Images of Dignity: Barry Barclay and Fourth Cinema

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