Cut to the quick

Barry Barclay demanded that his name be removed from the credits of his documentary. Picture / Wairarapa Times-Age

Two years ago this month, in the community hall in the quiet village of Tinopai, on the north side of the Kaipara Harbour, film-maker Barry Barclay stood to speak.

Pretty much everyone in town was there. Everyone knew the portly, white-bearded Barclay and trusted him.

He had become a familiar figure in the small seaside settlement where he had been living for the previous couple of years, writing a book.

He was a deadeye and respected regular at the weekly games of pool in the hall's annexe. He had become familiar with the town, the harbour - the largest in the Southern Hemisphere - and the one subject everyone in town was always talking about: fishing.

In October, 2003, he had come up with an outline for a film, to be called The Kaipara Affair. Its subject matter was the depletion of the Kaipara's fish and seafood stocks because of over-fishing.

But, as someone who had lived in Tinopai, Barclay saw a wider, deeper theme. This was to be a film about how people who might not, in other circumstances, even like each other very much became unlikely allies in a common cause.

Over the next few months, Barclay - or more correctly, He Taonga Films, an Auckland-based production company - secured funding from New Zealand On Air and TVNZ to make the film. At the public meeting, just as the shoot was starting, Barclay sought to allay any community fears that big-city film-makers were coming to town to hijack their issue for a bit of sensationalist television.

"Before we even leave the city we know what we want you to say," he said, describing how he - and they - knew that television usually works.

"When we have got the words from you that we said we would get, we leave. Chances are you will never see us again." Barclay wanted to assure the townspeople that "on this shoot, we would be trying to break the pattern". But those words are sour in his mouth now.

Tonight, a film called The Kaipara Affair screens on TV One. But it bears only a resemblance to the film Barclay made. His 133-minute documentary, which screened at the midwinter film festivals last year, has been cut - by others - to 70 minutes.

In the process, says the film-maker, the entire meaning of the film has been changed.

The television edit, he says, in effect rewrites the storyline, practically silencing the women who are major characters, strongly implying that the issue is simply a flashpoint between Maori and Pakeha, and turning the film into "an easily dismissed rant by grumpy men about a resource management problem".

Two of the film's main characters, Mikaera Miru and Raewyn McDonald, end up, to use Barclay's words, as "a tino rangatiratanga nutter" and "a mildly racist Pakeha granny spooked out by a bit of local Maori protest".

On the face of it, the row may look like an artist being precious about his work, But Barclay says his concern is with the underlying issue of the way publicly funded television keeps - or rather does not keep - faith with the people whose stories it tells.

Barclay knew that the film would have to be cut for television screening, although the "hurtful and abusive" nature of the edit, undertaken by the film's producer, Don Selwyn, has upset him.

"This is an abusive cut that does damage to the people of [local hapu] Te Uri O Hau and Tinopai."

Last week, Barclay successfully demanded that his name be removed from the credits.

That is only half his battle. He wants a freeze on New Zealand On Air funding until "it sorts out its protocols". He asks how New Zealand On Air can agree to fund a project which, when it finds its way to air, has changed so much. "It's like taking somebody's novel and taking the last two chapters out and publishing it under their name. Your local council can't get planning permission to build a bridge and then build a hangar."

Certainly the participants are upset about what has happened. Raewyn McDonald, whom Barry describes as "a co-architect of the uprising in which a small town roared" but who has disappeared almost entirely from the television cut, feels "hurt and betrayed" by the edit.

"It's pretty horrible for me," she says. "It makes me look like a middle-aged white racist and the whole thrust of the thing - that it was about the community - has gone.

"We felt we had done so well, a little community getting together to do this thing, and all of a sudden it became a film about a wrangle."

Miru, who, as the film makes plain, is not a man to mince words, says he is "gutted and devastated".

"It's a complete betrayal. Where's the accountability when they give out taxpayers' money to make a film and we put ourselves on the line and this happens? Barry's film was about many issues and they have bastardised it."

It is not the habit of people who make television documentaries to live for two years in the community they want to film. Neither do they typically screen their films, as Barclay did in this case, to their subjects before delivery to the producer.

But Barclay, whose 1987 film Ngati was the first feature directed by a Maori, is a rare film-maker. Current affairs and documentary television is fast-turnaround, slick and shallow. Opposing factions spit soundbites at each other and within an hour - 43 minutes plus commercials - the subject is done.

Barclay, widely respected internationally for a string of documentaries going back as far as the 1974 Tangata Whenua television series, operates at a slower rhythm, making films that are alive to the complexity of their subjects. His perennial interest is Maori-Pakeha relationships, and some would say we need that now more than ever. But between the funder, producer and broadcaster, the film that the good people of Tinopai thought was being made is lost.

Don Selwyn says he was under a contractual obligation to TVNZ to deliver the programme at 70 minutes and that Barclay "wouldn't come to the party".

"The buck has to stop with me. It doesn't stop with him." He said the new edit had changed the style of the film but not its content. "It articulates the same issues."

There is no question that Selwyn acted within his rights as producer. TVNZ, for its part, agreed to screen a 70-minute film and says any argument about content is between producer and director. NZ On Air takes the same view, saying that, having funded the film, it cannot exercise control over the finished product.

The Weekend Herald understands that there has been discussion at NZ On Air board level about the matter but the organisation's official line is hands-off. Its Maori adviser, Tainui Stephens, says that NZ On Air is prohibited by statute from having editorial influence on programmes it funds.

"Having said that, if there is a breakdown and the community becomes vulnerable, that is of concern. That is part of the bigger picture we are looking at at the moment - how a community that offers its feelings and words in good faith, can have that safely transported to the screen. We are taking it on board and seeing what we can learn from it."

The split between funder and broadcaster, a creature of Rogernomics, in effect requires NZ On Air's hands-off policy despite the fact that it has a Rautaki Maori (Maori strategy) policy which, among other things, aims to "improve the broadcast experience for Maori practitioners" and "better manage the relationships between broadcasters and producers".

For Barclay, the gap between the policy and the practice is too wide. It's a safe bet that more than a few of the people of Tinopai - and other communities who have been part of the drive to get more of New Zealand on air - would agree.