Film Co-op to foster films at Victoria

Graeme Cowley

Recently an advance has been made in Victoria's inadequate cultural amenities, with the film society's forming of an independent film-makers Co-op. This is an important step towards serious treatment of films in New Zealand.

The object of the Co-op is to foster individual film-making by providing the necessary equipment and knowledge for anyone who wishes to make his own film. It is hoped that the amenities of the Co-op will be fully used by interested students, and members of the public alike. The forming of the Co-op, as with the instigation of the magazine Kino, is the inevitable product of the wide appeal and success of the Film Society since its re-establishment last year.

Film Scholarship in New Zealand is virtu-ally non-existent. The school of fine arts at Canterbury has a course "design for moving image" which, although almost irrelevant, is the closest to film scholarship that we are able to get, in the country.

The consequences are widespread and obvious. We have a National Film Unit that is creatively stagnant, and refuses to recognise that film under the right composition may become an art. Instead it prefers to isolate itself in its own deceptions, never attempting to utilise the talent that is available in the country—the composers, the writers, the artists. The Unit iself is not to blame for this, but is a product of New Zealand's cinematic naviety.

Film has been a neglected medium in this country. Few people have any idea of what it is all about. Our critics degenerate to flowery plot precis. They talk about the "actor." and the director's "technical skill" whatever these may be. It seems that our closest resemblance to a film company, is aiming at a similar fictional goal, only replacing the "actor" with the "hills." To my mind a country exists in its people.

We must not be too harsh, however, the purse strings obviously reach further than the art.

Film scholarship then is important to our late, but increasing emphasis, on the film as mass media. The forming of the Film Co-op is obviously only a beginning to an increasing concern with the potential of film, but it is a point where (independant from all commercial bonds) the film may become completely individual. It is this state of freedom that the Co-op is endeavouring to foster. Freedom that is imperative in the formation of any art form.