Images of Dignity: Barry Barclay and Fourth Cinema

Images of Dignity is the first major study of the films of Barry Barclay, one of the most important film makers in New Zealand cinema history, and a major indigenous film maker world-wide. It analyses all Barclay's film and television work, including the groundbreaking Tangata Whenua television series and the feature films The Neglected Miracle, Ngati, Te Rua, The Feathers of Peace and The Kaipara Affair, establishing him as a figure who has made a radical contribution to New Zealand's understanding of both Maori community and the bicultural present. The book also draws parallels between Barclay's work and that of other indigenous film makers and activists working in the last 20 years. Images of Dignity places Barclay's work in light of the recent developments in the theorising of indigenous sociologies and cultures worldwide over the last decade. Barclay is a formally innovative film maker, especially in his blending of documentary and feature elements, and the study displays the ways in which such innovation works with ideas of narrative and of the image to comment upon New Zealand's history of cultural relations and its social present.

Author Biography

Stuart Murray is a Senior Lecturer in the School of English at the University of Leeds in the U.K. and has degrees from both the University of Exeter in the U.K., and the University of Waikato in NZ. Stuart Murray's main research focus is NZ literature and film and he has published several books on NZ literature and film, with more coming out this year. He taught a course on NZ film while at Waikato University and began communication with Barry Barclay while writing a chapter on him for the NZ Filmmakers volume, also securing funding to bring him to Leeds as a Visiting Professor in 2005.