Activism, community and governance: Barry Barclay's The Kaipara Affair (2005)

Abstract

This article discusses the most recent film made by Maori film-maker Barry Barclay, the 2005 documentary feature The Kaipara Affair, which centres on disputes over fishing rights in the Kaipara harbour in the North Island of New Zealand. It sees the film as a continuation of Barclay's method of activist filmmaking, which demands that Indigenous communities are represented through cultural modes and forms that extend from within the communities themselves. It also stresses the ways in which Barclay's film-making method revises a number of the traditions of activist documentary film-making. Finally, the article examines the controversy surrounding the recutting of the film for screening on national television, seeing the event as symptomatic of the cultural tensions that exist in New Zealand over the representation of Maori activism.

Keywords:

• New Zealand film
• Maori culture
• documentary
• television
• Indigenous cinema
• cinema and politics