New Zealand Film-making

We have left this aspect to last and will deal with it only briefly, because we intend devoting a whole article to it in the next issue. Our coming article will mainly discuss the prospects of starting a film industry; here we will give some background material.

The lack of a local film industry (to be more precise, feature film industry; other sorts of film are made by outfits like the National Film Unit) has been a cause for much heart-searching for the film devotees in New Zealand. A lot of reasons have been advanced: the smallness of the country, the lack of local talent, inadequacies in our national psyche.

To make a feature film though, there are only two things that are absolutely necessary: money and markets. With sufficient money you can buy any amount of talents and skills — and there are a lot of emigre New Zealanders who are very proficient in the various aspects of film making, but who have had to leave New Zealand because of the of the lack of opportunity locally. The markets of course are needed to make the outlay of money worthwhile.

It is frequently pointed out that the cinema chains have both the money and the markets, and that while they make quite a bit out of the cinema in New Zealand, they put back in nothing. (Compare the $300,000 of public money that the Arts Council suggested be invested in film making, with the more than $400,000 that the Rank Organisation took out of New Zealand in 1973. The chains argue that they are under no obligation to subsidise local film making.

It isn't a matter of moral obligation. It is a matter of commercial function. A key role in the development of successful film industries is always played by distributors (in unsuccessful industries they do as Kerridge has done and diversify into other areas). In New Zealand the distributors (and the associated cinema chains) are overseas controlled. They are here to market American and English films, not to duplicate costs by making New Zealand ones. They hinder New Zealand film making passively but their hinderance is no less effective for that.