From 'reality' TV to the reality of documentary making - the new civic impulse

Tame Iti featured on the cover of the latest Pacific Journalism Review. Image: Jos Wheeler/The Price of Peace

THE RISE of popular factual television has threatened the key claim on “reality” of documentary practice but there is hope on the horizon in the post-documentary era, says Pacific Journalism Review in the latest edition published this week.

The October edition examines the state of documentary practice in the Asia-Pacific region and also profiles the work of many contemporary filmmakers.

“Documentary programmes on broadcast television have been progressively replaced by lavish series, formulaic docu-soaps or reality TV,” writes edition co-editor Professor Barry King in his editorial.

He adds that a “troubling implication is that post-documentary forms threaten the legitimacy and credibility of the documentary tradition as a whole.”

King notes that one symptom of this “tangible appetite can be found in the rise of citizen journalism, which, however evaluated, still answers to civic impulse”. The surveillance of authorities also boosted this eyewitness function.

Exposes galore in NZ's Hot Air - and now Hot Air 2 needed for Pacific?

Raging fires around Athens, a still from the devastating Alister Barry climate change film Hot Air
by photographer Nikos Pilos.

IN THE wrap-up session of the Pacific Journalism Review 20th anniversary conference at the weekend, independent film maker Alister Barry was beaming.

"I've never had such a tremendous reception for the film," he admitted to Café Pacific. He was blown away by the tremendously engaged and enthusiastic response of a packed audience. Many said his climate change film Hot Air, premiered at the NZ International Film Festival in July, was inspirational.

But what needs to be done? The Vanguard Films investigation reveals in a devastating way how politicians are shackled when trying to confront such a critical global challenge as climate change. It also exposes the weaknesses of the NZ democratic system.

The lively discussion at AUT University centred on what strategies need to be followed. Some called for another documentary about climate change in the Pacific. A graduating student journalist from AUT was on hand to report the discussion.

Timor-Leste’s Max Stahl – documenting the audiovisual and development ‘war’

Filmmaker and digital historian Max Stahl with an image from his 1991 Santa Cruz
massacre footage in Timor-Leste. Photo: David Robie

By David Robie

A YEAR after Indonesian troops killed more than 270 peaceful demonstrators at the cemetery of Santa Cruz in the Timor-Leste capital of Dili in 1991, news footage secretly shot by a cameraman surfaced in a powerful new film.

The Yorkshire Television documentary, In Cold Blood: The Massacre of East Timor, screened in six countries and later broadcast in other nations, helped change the course of history.

Until then, countries such as Australia and New Zealand – in spite of a New Zealander being killed in the massacre – had been content to close a blind eye to the illegal Indonesian invasion in 1975 and the atrocities committed for a quarter century.

The cameraman, Max Stahl, who risked his own life to film the massacre and bury the footage cassette in a freshly dug grave before he was arrested, knew this evidence of the massacre would be devastating.

In a documentary made a decade later by Yorkshire Television’s Peter Gordon, Bloodshot: The Dreams and Nightmares of East Timor, that interviewed key players –including Stahl himself - in the transition to restored independence in 2002, Timorese leaders reveal just how critical this footage was in telling their story of repression to the world.

Sneak preview on Solomon Islands documentary in progress - help needed

By Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka

THIS is a sneak preview of a documentary about the Solomon Islands conflict that Larry Thomas from Fiji and I have been working on for years.

We started filming in early 2003, prior to the deployment of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). We went back and did more filming after the RAMSI intervention.

We are now in the editing stage and looking for funds to complete the film. If you have ideas on where and how to access funds to complete this important film, please let me know.

This film will contribute a lot to the history of the Solomon Islands conflicts and the aspirations of Solomon Islanders.

In filming, we travelled to Malaita, Western Solomons and around Guadalcanal.

'Neo-liberalism a lie a thousand times over' - tribute to Chávez

"WE ARE all Chávez" ... those were the chants from his supporters following the death of Venezuela's president. Losing his two-year battle with cancer, Hugo Chávez died on Tuesday at the age of 58 and Venezuela has declared seven days of mourning.

Always a controversial figure, reports Al Jazeera, Chávez rose from the ranks of the military to become the leader of one of Latin America's largest economies. And he divided opinion throughout his presidency.

But loved or loathed, Chávez always made an impression. One of the most colourful figures on the world stage, he styled himself as a leader of global anti-imperialism which was reflected in his international allies.

In 2002, Venezuela was supposed to be the first post-911 CIA coup. It worked - until it didn't.

A documentary film crew from Ireland's national broadcaster RTÉ "accidentally" captured the whole story - a story that the US news media conveniently forgets as it reflects on Chávez.

The Moruroa nuke testing legacy - a film tribute to stigma of de Gaulle's 'grandeur' victims

French servicemen watch a nuclear test at Moruroa atoll. A still from the documentary.

ALL THOSE nuclear-free Pacific campaigners from Tahiti's Oscar Temaru to a generation of Greenpeace activists would have been so delighted with the triumph of a 52-minute documentary at this year's FIFO Pacific Film Festival in Tahiti last weekend. A vindication for the "children of la bombe". The film Aux Enfants de la Bombe won the supreme award.

The Tahitian and French victims of the legacy of more than three decades of nuclear-testing in the Pacific finally got their story told. And what a graphic and poignant tribute.

All thanks to the courage of a French nuclear scientist, Bernard Ista, who defied French bans on filming the nukes and left shoe boxes full of damning evidence when he died from throat cancer at the age of 54. Here is an unsigned reviewer's posting on the FIFO website:

A WELL-DESERVED GRAND PRIX FOR AUX ENFANTS DE LA BOMBE

IT IS the prize we hoped that they would win - for the truth, for the forgiveness half-given, which makes the courage of those who took the dusty files out of the cupboard more credible. A prize in recognition of awareness and responsibilities was dreamt of above all.

Quick PINA postmortem from the sidelines

Another positive outcome from PINA ... work on a new Pacific media freedom documentary by the University of the South Pacific. Pictured: Director Don Pollock, Radio Djiido's Magalie Tingal and Samoa Savali editor Tupuola Terry Tavita. Photo: David Robie

AFTER THE furore over contrasting views on PINA 2012 and a season of personal insults and attacks, here is a calm and welcome voice of reason:

So congratulations to all our media colleagues who made it to PINA 2012.

To most of us the Pacific is home, this is where our bread and butter is so it is in our hands to either move the Pacific media forward or kill it with our bare hands. I am not for the latter!

There are some among us who are in the Pacific just to make money so I can excuse them for lacking the passion for the Pacific media.

I really do not care if it is PINA or PASIMA - as long they work on uniting the Pacific media and practitioners, train them, fight to give us better pay and to me that was the clear message coming out of PINA. And I must congratulate PINA for moving in that direction.

Vinaka and meitaki atupaka all.
Ulamila Kurai Wragg

• For some balanced coverage, go to the Pacific Media Centre
• Gallery of PINA 2012 pictures