Talk / Show

Sit down and relax as staff from The Film Archive talk on a range of topics with excerpts from the Archive’s collection of historical and contemporary film and television. Talk/Shows have proved an excellent opportunity for audience speaker interaction and bringing our shared knowledge together. Come and enjoy our third series.

Talk/Show takes place over 3 Wednesdays in June and July. Each event is 75 to 90 minutes long and entry is just $5

Wednesday 27 June, 7pm
Ad in Your Eye: The New Zealand Television Commercial as Historical Document
Presented by Alex Burton: Manager Education & Production
An analysis of the quirky, the classic, the truly ground changing, the political, the offensive, the banned, and the hilarious (intentionally and unintentionally) from our advertising past. Not expected to be much used as a component of Archive programming, the commercials of different decades have proved a highly effective reflection of aspects of our society’s historical fabric.
Expect plenty of humour and audience interaction. Unavoidably entertaining!

Wednesday 4 July, 7pm Eyewitness to the ‘80s: The 1987 Sharemarket Crash
Presented by James Taylor: Cataloguer / Researche
The mid 1980s were heady days for the New Zealand sharemarket. Rogernomics, the economic reform and deregulation undertaken by the Fourth Labour Government, led to an explosion in finance and a boom on the stock exchange. New companies were listed and complex deals were made at a frenetic pace. Everyday people got in on the act while a new class of millionaire businessmen became media darlings. However "Black Tuesday", 20 October 1987, brought this to a crashing halt. Following overseas developments the market collapsed. In an atmosphere of pandemonium thousands of millions of dollars were wiped off the value of shares and high flying companies went under. This talk/show looks back at this notorious period of boom and bust using the Film Archive's Chapman Collection of 1980s TVNZ News and Current Affairs programmes. We'll witness, as contemporaries did, the bubble growing from 1984, watch as panic gripped the market in 1987, and see the consequences of "Black Tuesday" for sharebrokers, captains of industry and ordinary people.

Wednesday 11 July, 7pm
Free Radical: Len Lye’s legacy in Aotearoa/New Zealand
Sarah Davy: Director, Collect (Acquisitions and Research) New Zealand Film Archive Ngā Kaitiaki O Ngā Taonga Whitiāhua
The legacy of New Zealand born ‘maverick modernist’ Len Lye (1901-1980) still has an appealing freshness. There is something for everyone in his diverse output of films, kinetic sculptures, artworks, poetry and prose. Children adore his bright and exuberant ‘dancing line films’, spontaneously jumping up to dance at screenings. His complex artistic and philosophical concerns challenge curators and academics, while his iconic kinetic sculptures ‘Wind Wand’ and ‘Water Whirler’ enliven cityscapes and promote cultural tourism. In a free-ranging discussion we will examine the resonance of Len’s work in Aotearoa/New Zealand, showing several films including  ‘Experimental Animation’ (1934), Rainbow Dance’ (1936), ‘Trade Tattoo’ (1937) and ‘Musical Poster #1 (1940).