Re: [-empyre-] speaking of film.. and global art industry

[su b <suballard@optusnet.com.au>]

Hi melinda et al.
I think it is impossible to answer the question of how a film is 
received 'locally.' My local may be very different to someone else's 
and we all have such different agendas when we sit down to watch a 
film. Maybe Heavenly Creatures is a film about Christchurch, and Once 
Were Warriors is somehow about South Auckland - two totally different 
locations in terms of social, cultural and economic mix.  Maybe people 
who live there felt affirmed, questioned, surprised, insulted, shocked 
- all of these responses add up to some kind of reception. But what I 
find interesting about these films is that both are fictions (or at 
least fictionalised interpretations) that somehow creep across the 
boundaries of non-fiction - in the same way that science fiction tells 
us more about the time when it was made (think jetsons or blade runner) 
than about the future. Heavenly Creatures and Once Were Warriors told 
us something about how we imagined our country. For me, as a southern 
girl, the first time i saw something resembling what I knew of nz on 
film was the adaptation of Janet Frame's autobiography "An Angel at My 
Table."
.
su