Anzac Day documentary

Press, 24 April 1987, Page 15

Anzac Day documentary

As part of its war strategy, the New Zealand Government established the National Film Unit in 1941. Its prime task was to produce a weekly cinema newsreel to inform the public about the progress of the war, to maintain morale and toencourage support for domestic measures such as rationing, and the entry of women into the workforce.

Cinema-goers saw film of the efforts and sacrifices being made by New Zealanders at home. The Government used the review as a means to get specific messages across, such as recruitment drives, selling war bonds, and urging the public to recycle, grow additional food, and support the war effort in a hundred different ways. Film crews travelled around the world with the New Zealand servicemen and women, sending back coverage of battles, conditions they were living under, their methods of coping, and how they relaxed.

The emphasis was on the more personal aspects of life, both in the service units overseas and on the

home fronts. In New Zealand’s small and close-knit community, the “Weekly Review” became a letter to Mum or to Aunty May about the personal things of daily ■life. The newsreels became a superb documentation of the attitudes of a people experiencing the stresses of enforced change.

“War Years” is a compilation of material from the “New Zealand Weekly Review” to make up a television special to mark Anzac Day this year. Screening at 12.15 bn Two, it spans the period from the outbreak of war in 1939, through to VE and VJ days, to the return of the servicemen in 1945 — coming back to emo-

tional welcomes and a society which had undergone substantial and permanent change. This 102-minute documentary will being back memories to the generation of New Zealanders who lived through the war years. For later generations it may clarity some images of a period which has been distorted.