The title of this recording is "Peter Wells on Little Queen". It is described as: Film maker and author Peter Wells, discusses his short film Little Queen (1984) at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi, on 3 May 2018. It was recorded in City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi, 101 Wakefield Street, Wellington on the 3rd May 2018. Peter Wells is being interviewed by Gareth Watkins.  Their names are spelt correctly but may appear incorrectly spelt later in the document. The duration of the recording is 27 minutes. A list of correctly spelt content keywords and tags can be found at the end of this document. A brief description of the recording is: Film maker and author Peter Wells, discusses his short film Little Queen (1984) at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi, on 3 May 2018. The discussion was part of the May Tuatara Open Late event. A special thank you to City Gallery Wellington for allowing this recording to be shared. The content in the recording covers the decades 1940s through to the 2010s. A brief summary of the recording is: This audio recording captures Peter Wells' thoughts on filmmaking, his personal experiences, and the socio-political environment of New Zealand during the time of the creation of his film Little Queen. Little Queen is characterized by its blend of silent film techniques and a rich soundscape, crafted by Wayne Laird, which Wells described as having a "tremendously worked sound patina." This juxtaposition of silence and sound, according to Wells, was intended to evoke the immersive experience of radio, which was a significant part of his childhood. Wells reminisced about listening to radio serials like Portia Faces Life, which influenced the film's narrative style and thematic elements. The film is rooted in Wells' memory of Queen Elizabeth II's visit to Auckland in the early 1950s. The Queen’s extensive tour, including a drive past the local municipal dump in Point Chevalier, left a lasting impression on Wells. A key incident involving a dog running towards the Queen's car became the kernel of Little Queen. This memory, layered with Wells' exploration of identity and the duality of the term "queen," forms the film's narrative core. The film juxtaposes the royal figure of the Queen with the derogatory term used for a gay man, reflecting Wells' own experiences as a young gay individual in a visually stark and socially constrained suburbia. Wells also discussed his approach to casting and character portrayal. The choice of the young actor who played the "little queen" was based on the child's ability to imaginatively engage with the act of crowning themselves, reflecting Wells' focus on imagination and identity. Wells highlighted the subtler portrayal of sexual identity in Little Queen compared to his earlier film, Foolish Things, which was overtly gay. He emphasized the challenges and responsibilities of representing childhood sexuality, a controversial topic, especially in the context of pre-homosexual law reform. Funding and recognition for queer-themed films in the early 1980s were not insurmountable obstacles for Wells. He credited his determination and the recognition of the seriousness of his intent by funding agencies. Wells considered his filmmaking as implicitly activist, aiming to present queer stories with dignity and humanity, as seen in his film Jewel's Darl, which dealt with transgender themes. Wells' also expressed a deep interest in how objects can hold emotional significance, as evidenced by the attention given to items like a queen on a cake tin or a dog statue in Little Queen. This attention to detail is also reflected in his film Friendship is the Harbour of Joy, chronicling the life and death of his friend Jonathan Dennis, founder of the New Zealand Film Archive. In discussing his latest work, Hello Darkness, which documents his own journey with cancer, Wells shared his approach to personal narrative and public engagement. Initially a series of Facebook posts, the project evolved into a book, reflecting Wells' focus on truth and representation. He noted the supportive responses from readers and the positive, life-affirming nature of the project, despite its challenging subject matter. Throughout the discussion, Wells touched on the broader themes of imagination, identity, and resilience. He emphasized the importance of pursuing one's creative vision and the role of art in navigating and reflecting on personal and collective experiences. Wells' reflections on his body of work highlight the interplay between personal history, cultural memory, and the power of storytelling in film and literature. The full transcription of the recording begins:  Well, Peter, it's been a very, um, special day for you. Uh, you started off by, um, talking with Tilly at Unity Books, excuse me, uh, Tilly at Unity Books about Dear Oliver, your, your latest, um, your latest book. And here we are this evening talking about one of your earliest, uh, films from, from 1983. Um, Having not seen this for the last 20 or so years, what are your initial impressions? Oh, well I thought it's, I think it's an entirely mad film, really. I think it's got some really very beautiful images in it, which surprised me. I'd forgotten all about those sort of quite stark images. I'm not quite sure if I knew what I was doing with the film. In a way, um, I think I was trying to do too much with the film. I think I was trying to make a feature film in the format of a, um, a short film. I was trying to tell too much, I think, in a short film. So what would you do differently now? Well, my very first film was all short. It was all voice over narration with images sliding through it. Um, and I thought for my second film, well okay, I've done that. I've done talk. Um, I'll do a silent film. This time, without realizing the enormity of, of, of actually doing a silent film. Um, but having said that, I, the person who did the sound, structure of the film was Wayne, is Wayne, Wayne Laird. It was from scratch. So that, that's in a way why it's got this tremendously worked sound patina throughout the whole film. So you've got this, I mean, enormous level of sound happening all, all through, all through the film. I'm sorry, I've led away into another whole area. So you say silent, but obviously there is a lot of sound going on. Yes, yes. And a lot of radio. Yes. So what was radio to you as a child? Well, you see, I was born in 1950, so radio was an enormous thing. And listening, when I, I managed to get away from school and was sick. Um, I used to love listening to a radio serial called Portia Faces Life, which was a soap. It was a, it was a, I don't know if it was a morning or afternoon soap with all the sort of, narrative absurdity of a soap. So, at the beginning of the film here, we had a, we've got a radio soap with all the sort of dilemmas, emotional dilemmas of, of, I mean, it's actually adultery, I think, if you're listening carefully to what the narrative is about. So, no, radio meant a huge amount. In a way, radio is a bit like reading. Um, you actually have to supply a lot yourself. So You're not actually that passive. You are actually imagining along with the sound. Um, so, I really like that aspect of radio. And I tried to give with the film some of that texture of the power of radio. It's interesting also that you use sound in a way to kind of enhance images, but also to subvert them as well. Yes, yeah, yes. Well, I think you do everything you can. Throw everything at it, I think. I was really interested in, um, the way that you, or the construction of memories, and, um, you were three at the time that the Queen came through. So, is some of this your memories, and is some of it from somewhere else? Um, well, you know, you get into what is memory, I suppose, which is a pretty large subject. Um, It is based on a memory I had of the Queen driving when she was in Auckland. I mean, they worked the Queen. In 53, 54, I mean she went everywhere, absolutely everywhere, and where we lived in Point Chevalier was by the municipal dump for Auckland. So she drove past the dump and came across my family and all the locals on the corner of the street, and this is where this incident with the dog occurred. Um, the dog ran out towards the car and, um, That became a kind of the kernel of the whole story, because the dog became a total celebrity within Point Chevalier. Everyone wanted to touch it. You know, forever after it was the dog, you know, that had almost gone and run into the Queen's car. It was a sort of celebrity. So that was the sort of, that was a nutshell of the whole thing. Looking at it more as an, as a, you know, uh, As a young gay man, there were other patinas laid over it to do with, um, memory fading, um, memory being unreal, um, the unreality of memory, um, and also I suppose the whole film is based on the duality of the word queen. Um, you know, queen as this highly, um, esteemed. figure on one hand, and queen on the other hand is the derogatory term for a gay man, or gay boy, or whatever. So that's the kind of the nub of the whole film, is this thing of this highly honorific person visiting almost like a goddess or something from another world. But then for the little boy, his own sense of, um, on one hand, identification. with this sort of very lush visual spectacle because it was just after the coronation and the coronation was this incredibly lush visual spectacle at a time when there really wasn't much highly visual imagery, um, and a little boy taking on that, that, um, the kind of identity of a queen, a little queen, really. Um, and I must say with the, um, um, The boy who played the little queen, many, many, many years later, I saw him in Oxford Street dressed in leather from foot to toe. And he said to me, how did, why did you, how did you know to choose me for that, for that role? And, and it was a very awkward, potentially awkward situation. And I said, well, really, it was very easy. I just got everyone, all the boys who auditioned to, um, crown themselves. And he was the boy who could actually go into the whole imagination of, of what it meant to actually crown yourself. And, um, so that's how he got the role. It was pretty simple from my point of view. He could imagine himself into this sort of thing. That's a diversion. Your first film, Foolish Things, was overtly gay. Yes. I think in this film it's a lot subtler in terms of the kind of sexual identification and identity. Can you take us through the process of how you work out how much emphasis you put on portraying a character's sexual or gender identity? Yes, well of course in this case it's It's tremendously awkward because you're in the whole area of childhood sexuality, which is enormously controversial, and you've got to be really careful, I think. I felt it held me back, as well. Um, I don't know whether I can say much more than that, really. Um, yeah. This was at a time when, um, this is pre homosexual law reform, and it's also, um, pre, um, HIV AIDS coming into the kind of mainstream consciousness. How hard was it, or how easy, or how hard was it for you to be making queer themed films in the early 80s? Well, I'm quite a pushy person, really, when you get down to it. I felt really strongly it was my right to look at those sorts of areas and make films in those sorts of areas and write stories in that area. That's my right as a human being. That's my right as a New Zealander. So I was pretty implacable about my right to apply for funding agencies and things like that. And how was getting funding for a queer themed film? Um, not, not bad at all, really. I think I was, I think they recognised the seriousness of, um, my intent, really. Do you consider your filmmaking activism? Oh, that's an interesting question. When I try to make each film exist on its own artistic terms, I don't think I've ever made a film that was actually activist in, in a sort of an ideological sense. So you wouldn't consider something say like, um, Jules Dahl? No. Which has got a transgender storyline? Yes. Implicitly. Implicitly. Not explicitly. Um, yes. You know, with Jules Dahl, it was, I think it was 1986. I made a film about, it was a half hour film, and it was looking at a transgender person's life with their trans best date, friend. It was just a day in the life of two characters. At the time it was a very um, advanced film. Um, I see looking back, really, because I treated the transgender character completely differently. As an ordinary person, I suppose, in a way, with dignity and, and, um, humanity, really. But that was, that was implicit activism, rather than explicit, because I didn't, it's not like, you know, the character turned to the screen and said, you know, we've got equal rights, give it to us now, kind of thing. Um, no. But actually placing. Someone like that before the nation's eyes is an active, was an active act of it. It was a political act, and as it turned out, it was a very dangerous political act. Television New Zealand refused to screen the film for really several years because they said it was unacceptable for transgender people to be shown as anything other than figures of fun. And this was the actual official line of television New Zealand at that time. And how did you respond to that? Well, they just held, they held the film back for two years. So we had to really wait for someone to, the internal censor of television, to shift, to go. Back to Little Queen. Yeah. And was that, um, destined for a television audience? No. Or, it was a film? Yeah. It was shown with other short films. We had a wonderful screening with Jane Campion, Alison McLean, Gregor Nicholas, and Little Queen. It was four short films, four sort of dynamite short films altogether, really. And it's screened all around the place in art galleries and small theatres and things like that. And people at that stage were very hungry for new images and new voices. And new cinema voices. And of course, you know, Jane Campion, you know, what a great voice, really. So are you thinking, when you're making Our Little Queen, are you thinking of a particular audience? I'm thinking, is it a mainstream audience? Is it a queer audience? A national audience? An international audience? I think all of it. All of them. I think all of them. You make it with the best of intentions that, that, that, that people will be interested or find something of interest in it. Really. Can we divert here? Um, we're going to divert into something that's not political at all, and that's When, when I was making the film, I had to kind of do actually a lot of research about what, what the past actually looked like, even though I could remember what the past looked like, but I needed to look at what the past looked like. And, uh, so we had this wonderful thing of going to pictorial parades, which were these, uh, tremendously boosterish, um, uh, serials that showed at the cinema. In the fifties and I think Mike has lined up a pictorial parade for us to actually have a look at just a couple of minutes of a 1950s pictorial parade. I mean, there you can see that tremendously boosterish tone and that sound element, um, but also the sort of hokeyness of it all, everything's so hokey, everything's so sort of down home and, you know, there are girl guides and, um, brownies lined up all along the roadside and things like that. So when I was putting together Little Queen, I looked a lot at these, um, Really quite wonderful documents, mad documents really, and um, and took a lot of art direction hints from it. Because really in, in 53, 54, it was, New Zealand, it was a very sort of froutsy sort of era. There wasn't a lot of, there weren't a lot of material goods. people did wear second hand clothes, or they patched clothes. I wanted to try and get that sort of slight sense of, um, of a post war world, where people were still in recovery and starved for some sort of glamour, or an event, you know, like the Queen driving by. So I actually did get a lot from those, um, Kind of pictorial parades. I love the playfulness in Little Queens. So, on one hand you've got, you know, this queen driving down a suburban street, but it's preceded by a toilet on top of a car. Yeah. Where does that playfulness come from? Um, well I think that's part of that whole crowd dynamic, really. I think crowds are very, very important. double edged in their understanding of what's going, going on. They are there to see the queen, but they're there to have a, enjoy a spectacle on whatever level it delivers, whether it's a dog pissing on someone's foot or, you know, or anything like that, I think. Yeah. You portray suburbia as quite a drab, completely drained of color existence. Is that your memory? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I mean, I see it in color, of course. Um, and I do see it in different ways, but yes. My, my childhood memory of it is, is of a, of a mens airiness, immense. And you've talked in previous interviews about being, um, or feeling constrained as a child. You were Yes. Heavily bullied at school for your Yes. Your voice. Yeah. Um. Dreaming of other places. Yes. Can you talk about some of those constraints and whether they, whether you think, um, young people now have those same kind of feelings? Right. I can't really answer whether young people still have those feelings. Certainly when I was growing up I was very imaginatively starved, I think. Um, there didn't seem much happening, apart from what you could make up in your own mind out of books. Yes. Or, or films. Films were hugely important to me. Going to the movies every Saturday was hugely important to me as a, as a child, in terms of imagination. And in fact, those coloured curtains that, that show in Little Queen are from my local bug house, local picture theatre, where the curtains changed colour. Well, to me as a child, that was the most magical thing. I just thought it was the most incredible thing, this incredible saturation of color, and then the blending and changing of colors, to me that was the most absolutely marvelous thing. So, uh, I think too when you're a child and, and, you know, you're bullied or something like that, I don't, in a funny way you're not, you can sometimes lack the framework, That, that can tell you that you are being bullied in a way, it's just something that happens and you think, well that's how the world is, I think, and in terms of myself I sort of went inwards into an imaginative world where I could create my own freedom and independence, I think, um, it's something I don't know. What advice would you, if you could see yourself as a child back there now, what advice would you give to yourself? Oh, hmm, that's an interesting one. Um, Well, you know, I was a very determined little sissy. Really. So, even though I was bullied, I was also extremely determined. And I did have a very, very strong imagination. And I just kept going, really, until, you know, here we are, you know, I made a film, and, and, you know, I've written all these books, so, I seem to have some ability to not submit, really, to that, and to admire and seek to follow the freedom of the imagination, which I think that's It is a symbol for the freedom of all of us as human beings, really. If I'm, I hope that's not too high of a fallation, but that's what I think. That's what I think. As a child, what films do you remember? Oh, golly. Well, um, Cleopatra was a huge film, which is a terrible film. You know, it was a big costume drama, a very big costume drama. Um, I mean, as children, we liked the serials. We liked these absolutely crummy 1940s serials where, you know, the, the, the caves collapsed. Would the person get out of the cave, you know, in the next serial? That all seemed terribly real and tremendously exciting, really. So it was all over the place. I didn't like high art films. I wouldn't have known what a high art film was. I just liked films, you know, across the board, I think. Um, yeah. One of the things I really like about your filmmaking is that you often focus on, um, and linger on small inanimate objects. Oh yes. And I'm wondering, can you, uh, and also things that are left behind, so for instance, the queen on the cake tin and, um, the immortalised dog statue. Yes. Can you talk about how you're emphasising those inanimate objects and why? That's a, you're full of really difficult questions. I'm sorry. Um, I like looking. I like things. And I think if you like looking and you like things, you do tend to invest emotions and things, emotions into things. I think that's part of it, I think. Um, it also reminds me of one of the last films you've made, which was a film about, um, Jonathan Dennis, who was the founder of, uh, the New Zealand Film Archive and a friend of Yes. Of both of us, um, called Friendship as the Harbor of Joy from 2004, uh, where you, um, focused a lot on some of the objects in Jonathan's, um, on shelves and rooms. Yes, I was chronicling his. It was one of those really extraordinary things where I'd come down to stay with a friend who had cancer tremendously, very, very badly, and lo and behold, he asked me to chronicle his death, which was a tremendously difficult and very challenging thing to do, and afterwards I did wonder whether I shouldn't have, I should have said yes but not done it, but anyway I got myself into this situation of responsibility, of chronicling his death. final weeks, couple of weeks. Um, and he lived in this tremendously decorated house of Pacifica, um, full of the most fabulous things and the most incredible colors. And it was just an absolute, um, bombshell for the eye, in a way. So, the way I represented his presence was through the objects within the house, each one of which he carefully selected. So it seemed a way of, um, representing this person who was on the margins of no longer being there. You're currently editing Hello Darkness. Yes. Um, which is talking about your own journey, uh, with cancer. Yeah. How does it differ, um, working on Hello Darkness to actually documenting somebody else's journey? Oh, hugely, hugely, really. I, I think because, now I'm talking about myself, I've got a huge, um, I don't have any responsibility except to myself, really, whereas with Jonathan I had this tremendous responsibility to to him, and I felt to a degree hemmed in by that. Whereas, with myself, my only responsibility with Hello Darkness is to make it as representative as possible of what I seem to be going through. Um, and the responses, I don't know if people know about Hello Darkness, but it was a, when I found out I had cancer and I was in hospital, I started writing about it on Facebook. And started doing this Facebook, essentially a Facebook. Diary every day about what was happening and how I was feeling and things like that and to my utter amazement all these people Started following me and replying to me and giving me Araha I suppose is what one would say. It was really extraordinary Um, so I was suddenly in this position of, of, of writing this document with a whole lot of other people replying and talking to me about it. So now I'm in this situation of making it, making it into a book. Um, so my only responsibility really is to make the book as true to itself really, I think. How have you found documenting it? Um, well, I'm living it, so it's sort of like, well, so what? I suppose. I mean, you know what I mean. It's sort of like, well, it gives me something to do. Um, people reply to me all the time. It's wonderful. Um, it's not negative. It's about life. It's about living. Um, so to me, it's a positive, a positive thing. It's not a sort of a, it's not an, it's not a miserabilist thing. At all, and I've often talked in the um, postings about this strange feeling of, of um, a feeling of luck that I have, which seems so perverse to think that you could have cancer, but feel somehow you're lucky, but I think I'm lucky because I'm alive, it's just a very basic thing. I'm not dead, I'm alive, so I feel very, very lucky. So, that animates the Hello darkness We've got a few minutes for questions from the floor, so if you want to ask a question We've got a few minutes, and there is one question. I have to ask right As the first one and it's in written form from chief curator Robert Leonard Peter, how does it feel to go from being a preschooler in the early 1950s, seeing the Queen go by when she was glamorous, still in her 20s, to being made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit by the self same, albeit infinitely older and sterner Queen? Yes, that's a funny one. Um, uh, well it's absolutely fine. You know, I actually met the Queen and talked to her about making this film. It was the most extraordinary thing. Um, it was at one of the Royal Garden Parties when she was touring New Zealand and somehow I ended up being selected and standing in this line with the All Blacks and then there was me and Front Lawn. People. So I met the Queen and I said, well, I made this film about you. And, um, she said, oh, you look much too young. And I think she thought as a three year old I was running around with a camera or something. But she had a, it was actually very charming. She'd been to the races and I would say had a good wallop of champagne. And she was in a very good mood. Because she wasn't doing the usual rather harsh things that she's doing all the time. So she seemed a rather jolly person. And I thought, oh, well, good. That's nice. So, you know, that's my take on it. And has, has she seen it? I don't know. No, I don't know. I should have really sent it off to, um, Buckingham Palace, shouldn't I? I don't think she likes the arts. Yeah. Thank you. Hey, thank you so much for being a wonderful audience and sitting through my really rather weird film. Thank you, Peter. It's been amazing. I mean, I mean, thank you for your films and your books and being you, I mean, you are a role model for a lot of people and it's just been really wonderful to spend some time with you and talk about your work. Oh, thank you, Gary. Thank you. The full transcription of the recording ends. A list of keywords/tags describing the recording follow. These tags contain the correct spellings of names and places which may have been incorrectly spelt earlier in the document. The tags are seperated by a semi-colon: 1940s ; 1950s ; 1960s ; 1970s ; 1980s ; 1990s ; 2000s ; 2010s ; About Face: Jewel's Darl (tv, 1985) ; Alison Maclean ; All Blacks ; Aotearoa New Zealand ; Auckland ; Australia ; Brownies ; City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi ; Cleopatra (film, 1963) ; From Scratch (group) ; Girl Guides ; Gregor Nicholas ; Hello Darkness (book) ; Homosexual Law Reform ; Jane Campion ; Jonathan Dennis ; Little Queen (short film) ; New Zealand Film Archive ; Oxford Street (Sydney) ; Pansy (2001) ; People ; Peter Wells ; Pictorial Parade (short films) ; Point Chevalier ; Portia Faces Life (soap opera) ; Queen Elizabeth II ; Sydney ; TVNZ (Television New Zealand) ; Tilly Lloyd ; Unity Books ; Wayne Laird ; activism ; adultery ; advice ; arts ; audience ; board ; books ; bug house (a cinema) ; bullying ; camera ; cancer ; children ; cinema ; colour ; coronation ; crown ; death ; diary ; dignity ; dog ; drama ; emotional ; family ; feature film ; feelings ; film ; freedom ; fun ; funding ; gay ; gender ; gender identity ; glamour ; growing up ; homosexual ; homosexual law reform ; hope ; hospital ; humanity ; identity ; imagery ; imagination ; journey ; law ; leather ; listening ; love ; mainstream ; memory ; movies ; narrative ; objects ; other ; parade ; parties ; passive ; power ; queen ; queer ; queer film ; radio ; reading ; recovery ; research ; role model ; running ; school ; sexual identity ; sexuality ; short film ; silent film ; sissy ; soap ; soap opera ; structure ; suburbia ; television ; texture ; theatre ; time ; top ; touch ; trans ; transgender ; transphobia ; understanding ; voice ; work ; writing. The original recording can be heard at this website https://www.pridenz.com/peter_wells_on_little_queen.html. Peter Wells also features audibly in the following recordings: "Peter Wells profile", "Part 1 - The Book That Turned the Light On - Same Same But Different writers festival", "Teenage Years - Same Same But Different writers festival" and "Dangerous Desires - Same Same But Different". Please note that this document may contain errors or omissions - you should always refer back to the original recording to confirm content.