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Salient. Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 26, No. 5. Monday, April 29, 1963

Documentary On Last Congress — By Diane Farmer

Documentary On Last Congress

By Diane Farmer

Large Legs and short shorts . . . hot sun and cool beers . . . discussion and repercussion . . . they call it Congress, where the days are long and the nights are short.

It's hard to imagine anyone trying to cram what happens at Congress into a certain amount of time and recording tape. And that's what Owen Leeming is doing. At the moment he's just completing a half-hour documentary on Congress, to be broadcast during Capping week.

Owen Leeming went down to Congress for a few days with a tape recorder and the memory of his own experiences with Congress in 1953. He graduated Ma from Canterbury with a thesis on Jean-Paul Sartre, and was one of those people who do everything, including the Drama Club. French Club and others he's forgotten.

He announced at 3Ya and 3Yc then won a government bursary to study in Paris. Now, eight years later, he is working as a Talks Officer for the NZBC.

As he points out his own student days weren't so far away. The only difference that really overpowered him this year was what he calls "a terrific advance in casual fashion. There seemed to be less of everything and all the women just looked more beautiful or something."

Congress discussions he found still "facetiously serious" but Varsity songs are even further out. He attributes this to "a sort of adult consciousness and the presence of more senior students." Someone said that the most popular discussion topic has changed from politics to poetry.

Politics will probably come back again, but religion is out. It was the big subject when Leeming was a student. He feels that now something has happened in religion itself, a greater sophistication. Anyway, it's not really possible to wade into a mass discussion on who is God.

Volley ball at 3am, little fences of beer bottles after a Congress party, sermons on the mount—these are memories for those who've been to Congress and the objects of envy and derision from those who haven't. Unfortunately. Owen Leeming couldn't use many of his best recordings. There's the one he made of a great stamping queue outside the store, waiting for the beer supply to be put on the market. The unison chant was "We want the p—s." It's a pity it can't be used because technically the recording is perfect.

Every Congress throws up its intellectual idols as well as its pretty girls. This year Erich Geiringer was there in his great long grey serge cloak.

And Mike Noonan was prominent with a quick, sardonic wit. Peter Bland sparked off a controversy with his lecture on modern poetry. When asked about Congress, he said:

"Most of the university year should be run as Congress is run for only a Week. It's the only occasion when university life here seems to get away from the atmosphere of a night school or technical college. I took my wife and children to Congress for a holiday which rather limits my ability to make any experienced remarks on the students' romantic life."

Leeming's documentary is intended to present Congress as a whole, or the parts of it that he saw. It's a holiday of wit and beer, not from thinking but from the pressures that prevent thinking.