REVIEW: Delving into the complexity of NZ documentary

Abstract

Review of: Observations: Studies in New Zealand documentary, by Russell Campbell. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2011, 260 pp. ISBN 978-0864736567

Russell CampbellL, author of Observations: Studies in New Zealand Documentary has been described as a ‘partisan reporter’, the book as a ‘series of dispatches from the front’. Aligning the author on a series of borders between intellectual and practical, the book has been divided into three appropriate sections; Workers and Stirrers, State of the Nation and Kiwi Culture that support the author’s commitment to the latter. Woven in, topics such as industrial unrest, feminist movements and Māori resurgence capture a sense of the contested versions of New Zealand depicted in these documentaries.