Wildcat: The Struggle for Democracy in the New Zealand Timberworkers' Union

A documentary exploring the battle over public education in New Zealand from the 1980s through the 1990s

In the years since New Zealand politicians began to grapple with climate change our greenhouse gas emissions have burgeoned. Alister Barry’s doco draws on TV archives and interviews with key participants to find out why.

Someone Else’s Country looks critically at the radical economic changes implemented by the 1984 Labour Government - where privatisation of state assets was part of a wider agenda that sought to remake New Zealand as a model free market state. The trickle-down ‘Rogernomics’ rhetoric warned of no gain without pain, and here the theory is counterpointed by the social effects (redundant workers, Post Office closures). Made by Alister Barry in 1996 when the effects were raw, the film draws extensively on archive footage and interviews with key “witnesses to history”.

The story of unemployment in New Zealand and In A Land of Plenty is an exploration of just that; it takes as its starting point the consensus from The Depression onwards that Godzone economic policy should focus on achieving full employment, and explores how this was radically shifted by the 1984 Labour government. Director Alister Barry's perspective is clear, as he trains a humanist lens on ‘Rogernomics' to argue for the policy's negative effects on society, as a new poverty-stricken underclass developed.

Don Brash stepped down as leader of the National Party in November 2006, the day before the release of investigative journalist, Nicky Hager's book ‘The Hollow Men’. Award-winning documentary maker Alister Barry (‘Someone Else's Country’, ‘In a Land of Plenty’) brings this exposé of behind-the-scenes politics in an all-too-real political thriller. Based on thousands of confidential emails, reports and memos written by Bash and his closest advisers, ‘The Hollow Men’ is an extraordinary story of unprincipled and anti-democratic politics.

Covers the 12-week-long strike at Kinleith Pulp and Paper Mill, owned by New Zealand Forest Products in January 1980.

Covers the 12-week-long strike at Kinleith Pulp and Paper Mill, owned by New Zealand Forest Products in January 1980.