Gareth Watkin's work producing Radio New Zealand's ‘20 Years Out' documentary has been recognised, as the series is a finalist in the Peace Media Awards, to be announced on the 9th of November. The radio series, featuring audio from around the time of Homosexual Law Reform in 1986, was broadcast on National Radio during the 20th anniversary of the reform in July this year. It has also aired on Chicago radio, and was featured in Melbourne's recent ‘Homo Histories' conference. Watkins tells GayNZ.com the nomination was a pleasant surprise, and that the recordings exist as “a real tribute to grass-roots ‘community looking after community'”. In June 2005, the Lesbian and Gay Archives of New Zealand (LAGANZ) received a grant from the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, with additional funding from the Gay Auckland Business Association. “That enabled me to do a two-month full-time preservation and logging of the LAGANZ collection,” explains Watkins. “It was specifically around the 80 or 90 audio cassettes from the time of Homosexual Law Reform. “The whole idea of the preservation project was that you were dealing with old material – one cassette was from as far back as 1968. Cassettes have a life-span of about 30 years, so it's coming to a point where those cassette might not be playable, and if they are, they might stop and break half-way through listening. So there was a real incentive to at least dub them onto different mediums. We had a dubbing machine that did it in ‘real time'. It played the cassette and recorded it onto CD.” As the cassettes played through, Watkins carefully completed abstracts of what was on them. “Then I pitched the idea to Radio New Zealand that we could do a documentary on it - they were very keen. “I thought I was going to hear very interesting and intellectual arguments for and against law reform, but it wasn't – much of it was just rhetoric, and nonsense arguments. So to go from huge and nasty statements that people like Norman Jones were making, and then taking it down to a very individual level - like when Rod's talking about his partner Michael dying of AIDS - it's quite moving. “If you don't get the individual stories, it just washes over you after a while.” The '20 Years Out' radio series is now on the Radio New Zealand website, as part of their long-term content. Watkins has since left Radio New Zealand, becoming programme director at Access Radio in Wellington. “There's no gay programme on air at present,” he admits, “but there is a Sunday morning lesbian programme. “A lot of people on the Wellington scene want a gay radio show, so I'm keen to get ideas pitched to me. It's just about finding someone to do it.” Ref: GayNZ.com (m)
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Friday, 27th October 2006 - 12:00pm