Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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offering one of the only filmmaking courses in New Zealand but numbers were limited
in the second year to an intake of five students for the Moving Image specialization.
Maurice Askew, who headed the Moving Image Department and was interviewed by
the Christchurch Star about the new course, gave the reasons for limiting the students as
being “a definite lack of equipment” and “a reluctance to put too many students out on
to a limited market”. 268 At that time, the prospects for getting a job in the film industry
“were not that good”, as Murray Freeth, who had been a film student a year ahead of
Ward at Ilam, points out. A student came out of Ilam as
An artist, a fine artist, having specialized in filmmaking as other students
[specialized] in printmaking or sculpture. The majority of [students] went off
and became art teachers. That was the only real prospect for employment,
otherwise [they could] go overseas and try and get involved in television or
filmmaking. Very few went into television […], some went to the National Film
Unit. But there wasn’t any work around really. 269
The lack of job prospects in the film industry when Ward first began studying at Ilam
was a reflection of the small-scale nature of the industry at that time. In the first half of
the 1970s, only three New Zealand features were released, all on 16mm film. Rudall
Hayward’s To Love a Maori (1972) was the first New Zealand feature to be made in
colour. Rangi’s Catch (Michael Forlong, 1973) was made for the British Children’s
Film Foundation and reformatted for New Zealand. 270 Geoff Steven’s Test Pictures:
Eleven Vignettes from a Relationship (1973) was screened only to film festival
audiences but, as Martin and Edwards point out, this film was significant in the genesis
of the New Zealand film industry in that it “provided a training ground and a
collaborative meeting place for many of the film-makers who were to become
influential in the upcoming period of rapid growth which would be obvious five years
later”. 271
By the time Ward had completed his course at Ilam this upsurge in filmmaking had
begun. The film that “effectively kick-started the ensuing boom in indigenous feature
268
David Young, "School for Young Filmmakers: Is It on the Right Course?," Christchurch Star 23
October 1971.
269
Lynette Read, interview with Murray Freeth, 25 January 1999.
270
Churchman, ed., Celluloid Dreams: A Century of Film in New Zealand 60-61.
271
Martin and Edwards, New Zealand Film 1912-1996 59.