Media Peripheries - Situated in Aotearoa, Regional in Focus, Global in Scope

Settler Aesthetics: Visualizing the Spectacle of Originary Moments in The New World, Mishuana Goeman, University of Nebraska Press, 2023. Reviewed by M. Sellers Johnson

M. Sellers Johnson — 2024-04-26

n/a

The NZFC’s Diversity and Inclusion Strategy

Tom Boniface-Webb — 2023-05-15

In 2022 the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC) published its first fully comprehensive diversity and inclusion strategy, He Ara Whakaurunga Kanorau. The ambitious strategy aspired to draw together the existing framework of individually focused diversity funds, including those for Māori and women filmmakers, with an overarching set of policy intentions that aimed to position filmmakers from underrepresented groups at the forefront of the agency’s funding strategy. This article looks at how the NZFC aims to normalise its work in the diversity space through the creation of targeted funding strategies, and how the agency’s idealism, most notable in the breadth of the Diversity and Inclusion strategy and its sometimes nebulous content, can clash with the work of individual filmmakers, many of whom produce films that do not assimilate with the artificial framework. However, institutional intervention in the film industry undoubtedly plays a significant part in creating a vibrant national cinema for Aotearoa New Zealand that gives voice to many filmmakers who might have otherwise not been heard.

Exploring Age-Related Patterns in Internet Access: Insights from a Secondary Analysis of New Zealand Survey Data

Edgar Pacheco — 2014-02-14

For over two decades Internet access has been a topic of research and debate. Up-to-date evidence about key predictors such as age is important considering not only the complexities of access to the online medium but also the ever-changing nature of the Internet. This paper attempts to provide a stocktake of current trends in Internet access in New Zealand and their association with age. It relies on secondary analysis of data from a larger online panel survey of 1,001 adult users. Chi-square test of Independence and Cramer’s V were used for analysis. A key finding uncovers an emerging gap in the quality of Internet access. While fibre is the predominant type of broadband connection at home, older adults are significantly less likely to have it, and more likely to adopt wireless broadband. Also, a large majority across all age groups have a positive view of the Internet. This was higher among older adults who, interestingly, were slightly more likely to say that their concern about the security of their personal details online has increased in the last year. The implications of the results are discussed and some directions for future research are proposed.

Christine Jeff’s Rain (2001) as an Allegory of Settlement

Laurence Simmons — 2023-02-09

This article proposes a new reading of Christine Jeffs’ 2001 film Rain as an allegory of settlement. To do so it uses Stephen Turner’s essay ‘Settlement as Forgetting’ and makes reference to the work of Lorenzo Veracini and Patrick Wolfe in settlement studies. It takes Turner’s claim that settlement requires a forgetting in order to patch over the trauma of dislocation from the mother country and explores how structures of nostalgia, fetishism and trauma construct an image of a failed and broken nation; a settler society seeking to forget its own history, afflicted with the trauma of its primal separation from Britain, and under the surface expressing anxiety about the indigenous presence that prevents settler claim over the land and (settler) cultural identity. Jeffs’ film, it is proposed, critiques the fantasmatic elements of settlement, in and through which settlers untiringly strive to envisage themselves as whole, and which sanctions the narrative of that striving to appear to be continuous.