Discourses of legitimation in New Zealand's film policy

Abstract

This article highlights the difficulties and implications of attempts to build legitimacy for state-funded cinema. Through a framing analysis of political debates and policy developments in New Zealand, and informed by international concepts and perspectives from critical and cultural policy studies, it examines the discourses employed to justify offering public funds to New Zealand filmmakers, from the 1960s through to the late 2000s. By tracing the emergence and subsequent institutionalisation of cultural nationalism as a policy frame, the author explains how the New Zealand government came to fund, and justify its support of, the production of fictional films. While this frame has continu..