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Article: New Zealand Film: National Identity and the Films of Vincent Ward
- Article from:
- Metro : Media & Education Magazine
- Article date:
- January 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright The Australian Teachers of Media Inc 2006. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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The development of New Zealand's national cinema attests to the changing nature of New Zealand's national identity.
EARLY films made in New Zealand, often by filmmakers from Europe and america, rested on a vision of New Zealand as a remote pastoral paradise; a kind of antipodean arcadia, populated by Maori noble savages and dusky smiling maidens. Other early films depicted various aspects of colonial life from the point of view of the colonizers, but this began to change when films such as Rewi's Last Stand (Rudall Hayward, 1940), Broken Barrier (John O'Shea, 1952) and To Love a Maori (Rudall & ramai Hayward, 1972) attempted to come to terms with New Zealand as a bicultural society, and ...