters. His films were remarkable when they were first made, and they continue to be treasures in our cultural canon.

“Geoff injected new life and direction into New Zealand cinema, and gave us new ways of seeing ourselves as a people. Finding creative new ways to explore, understand and shape our national identity is a great example and something I’m confident many Massey students will do in their chosen fields.”

Mr Murphy will receive his degree at 2.30pm, May 14 at the Regent Theatre, Palmerston North.

 

Student documentary makers head to international forum in Melbourne

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Two student documentary filmmakers from the School of English & Media Studies have been sponsored by the World Heart Federation to fly to Melbourne this weekend for the Youth Take Action Workshop at the World Congress of Cardiology.

Janaya Soma and Catherine Moreau-Hammond (both Massey Bachelor of Communication graduates studying Expressive Arts as part of their BC Honours year) have been filming a documentary about the ‘Smokefree It’s My Life’ youth activism project, under the supervision of English & Media Studies staffmembers Dr Radha O’Meara and Dr Elspeth Tilley.  Janaya has also been heavily involved in research and event management for the project, and has just had her writing about the project published in Tearaway Magazine (see her story at http://issuu.com/magazinestoday/docs/tearaway_term1_2_2014/25?e=1842483/7627406).

The World Heart Federation has provided a grant of US$2000 to fly the pair to Melbourne to share their documentary footage, and insights into what they’ve learned about by-youth for-youth anti-tobacco activism from being part of It’s My Life, with health professionals and other young people from all around the world.  While there they will also have the chance to learn from other young people and top health communication experts, and report back to New Zealand on the global youth anti-tobacco movement.

Once they finish editing and post-production on their footage, Catherine and Janaya’s documentary will be made available as a DVD to school students throughout New Zealand, as a resource for youth activism initiatives.

Redlight Rhythm2

Musician James van der Maas was part of the smokefree youth event that Janaya organised, and will also feature as an interviewee in the students’ documentary of the project.