New Zealand Coming-of-age Films: Distinctive Characteristics and Thematic Preoccupations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Lee Tamahori ◽  
Over Time

This chapter provides an overview of New Zealand coming-of-age films from the first feature film to be made on this theme, The God Boy (Murray Reece, 1976) to the most recent examples, Mahana (Lee Tamahori, 2016) and Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Taika Waititi, 2016), identifying trends and patterns in the evolution of this genre. Characteristic attributes are explored, such as the dialogue with national literature (of the 15 films examined in the book, all but four are adaptations); the universal tendency of filmmakers to update the setting to the time of their own childhood; the presence of personal projections and identifications in the films; the importance of the New Zealand landscape as a thematic element. Finally, the main thematic preoccupations are outlined, with a demonstration of how they shift over time in response to changing cultural and political circumstances.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Financial Returns ◽  
Self Recognition ◽  
International Audience ◽  
National Identity Formation

The conclusion reaffirms the essential role played by cinema generally, and the coming-of-age genre in particular, in the process of national identity formation, because of its effectiveness in facilitating self-recognition and self-experience through a process of triangulation made possible, for the most part, by a dialogue with some of the nation’s most iconic works of literature. This section concludes by point out the danger posed, however, by an observable trend toward generic standardization in New Zealand films motivated by a desire to appeal to an international audience out of consideration for the financial returns expected by funding bodies under current regimes.

Family Secrets and their Destructive Consequences: In My Father’s Den (Brad McGann, 2004)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Historical Changes ◽  
Family Secrets ◽  
Effects On Children

This chapter analyses Brad McGann’s highly esteemed adaptation (2004) of Maurice Gee’s novel In My Father’s Den (1972) as evidence of a prevailing trend in New Zealand coming-of-age films whereby the vision of a source work is regularly updated to reflect the different values and perspectives of a later generation. In this case, the updating involves a shift of emphasis from the destructive effects on children of puritan religiosity and repressiveness to those of lack of communication among family members, combined with the preservation of unspoken, but collectively known, family secrets, reflecting historical changes that had occurred in New Zealand society since the generation of Gee (born 1931) and that of McGann (born 1964).

Creativity as a Haven: An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion, 1990)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Personal Investment ◽  
Jane Campion

Through a comparison with Janet Frame’s Autobiography, from which it is adapted, this chapter analyses Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table as the first New Zealand film to present all three of the main maturational phases characteristic of the coming-of-age genre, but as experienced by a Pākehā girl. Identifying the effects of a repressive environment as the source of the emotional stresses that lead the main character, Janet, to be institutionalized for schizophrenia, the discussion shows how she finds respite in fictive creativity and a world of the imagination. It also shows Campion’s personal investment in the story as a displaced representation of her own mother’s fight with mental illness.

A Māori Girl Watches, Listens, and Learns – Coming of Age from an Indigenous Viewpoint: Mauri (Merata Mita, 1988)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Indigenous Woman ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Force ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines Merata Mita’s Mauri, the first fiction feature film in the world to be solely written and directed by an indigenous woman, as an example of “Fourth Cinema” – that is, a form of filmmaking that aims to create, produce, and transmit the stories of indigenous people, and in their own image – showing how Mita presents the coming-of-age story of a Māori girl who grows into an understanding of the spiritual dimension of the relationship of her people to the natural world, and to the ancestors who have preceded them. The discussion demonstrates how the film adopts storytelling procedures that reflect a distinctively Māori view of time and are designed to signify the presence of the mauri (or life force) in the Māori world.

The Formation of a Budding Man Alone: The God Boy (Murray Reece, 1976)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
World War ◽  
Value System ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
The Family

This chapter analyses the earliest of the New Zealand coming-of-age feature films, an adaptation of Ian Cross’s novel The God Boy, to demonstrate how it addresses the destructive impact on a child of the puritanical value-system that had dominated Pākehā (white) society through much of the twentieth century, being particularly strong during the interwar years, and the decade immediately following World War II. The discussion explores how dysfunction within the family and repressive religious beliefs eventuate in pressures that cause Jimmy, the protagonist, to act out transgressively, and then to turn inwards to seek refuge in the form of self-containment that makes him a prototype of the Man Alone figure that is ubiquitous in New Zealand fiction.

Duration, Compression, Extension and Distortion of Time in Contemporary Transgender Cinema

Somatechnics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-83
Author(s):  
Akkadia Ford
Keyword(s):  
Life Experiences ◽  
Private Life ◽  
First Century ◽  
Short Film ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Theoretical Issues ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Film Change

Cinema provides ‘privileged access’ ( Zubrycki 2011 ) into trans lives, recording and revealing private life experiences and moments that might never be seen, nor heard and after the time had passed, only present in memory and body for the individuals involved. Film, a temporal medium, creates theoretical issues, both in the presentation and representation of the trans body and for audiences in viewing the images. Specific narrative, stylistic and editing techniques including temporal disjunctions, may also give audiences a distorted view of trans bodily narratives that encompass a lifetime. Twenty first century cinema is simultaneously creating and erasing the somatechnical potentialities of trans. This article will explore temporal techniques in relation to recent trans cinema, comparing how three different filmmakers handle trans narratives. Drawing upon recent films including the Trans New Wave ( Ford 2014 , 2016a , 2016b ), such as the experimental animated autoethnographic short film Change Over Time (Ewan Duarte, United States, 2013), in tandem with the feature film 52 Tuesdays (Sophia Hyde, Australia, 2013), I will analyse the films as texts which show how filmmakers utilise temporality as a narrative and stylistic technique in cinematic trans narratives. These are texts where cinematic technologies converge with trans embodiment in ways that are constitutive of participants and audiences' understanding of trans lives. This analysis will be contrasted with the use of temporal displacement as a cinematic trope of negative affect, disembodiment and societal disjunction in the feature film Predestination (The Spierig Brothers, Australia, 2014), providing a further basis for scholarly critique of cinematic somatechnics in relation to the trans body.

scholarly journals Decline in New Zealand's freshwater fish fauna: Effect of land use

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Joy ◽  
KJ Foote ◽  
P McNie ◽  
M Piria
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Freshwater Fish ◽  
Native Species ◽  
Species Abundance ◽  
Fish Fauna ◽  
Fish Distribution ◽  
Individual Species ◽  
Freshwater Fish Fauna ◽  
Over Time

© 2019 CSIRO. The number of New Zealand's freshwater fish listed as threatened has increased since 1992 when the first New Zealand threat classification system list was compiled. In this study, temporal and land cover-related trends were analysed for data on freshwater fish distribution, comprising more than 20 000 records for the 47 years from January 1970 to January 2017 from the New Zealand Freshwater Fish Database. The analysis included individual species abundance and distribution trends, as well as an index of fish community integrity, namely the Index of Biotic Integrity (IBI). Of the 25 fish species that met the requirements for analysis to determine changes in the proportion of sites they occupied over time, 76% had negative trends (indicating declining occurrence). Of the 20 native species analysed for the proportion of sites occupied over time, 75% had negative trends; 65% of these were significant declines and more species were in decline at pasture sites than natural cover sites. The average IBI score also declined over the time period and, when analysed separately, the major land cover types revealed that the IBI declined at pasture catchment sites but not at sites with natural vegetation catchments.

scholarly journals The Readability of Sustainability Reporting in New Zealand over time

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 86-107
Author(s):  
Azadeh Nilipour ◽  
Tracy-Anne de Silva ◽  
Xuedong Li
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Sustainability Reporting ◽  
Over Time

Multimorbidity and  health-related quality of life among people 55 years and up: results of a longitudinal study in New Zealand

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nayyereh Aminisani ◽  
Chris Stephens ◽  
Fiona Alpass ◽  
Seyed Morteza Shamshirgaran
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Inverse Association ◽  
Health Related Quality ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Related Quality ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Over Time

Abstract Background: This study aimed to examine the association of Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) and multimorbidity (MM) and its correlates over time in New Zealand. Methods: People aged 55 years and over were invited to participate in a nationally representative population-based longitudinal study in 2006 and followed up biennially until 2016. Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) with an exchangeable correlation matrix and robust standard errors adjusted for both time-constant and time-varying factors using baseline and five subsequent waves of data were used, to compare a range of factors related to changes in MM and HRQOL. Results: Of 2632 participants at baseline, 957 of the participants were classified as “MM participants”; 570 had two, and the rest had three chronic conditions. The results of the GEE regression models demonstrated that SF12-PCS decreased over time, and there was a significant difference in SF12-PCS between MM and Non-MM participants. Having MM was negatively associated with HRQOL-PCS [-3.00 (95 %CI -3.60, -2.49); p <0.001)]. Although the results showed an increase in SF12-MCS over time, the score of the mental dimension of HRQOL was lower among MM participants compared to Non-MM participants [-2.60, 95 %CI -3.09, -2.11]. Conclusions: According to this longitudinal study, there is an inverse association between MM and one of the most important health outcomes; HRQOL, in older adults.

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