TVNZ?s editing infuriates director

Wairarapa filmmaker Barry Barclay is calling for all NZ On Air support to be frozen until funding rules are tightened in the wake of a rogue edit of his latest award-winning film.
Barclay, of the Ngati Apa iwi, said an original 133-minute edit of The Kaipara Affair last month won the best documentary award at the 11th Annual Dreamspeakers Film Festival in Canada where he was also inducted into the indigenous film organisation's Walk of Fame.
A 70-minute cut of the film that was jointly funded by NZ On Air and TVNZ, is set to screen this Saturday on TV One at 9.40pm.
Barclay has demanded that his name be removed from the credits of the television version, which he said to his knowledge will be done.
In 2003 he began writing a concept outline of the film, which came to be focussed on the concord achieved between Maori and non-Maori residents of Tinopai on the Kaipara Harbour, who joined forces defending their nearby waters from commercial over-fishing.
He spent almost three years living in Tinopai writing, preparing, and shooting the documentary, he said, and the television edit betrays not only the essence of his work but the intention of the funding and the community of Tinopai itself.
Barclay wrote a document that specifically details his concerns ? A Pistol On The Table ? and submitted copies to Prime Minister Helen Clark and to the board of NZ On Air.
Miss Clark had referred the paper on to the Minister of Broadcasting Steve Maharey, Barclay said, although NZ On Air had made no reply as yet.
"What I am very angry about is the nature of the edit ? the type of edit that emerged," he said.
"It's only once in a blue moon that something goes seriously wrong and it wouldn't be a good thing for NZ On Air to be sitting in on every final edit.
"But if somebody in the community comes up with a major problem with a publicly-funded project, the funder should be ready to examine the case toward getting a good outcome. But there are no protocols as such or guidelines at all.
"I think this is totally unscrupulous and allows producers, or directors, or broadcasters to chop the material in any way that needn't be in line with the brief or the original intention of the funding.
"This is throwing money to the wind and it affects the vulnerable communities. This is especially so for Maori.
"The tragic thing of our history is that if things are made to the stereotype where Maori are in bad shape ? or wreckers or haters or protesting ? then that's a good programme and great TV.
"The thing about this particular project is that it may be considered a kind of breakthrough in that the festival version showed the two communities bringing their own worlds together ? and it's quite hard to point to any New Zealand programme in the past 10 years that has done that.
"The full force of the community coming together has been cut."
Barclay said. it would have been difficult but a 70-minute edit could have retained the integrity of the film "without stomping on the mana of Te Uri o Hau and betraying the people of Tinopai".
"It could be a bumbling edit but nevertheless if there had been a censor there it couldn't have been more effective. It's absolutely bordering on censorship."
Barclay said NZ On Air had turned a deaf ear to his pleas to sight the television edit although he had viewed it after it was given broadcast approval.
Mike Bodnar, acting communications manager for NZ On Air, said the organisation was by law prevented from "having editorial input in the projects we support".
He said the board of NZ On Air were still reviewing the document submitted by Barclay and that the funding body was aware of what it deemed "a creative difference" between Barclay and the programme's editors.