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New Zealand is a liberal democracy where state censorship is among the lightest in the world. However, in 1964, the government intervened in the controversy surrounding the publication of a primary schools bulletin called Washday at the Pa. This booklet which showed photographs of the home life of a rural Maori family, engendered strongly differing social views on the representation of Maori, the desirability or otherwise of censoring classroom resources, and the shifting dynamics of race relations in the country. This article scrutinizes the events of 1964 surrounding Washday at the Pa in detail to provide an account of the complex series of actions undertaken by government departments, government ministers, publishers, pressure groups, and commentators on both sides of the debate. It also extends its coverage to subsequent events such as the 2011 re-publication of the bulletin for a twenty-first-century readership. This article argues that the censorship of Washday at the Pa has had long-lasting ramifications and illustrates the evolution of attitudes to the representation of Maori over the decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heavenly Creatures (1994), a dramatized version of a scandalous real-life 1954 Christchurch matricide committed by teenage girls, is one of the most accomplished films ever produced in New Zealand. The article attempts to do justice to this complex film with a detailed analysis. While attention is paid to its place both in the evolution of Peter Jackson and Frances Walsh as film-makers and in the context of New Zealand film history, the primary focus is an analysis of the film text itself, especially in terms of its narrative techniques. Perhaps the film's greatest achievement is its success in taking the audience inside the subjective experience of protagonists Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme and the article provides insights into just how Jackson and Walsh achieved this considerable feat. It examines the different styles of storytelling that combine in the film's intricate narrational mode and scrutinizes the way Walsh and Jackson adapted Pauline's diaries into the script, demonstrating how the resulting narrative empowers the main characters by recruiting their imaginations to 'co-direct' the film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents an analysis of postwar representation of Hollywood films which part or all of their plots set in New Zealand. He brings attention that Hollywood's vision of New Zealand cinema after World War II as stereotypes and untold true stories mixed in complicated ways. He stresses that Hollywood narratives dominated their consumption of film stories because the cinema images of even New Zealand in those decades were constructed according to the conventions and signifying systems of Hollywood. He attempts to analyze several Hollywood films shoot in New Zealand.