Focusing on people, not issues

Press, 15 September 1988, Page 13

Focusing on people, not issues

By

MAVIS AIREY

Readers with long memories may remember Bill Saunders as a radio and television announcer in Christchurch in the 19605. He went on to read the news in Wellington.

Now his face is never on the screen, but he’s doing what he really wanted to do all along: making documentary films.

When we met he was in the throes of editing a film about a woman who gave her baby up for adoption 27 years ago and wants to make contact with her under the new law. The film will screen later this year in the Tuesday Documentary slot, the culmination of three months work.

“I feel very privileged to be able to choose a subject I’m interested in and follow it through for that length of time,” he says.

He also likes to be able to focus on people rather than issues, as in current affairs. It’s the observational style he likes. "Ordinary people having extrordinary experiences.” Earlier in the year, he and his crew set up shop at the premature baby unit at Auckland Women’s Hospital, experiencing the trauma of parents whose baby was born prematurely and had a fairly high chance of not surviving.

“It’s something I never

really thought about before: giving birth to a baby but not being allowed to touch it, feeling you have lost control.” The- adoption film he describes as "probably the most risky programme I have made.” Rather than have someone talking about what it was like to make contact with a child given up for adoption, he decided to follow someone through the process. “It could have taken months, years,” he points out. “We were very fortunate — it all happened over six weeks.” One of the problems of a documentary film maker is to avoid setting things up. Saunders agrees that the very presence of a film crew can alter people’s behaviour. “One of the things I have learnt is that it takes a while before they stop putting on a performance. “But after the first week I think if you are sensitive you are able to film people in a fairly natural ways — usually the event they are going through is more important than the camera.” Although the woman had agreed to be filmed, she became very tense when it was time to meet her daughter. Saunders could understand why: apart from anything else, she had remarried and had not told her second daughter she had a sister.

So they did not film the meeting, instead filming as she told the social welfare counsellor about it. They also gave the woman the right to say afterwards if she wanted the film to be used. “It’s all a matter of trust, really,” Saunders says. “One reason people do agree to be filmed is that

they realise the benefit to other people. In the case of adoption there are so many fears, so many myths. “Society has perpetuated the idea that adopted children are supposed to act as the natural children of their adoptive parents. One of the fears of adoptive parents is, ‘lf they

find out who their real parents are, they’re not going to love me’.” Among other films in the pipeline is “The Journey,” about six violent offenders who, under the leadership of Graham Dingle, set out to get from Marlborough Sounds to Auckland under their own

power: paddling Cook Strait, tramping, climbing Ruapehu, rafting down rivers. The trip helped raise money for Telethon. Saunders hopes to do a follow up in two years time to see what effect the experience has had in giving these people the impetus to change their lives.