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What drew you to research? Jonathan Dennis. A huge amount of things sort of came together at the same time. So I'd worked at the New Zealand Herald as an image archivist, and I've been looking at the collection in the basement of those beautiful old glass plate negatives and lots of them were of Maori people and they had and dressed in traditional costumes. And I thought, Who are these people? None of them are catalogued. There's no information about them. Do I know if they are dressed [00:00:30] in their traditional actual, you know, outfits of the day? Or are they dressed for the camera? I know nothing. So I started asking my boss, you know, who are these people and should we be doing something with these images, and can we digitise them and share them? And she said, If they know we have them, they'll want them back. And I Who is she talking about? She was talking about tribes. If tribes knew those images were at the Herald, they'd want them back. And so we weren't gonna do anything with them, which I found really disappointing. [00:01:00] And so I started taking myself up to a UT to the Maori classes that, um, that Jason King and Val Smith were running at because I thought at least if I got a little bit of language, I might get a little bit more understanding. And the Herald actually, um, allowed me to take time off in the evening because I was on night shift to do that, which is pretty cool. And [00:01:30] I just started thinking about this world that was seemed quite parallel to my world, and I wanted to know, had anybody else been thinking about this and archiving circles because I wasn't a trained archivist. I was just someone who'd fallen into it for my master's in media studies. So that that was that was the beginning. And then nothing happened for a while because I went off to Australia and did other things. But then I read Barry Barclay's book, [00:02:00] and there's a chapter or so in there where he talks about the New Zealand Film archive and, uh, the notion of and the notion of and what that means. And he mentioned this Jonathan, Dennis and I quite literally walked off to the library to find the book on Jonathan Dennis, and it wasn't on the shelf. And Wang Lu, who knew Barry Barkley, who was, I think she was mentioned in the book in Barry's book, she said, Go [00:02:30] ask Roger Horrocks and Roger Horrocks said, That's a great topic for a PhD and that was it. Off I went. But the other bit of that was that, um when I did start reading about him and thinking about him, I thought, Oh, this is a gay man. He was out and my dad was a gay man who hadn't been out. And I thought, How many narratives are there of out gay men running institutions in New Zealand? I actually don't think there are that many of [00:03:00] them. Um, this guy seemed passionate and fun and out and colourful and gay in the most lovely way, and I wanted to find out a bit more about him. So that was the other side of it coming into play. And that's caused tension between the sort of queer angle that I've taken, particularly with queer theory and a sort of more traditional view of, um, what it was he was doing, and particularly in relation to Maori [00:03:30] and things. Sometimes people haven't always been comfortable, but I've been trying to bring those two elements together. So So let's delve into Jonathan. Um, so to speak. And, um, yeah, tell me about him. What? So you know what? What was he like? What? What did you find? Well, I never met him, but I listened to interviews he'd done, and I watched videos of him, and I read everything I could find about him, and he [00:04:00] was seems to have been extremely opinionated. Uh, he was a bit black and white about things he loved. He seemed to love things or hate them. And he said So it's a little bit unusual for New Zealand men at a particular time. I think, um, people always described when I talked to them his clothes, his bright Hawaiian shirts and, um, maybe chequered trousers that didn't really match the Hawaiian shirt. But that became part of the look. You know, Lindsay Shelton talked [00:04:30] about being in Italy with him. They were walking along the street, I think, in Milan, and Jonathan was in this typical brightly coloured outfit. And these, uh, beautiful suited Italian men were walking towards them in a line and sort of part of like the Red Sea when they saw Jonathan because they sort of didn't really know how to respond or react to him. Um, he was. He was very tall. People often talked about his height and the fact that he was really fun and people [00:05:00] who were friends with him thought that he was just a a person who loved loved film. That was his focus. That was his focus More than anything else. He loved film, but he loved sharing the delights of film and sharing that world with people. And he found ways to connect with people through through his love of film. Um, yeah. And his sister said he was a He was always a collector of small things, which I thought was a lovely comment. He [00:05:30] he was always filling his pockets with stones or toys. Or, you know, he tells one story about living because he grew up living in grand hotels because his father was a general manager. He opened up every I think cornflake packet in the cupboard for the guests to pull out the little plastic toy inside, and he got in a lot of trouble for that. But he was always after the gem, the beautiful thing and the bright coloured thing. It's a bit of a magpie. I think it's fascinating what resonates with people [00:06:00] after somebody's past, what the words they use to describe somebody. So you know, whether it's the height or the the Yeah, yeah or Elizabeth Ally, saying he flew on, flew on in on his own personal rainbow. I really liked that that notion that he was just quite different from everybody else. He seemed to come from nowhere, and here he was fully formed, doing his thing. So how does that fit into New Zealand in the 19 fifties and sixties? Well, I asked a lot of people about [00:06:30] that, and, uh, he didn't fit in, you know, he said, he he described himself as he said, I wasn't Boise, which even Boise is a kind of unusual term. He wasn't like the other boys. Tim, his brother, said, while he himself was outside and um and particularly around Mount Cook when they lived at the Hermitage. Um, he was, um, learning how to build things with his mate who worked there, and he was shooting rabbits in front of [00:07:00] the, uh the guests windows. When they were eating in the dining room, Jonathan was inside. He was inside. He had dolls. He had toys. The women in the house loved him and adored him and flocked around him, and he had wrapped them around his finger. And a lot of people talked about that. Jonathan could wrap me around his finger. He could do whatever he liked. So were words like, say, gay or homosexual or queer Used in his family. Did [00:07:30] his family know about his sexual identity? Like from a young age? His family did know. But words were never used this according to his family. So, um, one of the stories Tim tells is they were all living, I don't know, would have been would have probably been a central terrace in Wellington by then, I think, and in the morning Laurie, their father would come around and bring a cup of tea to everybody while they were still in bed. And sometimes, you know, Jonathan would have his boyfriend in bed with him, and it was just good morning. [00:08:00] And here's your cup of tea. There was never any questioning or outrageousness, and you know, Jonathan later told stories of having two boyfriends at the same time, and they were staying in the big water bed at I think it was Central Terrace. So family always knew he was. He was just Jonathan. He was the way he was. But no, definitely not the word queer. Um and you know, as we know in the fifties sixties time, the word queer was a real insult for people. But even now that those of his generation often don't [00:08:30] seem to use the word queer so much, Um, but as his family, his family, as far as his siblings are concerned, say that, um, his parents were very open minded people. They just took everything as it came and they were intelligent and interested in the world. But at the same time, Jonathan says, he went through a period of being absolutely enraged by them, and he treated them very badly, and it seems to be all tied with him being sent to boarding school. [00:09:00] And Tim had already gone to boarding school in Christchurch, and he really thrived. Um, but Jonathan got there a couple of years later and he wasn't like the other boys and a lot of them were the Sons of Canterbury farmers and cricket was on the menu. And, um, being artsy or being in any way, um different from a sort of a kind of conformist, standardised, normalised version of masculinity wasn't particularly acceptable. Um, So [00:09:30] I interviewed his friend who went to school at the same time, who said that there was a heck of a lot of bullying, that Jonathan somehow seemed to rise above it, he said. But Jonathan himself said, I made myself transparent so that they wouldn't get to me. I made myself invisible. Um, so the same time as other people saw him as flamboyant and colourful at least as a child, there were times where he knew he had to hide himself away to survive. And he was very angry with his parents for sending [00:10:00] him into that environment for a long, long time. And do you think, is that where the kind of love of film came in was that he could actually go and hide or hide himself away in a cinema in the world? Yeah, So he'd sign himself out of school whenever he could, and he'd say he was going to his sister, Simon, who was living in Christchurch at the time. But actually he was going around the corner to the local theatre and the local theatres at that time, Um, other people [00:10:30] have described and Jonathan and as well as talked about the fact that they had these crazy repertory screenings. I don't know how to say that word properly, actually, but, um, of whatever they could get their hands on. So they had classic cinema and silent cinema and westerns and everything, and he lapped it all up. And so in the archive, there are wonderful postcards and letters to his parents who were in various places at that time saying, I've seen this film, Um, and it was 262 metres, or however long It was like he always [00:11:00] wrote down how long the film was, and and or been in feet in those days, wouldn't it? And this is what happened in this film, and I really loved it. And it was a way for him to escape. And in later years, when Peter Wells, his friend, wrote Long Loop home and some of his memoirs, Jonathan read them and then Peter and he talked about Peter's notion of escape into those films. And, um, Jonathan felt very similarly, Peter said. And, um, Jonathan uses, and I think it's [00:11:30] the Centenary of cinema. A wonderful quote from A I think it's a Janet frame story where a mother and perhaps her daughter go off to the cinema and this is their magical time, and he really felt that that was his magical time. And as Peter says, you could imagine you were the the, um, the heroine being kissed by the hero at the end of the film. It was a very sort of Amex sexual reality, and, uh, your imagination could could fly free. So was was Jonathan [00:12:00] like, aware of his, um, sexuality, like when he was at boarding school? What a great question. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. Um, I never read anything, and no one ever said to me what his experience in adolescence was in terms of his understanding of his own sexuality. II. I don't remember him ever saying he had one moment where he thought, Oh, this is who I am. But the story he does tell is [00:12:30] at 16 writing to the now What did they call themselves? There was a sort of homosexual law Reform League at that time, and they were very proper. And they were. Lots of them were lawyers and things, and they wanted to change the law. And he wrote and said, I want to be part of your your group. I'm I'm only 16 but I think this is very important. But interestingly enough, he never said so when he did his interviews. But when you read the letter, it says I am not a homosexual, but [00:13:00] I think this is really important. Um, and he tells the story of how the secretary was very concerned that this would be misconstrued if a 16 year old turned up at their meetings. So he said, You can only come with a chaperone. And so Jonathan's dad, Laurie, came with him to the meetings. So he went to the meetings, and he he talked and listened and understood about homosexual law reform. But it's interesting. In that first letter, he said, I am not a homosexual, but but he was only 16. [00:13:30] What year was this? Well, he was born in 53. So do the math man. That that letter is is in his papers in the archive, and it's It's It's lovely. And I think it shows a generosity of spirit and an intelligence and a thinking outside the box that a lot of 16 year old boys, you know, whatever their sexual orientation would be would just not not be there at 16, you know? So this will be [00:14:00] 1968 1969. Well done. Yeah. When you think about 1969 in San Francisco, that's a very different thing than 1969 in New Zealand and Roger Horrocks. And many people have said that we didn't have our sixties till the seventies, you know? But it was It was a conservative place, and you were judged very harshly for and And how even would you know as a 16 year old that this kind of society existed? Indeed, indeed. II. I haven't seen anything. I hope it turns out where he talks [00:14:30] about. Oh, you know, I heard this on the radio. I read this piece of news or my father, Laurie gave me an article that he'd seen or my mother talked about it, or I have no idea. Were there other members of of the Dennis family that that were, um, queer that he could, You know, that that he could kind of relate to none that I know of. But a a family member who was a broad minded fellow who Jonathan talked about [00:15:00] having influence on him was his uncle. So his uncle, who was the Christchurch librarian, Ron O'Reilly and, uh, Jonathan would also escape to see Ron and Ron had, you know, these McCann paintings on his walls and and, um, the, uh, one of Jonathan's cousins. Rachel remembers Jonathan's mother arguing with her father because these paintings were obscene. And how could you have them in the house? [00:15:30] And Jonathan remembers those arguments because he'd grown up in hotels with beautiful landscape paintings. You know, there was nothing like these, these works on the walls, these modern works. And so this uncle was different and he was very into films. He was part of the film society, and you know that the film society at that time and prior to that had been regarded as a place for perverts and radicals. It's a quote from, um, I got it in my thesis I can't remember who it's a quote from, but that was, you know, that was the place the perverts [00:16:00] and the radicals went because they were able to bring in films into the country that no one else could see. And I've talked to quite a few people about this, the kind of tangential to the thesis. I thought it was really interesting how many gay men I know older gay men went to the film festival, the film festivals and the film society. The film society was the beginning of it, and they saw these films that showed them other worlds, and I think that was really important. It was important to Jonathan. It was important to Ron. So Ron O'Reilly, the uncle [00:16:30] he's quoted in mates and lovers, which is by Chris Brick. Brick. Yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you. Um, so Ron's quoted in there because he's he's writing to toss Williston or one of his mates. And he's saying, You know, really, we're all homosexual. It's part of who we are. And that's kind of a quite a modern thing to say for I think it was in AAA letter written in the fifties or something. You know they've been talking about what it meant to be a man, what it meant to have a sexual identity, [00:17:00] why there were even issues or problems with being homosexual or heterosexual. So this was a guy who was who was an open minded fellow. I mean, he he'd been married, he had two kids, and I'm not saying what his sexuality was. But I'm saying I think he was an intelligent person who was accepting of who people were in the world. So how do you think Jonathan would label himself? I believe he used the term gay. But other people have said to me, [00:17:30] You know, during the time of homosexual law reform and the the agitations and the marches, he went on some of the marches. But some people have said, you know, he wasn't standing up there being the drum, being the activist on the front line. He wasn't doing that kind of work. And I don't know if they said that because they felt he wasn't doing enough work or they were just making an observation. Um, Malcolm McKinnon, his friend, says that they had a drink the night the homosexual law reform went through 11 of the clubs that they went to, Um, [00:18:00] but I, I mean, I. I think he would have proudly said he was gay if he was asked, but I really think he didn't see his sexuality. Well, he said, I it was never an issue in my occupation. It was never an issue for me. But other people have said that they knew it was so you know, Elizabeth Ally says that when she first wanted him, you know, flying in on his coloured rainbow to do work at UM national Radio and or concert. I think she was [00:18:30] originally programming for concert. Her manager said his voice is too camp. She said, Don't touch it. If you try and get him to do voice modification or anything like that, he'll run away. There's nothing wrong with his voice. So she had to buffer him and protect him for, and she clearly never told him that he was. His voice wasn't appropriate for radio at that time, according to the managers. So what's that? Early nineties? I mean, far out. It seems outrageous to me. Um, [00:19:00] and I think there were champions through his life who probably buffered him in the way that Elizabeth did from bureaucracies because he didn't love them. And he tend to just tell people what he thought, which didn't do his career any good. Um, so sometimes he may have been a little bit oblivious to what was going on for him. You know, he was the adored younger child. He was, um, I, I think he he saw he saw love and collegiality and friendship wherever he went. [00:19:30] I think, even though he in later years, he got cynical, he did see the positive side of things. He did see what he wanted to see in the world. And he, you know, he thought that he knew that there was nothing wrong with being gay. So he assumed everybody else thought that, too. That's what I'd say. That's, um, fascinating to to hear about that kind of. I mean, I would call it kind of hidden homophobia, you know, 19 nineties. I mean, that's not that long ago. That's right. It's It's very [00:20:00] recent. Um, but, you know, that really made me think when she told me that and then I thought about the voices I knew from National radio and concert FM, particularly the male voices over a long time. And they were a kind of they were a kind of standardised deep, kind of not not Kiwi bloke, more refined than Kiwi bloke. But and then it makes you think, Well, what do you think? A gay voices or a straight [00:20:30] voices or a How did they even, you know, why did they think that voice was camp as opposed to another voice? What does camp mean and what I mean? Gosh, you know, if if you let one of those voices on the radio what would happen, what will happen next? That's right. That's right. But you know his His radio shows were incredibly popular. They won awards. I mean, you know, you worked on some of them, Uh, and people loved people, loved them. And his voice was distinctive. [00:21:00] And it was, you know, uh, he he he said colourful things. He he said passionate things. And part of that was was actually a really beautiful speaking voice, a lovely voice to hear and listen to, because he had done quite a lot of acting and stuff in the seventies. That's right. So in the seventies, he got involved in a theatre company. And they had some pretty, uh, well known people that had Anna Camp and Paul and, um, even [00:21:30] Sam Neil, which is very exciting. And in England, And Denise, who is now Denise, she's changed her name. Uh, and they did. They began to do plays about what they considered the New Zealand condition. And they did plays about Gallipoli. Uh, you know, and not the sort of average, celebratory, nationalistic, jingoistic stuff it was more about, Really, How it was, how it genuinely was for people. So he was doing that [00:22:00] for a long time. He'd also done some radio in the seventies, early eighties for one ZB, I think, um, Fri Hendrix talks about Jonathan going off on Sunday morning to do early morning live radio. Um, you know, doing a Star Wars reviews and things like that. And you can imagine what he thought about Star Wars. He didn't like it very much. Um, so yes, he he had he did have experience [00:22:30] and he and he had a confidence about it. He he said, you know, he could really feel like he was in the in the zone on on stage and And he used all those skills later on, when he became a public figure and he talked about that mask that he would put on so he could do the I'm the director of the archive and, uh, do those public talks that he did because, interestingly enough, despite everything else I've said, I would say he's a He was an introvert. Um, he needed to be able to choose the people [00:23:00] he was around in order to feel really genuinely comfortable. Otherwise, he had to put on the performance space in order to cope with things. And I think he probably found the public side of things tiring. Uh, but they were necessary to what he wanted to achieve. And what did he want to achieve? Well, domination. Um, probably, um, for everybody to understand the amazingness of the films that he thought were beautiful and wonderful [00:23:30] And he, you know, he thought silent film was the best film, and this was quite a purist. Um, Roger Horrocks calls, calls someone like Jonathan Sunny east and never quite sure how to pronounce it CINEAST and TE. And there's an acute somewhere, um, a pure film lover and so you know, he was encouraging the film festival and working with the film festival to bring in the classics of silent cinema, [00:24:00] play them with the orchestra, and that still goes on today with the film festival. Um, he would have to get the best print. And if it wasn't the best print, he would have to get another print, even if the film festival had to pay twice for it, which film festival didn't like very much. And fair enough, Um, but he wanted people to really understand how what masterpieces these films were. And he was deeply frustrated when people didn't, uh and I think that's that's why for him, going to Italy to the [00:24:30] film festival as long as many times as he could was very important to him because there were people there who he felt really understood the power of silent cinema in a way that he often felt New Zealanders didn't. But then I think he probably had that thing about feeling like everyone was a philistine and he and he knew a lot more, and that made him feel good too, you know. So he was frustrated by people, but at the same time it gave him a sense of status, I think, to be the person who really understood how incredible these films were. But it's interesting that you were saying [00:25:00] that he he did a lot of public speaking and and I guess my experience of him was that he was always incredibly generous with his his knowledge so he wouldn't hold on to it. He would want you to understand and would take the time to explain it. I think that's a super good point that he if he was asked to speak or if there was an opportunity, he would he would take it and he was generous. So there are neat, um, uh, papers [00:25:30] in the archive that I didn't really get to do anything with yet that I'd love someone to do with something with which are notes from lectures he gave all over the country. So he was asked to speak at film festivals, or, um, he was asked to speak at the film and television school here in Wellington or come up to Victoria Uni and speak to the history classes about the history of film in New Zealand, or he go to A and speak about Maori films in the collection. And you know, they did this. He did this on a real shoestring. [00:26:00] There wasn't a lot of money for it, but he would do it because he thought it was important to do it. And you're right. He shared his knowledge. He wasn't someone who thought information was power. Um, and I think that probably made him hard for bureaucrats to really know how to deal with because he wasn't. This wasn't about getting himself to the top of the hierarchy in any traditional way. This was about his passion for film and sharing that with everyone in all sorts of ways. So, yeah, you're right. He was He was generous. And if [00:26:30] people came to him and said, Oh, you know, I'm really interested in this film from blah, blah, blah. He'd come and help them with it. So I've spoken to people who are scholars at Victoria and they say, I remember Jonathan helping me. When I went into the archive, he'd come in and he'd always he'd have some new piece of information for me, and he'd always share it with me. And that was how he that was how he tried to run the archive as an open place and as a place where anyone could come. You didn't have to be a scholar. [00:27:00] You didn't have to be, As he said, archive literate. He he he'd take the archive to you if he could, you know, bundle up the huge big old film projector in the bloody car and drive it out to the middle of nowhere to show on a which was at that time being done up. So there's like sheets of plastic everywhere and chickens running around. But that's how you get people to see the So that's how you do it. So it's not just good enough to kind of preserve the films, but actually to [00:27:30] make them accessible and to have them out there. Yeah, and that's really hard. I can see how archives Excuse me, you can get focused on, um, preservation and get so worried about, you know, sharing their stuff. But it comes back to that sort of, um, that film archive argument that gets centred around Ernest Ren at BF I and at the cinema tech, um, France. Uh, you know, he was always showing everything [00:28:00] all the time, even if he only had one print. And, uh, Ernest was saying No. If we don't have a preservation print, we can't share it. Which was hugely frustrating for people. And Jonathan, you know, he knew how other people had approached these things, and that was the great advantage of starting the archive. Later in 81 when a lot of the big archives that started in the thirties and forties was he could take what he thought was best from all the different types of, um, approaches. And he definitely thought that presentation was [00:28:30] enormously important. And I think he knew. And maybe I just say this because I've done research myself and I want to believe it. But I think he knew that researchers and people from the outside brought so much to the archive because they had expert knowledge, and he certainly knew he learned that Maori people had expert knowledge about the films that they were looking at. So that made me think, you know, those, um, glass plate negatives that the Herald I was looking at many years ago, if I'd been able to say, Here are all these images, What [00:29:00] do you know about them. Boy, that could have been interesting. We could have been sharing the images. We could have been thinking about them differently and talking about them differently Could could change a whole institution to start opening out in those ways. So where are those plate negatives now? As far as I know, they're still in the basement of the Herald. Yeah, so? So I got a I got a small budget agreed to after a while to, um, to scan some of them. And there was a wonderful, [00:29:30] uh, image. Um, handler at the Herald called Andrew Robson who was interested in history, and he'd helped me use the big old scanner in the Mac. So I'm no good with Mac. I only use PC, and we would cann these things and we would do some research and try and figure out what it was we were looking at. So some of them are scanned, but most of them are just sitting, you know, just sitting in the basement. And how did the Herald acquire them? Uh, well, the herald started, um, in the late 18 hundreds, so they were taking photos [00:30:00] all around the country from the time where there were, there was that kind of equipment available to take photos. So they were their own collection originally owned by Wilson and Horton, I think, was the company that owned The Herald. And they were a civic minded bunch at that time. And they, uh, they had photographers going around the country taking photos. They had a lot of amazing photos of Auckland being built. Um, and then they developed a relationship with the Auckland Museum. So they were sharing with the [00:30:30] museum. The images they had. They were starting to do exhibitions together. But then the Herald was sold to Tony O'Reilly and and it changed. It changed a lot. So I think half the collection is at the Auckland Museum now. But the rest are still at the Herald because that relationship stopped. So Johan's culturalism, How did that do you know how that began? Well, he said he never went on to a until the late seventies. Um, and he didn't say what [00:31:00] that was in the late seventies, but really for me, from what I can understand, Harris happened to him. You know, um, they had found out through American colleagues and Audrey to talk to me a little bit about this, that there seemed to be a copy of the Devil's pit floating around in the States. I think a collector had it, and that's also called and Southern Cross. And so that was an early film shot in New Zealand by I think Universal Pictures [00:31:30] and, um, he had heard that there might be this film. They might be able to negotiate and get it. And indeed, the New Zealand Film Archive was able to get that film and that that someone who told him the Star Princess might still be alive. And so he was calling around, you know, trying to find the star because that's what he did. If he could, um, if was in town, even if she was sitting on a cruise ship and didn't want to come off it, he was going to interview her. So he did, and that's pretty impressive. He sought [00:32:00] out the people he thought were significant, and for him, the Devil's pit was a significant New Zealand film. And so the star of it was a significant person in just the same way that Li was. And you know, he called up with and they had. There was a bit of confusion about the name of the film and was it the same film? And finally they agreed it was and they met and about 82. So you can see his diaries in the archive and meeting with Harris. And he said, from there they [00:32:30] they just started this extraordinary friendship. It was very close, very quickly, and she began to talk to him about things. So her daughter-in-law Beryl, says that they'd sit together at um where where lived and would teach him songs, Maori songs and help him think about, um, how he would do an introduction and Maori and, um, [00:33:00] there were other Maori people involved in helping him with this stuff. But I think he was completely comfortable with as his guide, and she she loved him and he loved her and they just loved working together. And there's some lovely handwritten notes of one of his speeches. I think she gave at Port on about what the film fes, what the film archive has done and why in relation to um, the Maori World. And she felt very [00:33:30] confident that what they were doing was extremely important, and she was the she was gonna champion it, and and And he was very happy to have that relationship, which I don't think was exploitative. I think they they both genuinely adored each other and wanted to work together. And they found it to be loads of fun. And so it was through her that his entry into the this kind of parallel world that yeah, it appears to have been. And he describes the [00:34:00] Maori, uh, the not the Maori, the festive art. I think they call it That happened in, I think, 84 or so and how had called around and told people the film archives, bringing out these films from our region. Um and so they had a private screening at someone's home with just the old people. The who said I'll play that again. Play that again. They had these different fragments from and they started recognising ancestors and various people in the images. [00:34:30] And then he says, when they had the big screening, the word had gone around. We've got these photos. We've got these images of your region and heaps of people came and it was hugely popular. And the learning for him was, um, through opening out that world by introducing him to the influential people. Then everybody would know if this was significant. Everyone was gonna know everyone was going to get involved. And he described a number of times that that [00:35:00] amazing experience of, uh, people calling out to the screen because they're recognising people, people really engaging with the film in a way that he he wouldn't have done himself as a sort of European, brought up in a particular kind of way. You know, he talked about screenings at his home in the seventies when he was bringing home films from the film Society where everyone must sit rigidly. Still, no one was allowed to speak, and if they did, they may never be invited back again. And yet he was this other [00:35:30] way of watching film, which was much more interactive and much more obviously passionate. And he realised there were different ways you could interact with these these films, and that was important to him. Yeah, and that's absolutely the complete opposite approach to what was happening at the Herald where they were saying that Oh, gosh. You know, you know, actually, if you tell people that this material is here. They'll want to come and access it and yeah, that's right. But that whole fear that actually, [00:36:00] if somebody knows something, is there that they'll want it back or they'll take control away from it or yeah, and I think it reflected that that person who said that to me it reflected her world view, which was very much an institutionalised herald view that we have power because we have information. We have these materials. Even if we do nothing with them, we still have the power. But other people don't necessarily think like that. Uh, so it sort of shifting your whole your whole perspective on it is, is a is an amazing [00:36:30] thing. And I think that takes a lot of bravery. And I think you have to accept that if you open out, you will be challenged and I think you have to think that's OK. We'll deal with the tension and and this can mean a new creative approach to our our materials as possible. And if we're willing to listen as well as speak about them, we might learn something. So I'd like to know why. [00:37:00] Why did Jonathan, think one archiving and into bicultural. Why were they important? Well, he he had been working with Clive. So who was, um, the the really the only train film archivist we had in the country at that time. And they had been looking at the collection the film collection, which was part of the the National Library, I believe. And they'd found out that there were these [00:37:30] films at Shelley Bay and a bunker and they were there because they were nitrates, so they were liable to explode. And, um, they'd been finding out what they were, and they were getting really excited. And he said, Jonathan says Clive came up with the idea of a film archive. He's the one who said We need a dedicated film archive and Jonathan ran with it. So he had he said it at one point, you know, I had thought I'd be a film star. And then I saw myself on screen and I realised that really wasn't gonna happen. And then he said he also thought Sam Neill was never going to be very well known [00:38:00] because he had such a na nasal voice. Um, so he started thinking, Yeah, This is some. This is something I could focus on. This is something I can do. This is something I believe in. And Lindsay Shelton and the the the, um, Sheldon and the, uh, the film Society had been doing the film festival, and there was a lot of interest in film, and there was an appetite, uh, to think about the local film as well as international film, because we often, you know, the [00:38:30] mainstream culture in New Zealand often looks overseas, but, um, when they looked at this collection of this these materials at Shelley Bay, I think they started thinking, Actually, this is this is really important stuff we've got here. This is really interesting stuff. Why don't we look at it further? And once they were, they actually got Well, there was a big struggle, but they finally set up a charitable trust, and they set up the film archive, and he was the only employee to begin with. And he set it up very much along the lines of [00:39:00] the North American and European cinema, uh, film archives that he was seeing because that's all he knew at that time. He'd gone around and he'd done the trip, and he learned from people how they were doing these things. But it wasn't until a bit later that he started to realise that actually, uh, Maori culture was a very important part of this. But of course there was. There were wider social issues going on you'd had, um, you know, a bastion point the protest of Bastion Point were happening at that time. Cooper had, um, had led the [00:39:30] to Wellington about, uh, no, no more land being sold away from Maori ownership. You had 81. You had the Springbok tour, and Jonathan went on some of the Springbok marches, uh, anti Springbok marches. And, you know, part of the conversation was in New Zealand was Well, you're very, uh, you know, Maori people were saying, and you see it in film? Maori people saying to Well, you're really happy to fight for the rights of black South Africans [00:40:00] on the other side of the world. Why are you not fighting for us? So the conversation had shifted and changed had been doing their thing. And the Maori, uh, proponents were, um, were taking petitions to parliament and saying, actually, this is the language of the country movement was starting, everything was shifting. So I think Johnson was good at hearing what was going on in the world and thinking about it as well. And, um, and government institutions were starting to shift and change about, um, about [00:40:30] or Waitangi and what that meant for them. There was starting to be some education around it. So I think it was a whole lot of things like, I don't think he was like this magic genius. But I think he thought really hard about what made this film archive different from any any other film archive in the world. Actually, it was the Maori materials that made it made it different from other colonial spaces and and this was worth this is worth finding out about. And he was curious and he was smart. So, you [00:41:00] know, why wouldn't why wouldn't he? And I guess it's not just about the, um, the materials that the tang of the collection items, but it's about actually how you handle the items and who has access and who has rights and all that kind of thing. Yeah, and and they had to they had to work that out for themselves because there wasn't an archive at that time which had been set up along European lines, which had, [00:41:30] I can't think of any other film archive in the world that actually had good relationships with indigenous people and local people and had, um, God forbid, given away enough power to allow other people to tell them how, how, how to handle these materials or who could handle these materials or who couldn't. And that was the struggle all the way through the eighties. And that first decade of the archive was, you know, OK, so we've got these materials and we're speaking to people. We're taking them out to people. And some people [00:42:00] were saying, Well, actually, what are you what are you doing with those materials? They're not yours, they're ours. And Jonathan described um, being at the old Buckle Street Museum, showing some films around about the time of Maori, which was such AAA big um, they call it a watershed in New Zealand of, um, first time. Really, Maori Maori materials had been shown as art or had been shown as being as significant as European materials. And so they played these films, [00:42:30] and Jonathan said this young Maori fellow got up and he said, Well, who are you? Who are you to handle these materials? And, um what are they paying you to handle these materials, and why are you doing this? And then they're not They're not yours. And Jonathan was really upset and shocked, and there was a there, and he spoke in response to the young man. But I thought, What a brave person. What a brave man to to stand up and challenge the director of an archive and say, You know, actually, these aren't yours, [00:43:00] So how are we going to have a better relationship? And Jonathan kept telling that story. So it was obviously of significance to him. He it it it it got some thinking going in his in his head and he talked to about it afterwards because she hadn't been there that day. And she said, I'm coming with you every time you show these films now. So they talked about warming the films, you know, she was there to introduce and Contextualise and talk about what was in these films and sing a song and then teach the audience [00:43:30] a song and involve people and what these materials were. So it wasn't an anthropological or ethnological ethnographic exercise. And looking at these cultures of the past, you know, this was, um, looking at images of a living culture of people who have connections, and, uh, they are engaged in these spaces and they have control over these materials. So I was trying to really shift the conversation. Um, I think that, um it's [00:44:00] interesting. I think that kind of warming of, um, films still happens. I. I know I. I go to screenings at at the archives and there is something to be said for having somebody introduce and give context and actually say that this is you know, these are real people. It's not. It's not just something they're on screen, you know? Um, it does. It does warn them. It's really important. I [00:44:30] agree. And, um and I was at a conference a few years ago at a UT, and it was about, um I think it was about indigenous filmmaking and indigenous representations on screen. And there was a really obvious divide between the Australian filmmakers and the New Zealand filmmakers in the room. Boy had come out so there was a wonderful panel discussion about what boy meant for Maori filmmakers. And [00:45:00] there was a real disappointment that actually and Ainsley Gardner hadn't managed to make much money off. Boy, um, because there was this discussion about, you know, we've got this blockbuster now. God, you must be rolling in it. That wasn't the case, but there was this conversation about how you, um, how you represent people who haven't been represented so much on screen before. Appropriately, And there were some Australians who'd been doing some interesting work projecting archival images onto the outside of a building. Um and then I think [00:45:30] in the Northern Territories and projections of local people and they were white filmmakers. And I think I asked the question. So do you have local people, um, who who are descended from those in those images with you? And do they concept contextualise for the, you know, for the audience and the guy and the white guy said. But that would be like pulling out a performing monkey. I mean, that's just not appropriate. And he really didn't understand the notion of contextualising. And so So it's [00:46:00] not a a matter of, you know, dragging a Maori person in and saying, Well, you do the and then you can leave again. It's actually about involving someone in a project or perhaps an indigenous person instigating the project or owning the project or or, you know, running us in some way and actually in in that situation. I think the instigator of the project was, um, a local indigenous person. But then the white people had sort of gone off and just done the thing because they had seen that that was their brief, you know? [00:46:30] But they hadn't connected the dots back into the network of the landscape and the people. So it's, you know, there's still lots of misunderstandings around that how that works. And I'm sure it doesn't work well all the time. But, you know, you got to give it a go. At least people are trying and it does make a difference. Yeah, so within the archive, do you think or or did did Jonathan talk about any, um, homophobia [00:47:00] within the archive context? Um, I don't remember him. No. Is is the is the short answer. I don't remember him talking about that. Um I know there were. There were other gay people working at the archive. I don't know if, um, there were conversations about that I don't He didn't really talk about, um, [00:47:30] like, at the time of the homosexual law reform, right? It would have been quite logical in the same way that this year you guys are showing, um, films in relation to the politics around there. It would have been quite appropriate to be showing films then, but maybe they weren't films in 86 so Well, they were. I mean, actually, So turning the question around, I don't remember him talking about homophobia, but I do remember him celebrating gay film. So I know there's letters in the archive from Peter [00:48:00] Wells saying, Thank you so much for playing all my films again. And there'd been a, um, an exhibition, actually at the National Library. I think it was postcards of love or something similar to that in the early nineties or mid nineties, and Jonathan had curated a collection of Peter Wells early films, mostly the short films. Um, a lot of them had gay themes, and, you know, um, he'd been given the opportunity [00:48:30] to to think about, uh, films related to love and he'd chosen Peter's films. And, uh, Peter was always very out, and he and his films often had gay themes, and Jonathan really admired that about him. And they were the films. They were some of the films of New Zealand. So Peter's films always played overseas when he was, um, showing New Zealand films along with, UH, Maori films and feminist films. And he made sure he didn't just follow a sort of A a mainstream [00:49:00] version of what New Zealand filmmaking was, because it was really easy to go down. The good pie pork pie wrote all the time. There's nothing wrong with Goodbye pork pie. But there were other films. There were always other films from the seventies onwards. You know, Um and I and I think that's one of the things I like about Jonathan's work is it always seemed to me that he he flipped the sort of standard notion of New Zealand is on its head. He loved doing that in all sorts of ways. You know, New Zealand is actually a lot queerer than you think [00:49:30] it is, and it's a lot Browner than you think it is, and it's a lot more radical than you think. It is in particular kinds of ways. And he was interested in that. And I think part of that was, um part of that was an influence from feminist friends who were looking at, um, challenging the mainstream in many ways. And he he you know, I love I love the idea that he was challenging the notion of what it was to be a Kiwi bloke. And he was doing it with the contents of the archive, you know, he was challenging notions of national identity. And, um, a sort of [00:50:00] a picturesque view of this is New Zealand. You know that we are just these beautiful landscapes and nothing else. Actually, we're a lot more complicated than that, and that's OK. That's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. And let's have a look at some of the tensions in our relationships. And I think the way he curated, um, the the films he showed and the way he did exhibitions like the big exhibition that he did with Sergio to in Italy and 89 and then the other one he did in Italy in 93. I think [00:50:30] he was he was really saying We are. We are so much more than a simplistic view of us. We are all these different things. And and I think he challenged assumptions through that style of presentation of film. One of my memories of Jonathan was that, um he was incredibly playful and subversive. He would he would love to subvert, as you say, the the the kind of the the main mainstream view and just kind of like, yeah, give it a kick. [00:51:00] That's right. That's right. And when you're doing sort of scholarly research, you can lose your sense of humour. But when you listen to the kind of things that Jonathan would put together in those radio the do radio documentaries and, um, they're fucking funny, they are just witty as the way he would, uh, or you guys actually would edit together quotes from various films. So you know, you have one [00:51:30] guy saying, Finally, we have a New Zealand film culture that can show us what it means to be New Zealanders. And then you have a quote from, you know, some mad Bruno Lawrence character who's going off his head and wearing neglige and pulling the door off somebody's house with his tractor or whatever it is. You know, um, he was always He was He was Yeah. He just must have had this sort of great sense of humour, but also this incredible brain for [00:52:00] thinking through how we how How am I gonna to juxtapose these materials? How am I going to bring them together to create this This sort of funny, subversive challenging, but also just on a purely oral level engaging narrative? Because it still had to sound good, right? It couldn't just be clunked together to to make a political point. He was actually quite subtle about these things. And I think, um, he was really influenced by Eisenstein there. You know, the notion of juxtaposition [00:52:30] of things that seem to be at odds with each other, to tell a narrative or a subversive narrative and just thinking of his some of some of his creative output. I mean, I, I I'm thinking of a day without art. Um, early nineties, which was AAA radio soundscape. Um, Commemorating HIV a I Yeah, it was I. I find that still to be one of the most moving of his his works and he did that with Elizabeth Ally, um and he was thinking, you know, there was a wider movement in [00:53:00] the States thinking about these issues, and that's where that a day without art the notion of that comes from But he made it very local. He made it about local people. And you hear quotes from people, uh, talking about the day they were diagnosed with HIV or the experiences that, um, that they'd had. And it was quite influenced by Derek Jarman Blue, um, which was, you know, Derek and, uh, various of his friends reading from his diary, but also from, [00:53:30] um, creative pieces. And, um, it's a It's a an absolutely beautiful work, that one. Yeah, and and still playful at the same time as that's addressing, you know, important, really important issues. And there's that thing about, you know, this whole. I saw a quote the other day on Facebook about this whole generation of young men who died and they were artists and they were creative people and they were ordinary fellow, and they were, you know, and and they were all [00:54:00] gone and something like a day without art actually makes you think about that again because I think I don't know if it's that we've swept it under the carpet. But how did we forget so quickly? And, um, you know, Jonathan's very close friend and partner for a long time, Fri Hendrix told me in quite a lot of detail about nursing various friends who were dying of AIDS before the new drugs came in and, you know, people going blind and people's faces turning black [00:54:30] and the kind of cancers that overtake them. And so Jonathan was around this, you know, This was happening here in New Zealand. This wasn't just happening overseas. And, um, their friend who was a camera man His name was Bailey. He died, and Jonathan and Fairy put money towards a, um, a commemorative plaque for him. So it was very much he was very aware of what was going on, and and I have to say I've thought from time to time, given that when [00:55:00] people have been honest about it, they said that Jonathan loved having sex and he loved having sex with a lot of people, and he travelled overseas a lot. How did he keep himself safe? What did did he figure out early on what was going on and was more careful than other people. I don't know because he didn't talk about how he kept himself safe. Um, but some people did assume he had HIV aids when he got sick with his cancer. Um, I think because he was a gay man, there was just this assumption and they hadn't seen so many people die. Um, but, you know, [00:55:30] so I remember one of his mates pulling out an old of his because Jonathan loved to carry different coloured kits and it had a note in the bottom, and it was written in two different hands. And it was Jonathan picking someone up. He was at, like, a conference or something. And he was writing notes to this person sitting next to him, saying, Oh, what do you like? And the other guy was saying what he liked. And he's like, Should we go somewhere? And da da da da da. So you know, this is a guy who Malcolm McKinnon, I think, stood up at the end of the funeral and said and Jonathan loved sex. And Malcolm wasn't saying it because [00:56:00] he'd been having sex with Jonathan they were mates, but yeah, it was an important, really important part of his life. Who you know, who he was. And having, you know, the freedom to be with who he wanted to be with was a huge important part of his life. But Malcolm also said he felt that in some ways Jonathan never figured out, not never figured out love. But he never had the long term sort of permanent relationship. But then maybe he didn't want that. Maybe that's not how he worked. He stayed friends with [00:56:30] every lover, I think, bar one he'd ever had. Really good friends. I mean, if he was your friend, he call you up every day. You were connected, you were connected for life. But then there would have been sexual encounters overseas with people, perhaps than he ever. Sorry again. I don't know. Yeah, I think it's important to talk about these things because they're in a huge part of people's lives. Well, for some, um, say biographers or, um, researchers I. I mean, I've read where [00:57:00] things are just kind of glossed over, so we we just don't go there. And And it was interesting that you were saying at the start that there was that tension between kind of your kind of queer theory and the the archival aspects of Jonathan's life, and I mean, was it hard to talk to people about? I mean, there's really intimate details about Jonathan. Sometimes I didn't ask because, I mean, this is also someone who hadn't died all that long ago. Um, so with ex lovers, um, sometimes [00:57:30] I didn't feel like I could. I could ask him. Maybe I wasn't brave enough. I don't know. Maybe I'd do it differently now, but I sort of hope that people would volunteer what they were comfortable talking about. Um, most people didn't talk about sex. And also, you know, as far as they're concerned, I'm a straight woman. I'm a straight woman doing a biography based on the notion of Jonathan being the director of a national archive. So maybe if I'd had a different angle or there was a discussion part way through the process of Do [00:58:00] I scrap the sort of archival, bicultural perspective on this? Do I make this a queer study of this fellow? And I asked a lot of people. Do I do this or don't I do this? And I think it was actually Roger, Horrocks said. It was incredibly important to Jonathan that he was gay, but it's not the lens he saw himself through. So no, don't And I talked to Malcolm McKinnon about that, too, and he said, No, I don't think [00:58:30] that's the lens So I was thinking through theories of camp, you know, there's huge theories of camp and queer theory and stuff, and and Malcolm said he wasn't camp. That's not who he was. I wouldn't see him through a camp lens either. He was Jonathan doing all the things he did, and that was one of the aspects of his life. So I sort of took that advice from people who knew him and and yeah, I I'm pretty happy with that with that as the approach. But I always knew that part of my interest was the fact that he was this gay man. He [00:59:00] was out, and I really admired that about him. Did his out cause any problems. I'm thinking that II. I certainly know, like in the mid eighties, there was, you know, increased kind of verbal abuse and physical Um bashings say in Wellington. Not I'm not sure if it was Jonathan, but I mean, did did he encounter any of that? He didn't in New Zealand. Uh, and you know, people describe him as being very tall and walking forcefully through the streets and seeming very confident. [00:59:30] And maybe or maybe not that had something to do with those things not happening to him, though he never can tell it. It was actually in Melbourne, of all places, Uh, where he totally didn't anticipate it. I think he was in Melbourne for a film festival or some some similar event. He was walking down the street on his own in brightly coloured clothes, and he was punched in the face, um, very hard, and his glasses flew off and there was blood and he couldn't see his glasses [01:00:00] because his they'd come off and he was sort of scrambling around on the ground and no one helped him. And there was this feeling from the people who talked to me about this episode that, uh, people knew about HIV and AIDS. At that time. There was a lot of fear about what it meant that they didn't want to go near someone who might be gay because there was blood, you know? And he felt really frightened and distressed by that episode, and his friends did, too. [01:00:30] And, um and it, I mean, it affected him physically as well as emotionally, because he had to have his teeth redone. And there's a, um, an amazing letter where he's writing to an ex partner, an ex lover. And he's saying, You know, I'm gonna have to have my teeth done and this is happening, and I'm I'm just feeling really crappy, and I'd really like you to come see me, and and I think that letter is quite significant because, um, they'd broken [01:01:00] up on quite bad terms and things weren't great, but he really needed some human comfort. And, um, yeah, I think I think for him it was very unexpected. Do you know what year that was written down somewhere? But I think it was actually nineties rather than eighties for him. Does he talk any more about about that kind of bashing in Melbourne? I mean, how how did that influence later years? I don't know, because he didn't talk about it so that I've seen that one letter [01:01:30] and then other people have talked to me about it. I don't know if he sort of tucked it away and just thought, Oh, well, that's happened to me. Or but then probably a day without art was done. Maybe after that. So maybe he was thinking about the sort of wider politics of homophobia and things when he did that. I'm I'm not sure, Um because he didn't know he didn't. He didn't really talk about it any further. I think he was a person. [01:02:00] Um, I think he was probably It was probably a person who emotionally did put things in a box and tie it up and want it to go away a little bit. Or maybe he was just getting on with other things. I don't know, but he doesn't talk about, um, changing the ways he walked around the street or changing his practises in any way. Maybe his friends would know if maybe his friends would observe changes that he might not have even described. But nobody told me about them. Where do you think [01:02:30] his, um kind of staunchness of personality comes from, um, and that resilience? That's a good question. Uh, he had a nana. He had a Nana and on the O'Reilly side. And she was, uh, a an opinionated and staunch woman who said exactly what she thought at every moment. And he adored her. And she was often a source of discomfort [01:03:00] for other family members who found her embarrassing or difficult. But no, he just thought she was great. And there was another grandma on the other side of the family who had, um who who was also a strong woman, who had I think Simon will kill me if I get this wrong. But I know there was an older woman in the family, and she had brought her Children to Australia, to New Zealand from Australia, and she had run a a kiosk on her own. And she had looked after these girls and she, you know, that both [01:03:30] sides of the family there, these women who were really strong, and he admired them a lot. So I think part of his sense of who he was, what probably it was genetic. And then he he identified behaviours that he liked, you know, um, and and he he enjoyed outrageousness. And he enjoyed, you know, being a bit in your face. And I think sometimes his response to cruelty would be Fuck you. I'm gonna do things 10 times as big as I did them before. And he talks about that in terms of [01:04:00] his colourful dress. You know, he felt he had to be transparent when he was at school. So once he left school, he didn't need that anymore. He was gonna be outrageous. So I think he he had a bit of a, um an anarchist. I think he's a bit of an anarchist. Really? You know, he he wanted to challenge all the rules. And if people were mean or stupid, then he was just gonna go harder. But I don't know what makes someone like that and then another person have a different reaction. I I'm not sure. Um [01:04:30] I, I I'm not a psychologist. And I didn't do a psychoanalytic study of him and I and I, um, I'm I'm I'm fascinated by the psychology of someone like like him. But I I couldn't explain it. I. I know for me personally that, um, seeing his his staunchness around Wellington, even when you know we weren't working together was, um just inspirational, you know, to [01:05:00] have somebody, um who, as you were saying earlier, was leading a national institution who was an openly gay man. Um, because I think for a lot of people growing up, certainly, um, in the sixties seventies eighties, um, being gay, there wasn't a very good future ahead of you. You know, you you were gonna be lonely. Um, you were gonna be isolated. Um, you wouldn't get a good job. And, um yeah, once AIDS was along, you were probably going to die of AIDS. [01:05:30] Um, so to see somebody actually, uh, out there, uh, just doing it and just being, uh, was so important. I you know, I and and And I think that I think that he would He wouldn't want to put words in his mouth, but I think he'd be stoked. You know, I'm gonna ask you a question. Did you ever tell him that? Uh, no. Because I think, um, you only kind of come [01:06:00] to those thoughts afterwards on reflection. And, um but yeah, III. I think that just the fact of being and being out there and, um celebrating difference it one of the pieces of queer theory that most interested me in relation to Jonathan is, um it comes through Michelle Foucault's work, you know, history of sexuality and all that kind of work he did. But [01:06:30] this notion of, um, uh, being able to find spaces outside heteronormative where you can be otherwise where you can be yourself, you know? And I think Jonathan did manage whether whether he sort of felt it from the inside or not. But he created spaces where he could be exactly who he wanted to be. And I think that's awesome. And I think that's hard. And I think what I'm interested in often is in between this you know how you get beyond ironically enough, given [01:07:00] that I've been an archivist and it's all about cataloguing, how do you get beyond, uh, the the naming and the indexing of everything and just simply live in the ways that you believe are are right and natural, And I and I feel like he managed that in some small way, and I think that in itself is inspirational.
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