Documentaries
Local series Decades in Colour (Prime, Sunday, 8.30pm), fronted by Judy Bailey (right), returns this week, the marvellous feat of research that offers a glimpse of our past.
A nationwide appeal for colour home movies has yielded stories from the
1940s to the 1980s, and the first episode begins with the highly topical subject of home. A number of immigrants describe arriving here in the 1970s and settling into their quarter-acre paradise. With state assistance, they could afford a house on a section:
when Steve and Irene arrived from England in 1974, they put all their possessions into their Trekka and drove from their rented flat in Papatoetoe to their new house in Manurewa.
“We had this huge vege patch and flower garden and the whole nine yards,” says Irene. When kids came along, they were sent out to play and arrived back at tea time.
What emerges is a document of big social
change between the
1950s and the 1970s: 1950s weddings contrast with footage of Auckland in the 1970s, when artist Richard was hanging out with a punk crowd.
Attitudes towards childcare shifted from bottle to breastfeeding and fathers were allowed into the birthing room. There were changes for Maori, too, with the start of kohanga reo – and the protest movement.