Posts by Hebe
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@Sofie. How sad for you and everyone. Hugs.
Thank you all for moral support and kind words: I didn't plan to derail the thread with the personal. So many insights -- some I don't agree with -- are helping to construct my own shifting narrative of these times.
I get furious some days but overall have a weary optimism. So many heartbreaks, and so many opportunities.
It's a long haul. Business surveys are showing expectations of the CBD revival are moving out: now many expect it will take off around 2017.
I'm unsure about Campbell because clear storylines are best, and this is muddied (literally) by the Increased Flooding Vulnerability being investigated for our land, the result of which will impact on everything. We found out that a month ago, with a bald three-paragraph letter.
I have a real concern about the fact that owners are expected to prove damage rather than have it properly assessed by EQC's professionals: that seems wrong in the extreme -- but a court would need to rule. It's a two-tier system: for those without financial back-up and those who have it.
The effects of the earthquakes shift in ways no-one can predict. Eighteen months ago, there was no sign of what was about to happen. The land claim had been settled and closed, EQC had said a few months before. No mention of flooding: yet modelling by insurers and council started in November 2012 I found out a few months ago.
The comment about fractures of relationships becoming more apparent is true. Relationships are shattering all over. A middle-aged person we met recently said he knew of 15 reasonably solid couples, plus himself, who had split in the last two months!
So more of the personal, and the emotional from me. I'm no academic: I read and appreciate the technical and creative deconstructions and analysis of Hope and Wire. But it's personal. Life and death. Fear; so much fear: especially for my children.
They aren’t her feelings, though, that’s the problem. They’re our feelings. She’s put fiction where our real stories should be. I have great respect for Preston as a filmmaker, but I think the show is misconceived.
And I recognise that everyone in NZ has feelings about what’s happened in Chch, and that many of you have been deeply supportive. That means a lot.
I'm with Lilith. Every word.
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Hard News: Hope and Wire, in reply to Russell Brown,
Cool. No rush :-)
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Hard News: Hope and Wire, in reply to Russell Brown,
I felt that commissioning ‘Chimney Book’ and getting it in front of people was an important thing that was within my power to do. I wish you’d been there for the public screening (along with Stanier Black Five’s sound work) at the Great Blend, Ian. It was powerful. My main memory is Bart Janssen and I holding on to Emma while she basically lost her shit in the dark.
I have no memory of that. BMT? Or too busy to notice maybe. Will search it out.
[Now I'm a little regretful about putting up that previous post. It feels like admitting failure -- but it is life being what it is. Essential not to let it overwhelm daily life and to reaffirm my strong sense that there are opportunities here to rework my life that are not available elsewhere. ]
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Hard News: Hope and Wire, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
I could blog but it's dull; really. Greg and I spent three weeks on a huge form recently: we need to get at our Kiwisaver to fund an engineer's assessment of the house because we've both been sick for a year (post eq immune system meltdown both), made redundant at same time, used up savings, bank won't extend mortgage (large percentage in house but little income). The engineer will cost 5k or more. Red Cross has 1k grant for that kind of thing but damage must be 100k or more: but EQC says the damage is under 100k. So no help. To sell the house as is
+ get out we need to get assessment settled, To do that we need engineer's report...And now the Kiwisaver provider is quibbling, threatening not to hand it over and if they decide not to, there is no appeal and a three-month standdown.This is a run-of-the-mill story down here. That's three or four major life-stress events in that par.
But there's no way this grind is gripping film (or writing).
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@Sofie @Lilith: Where the hell would you start and make it watchable? I have no idea.
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Hard News: Hope and Wire, in reply to Ken Sparks,
It was a fine line that we didn’t want to cross but we were also driven by the need to show how deadly those quakes were.
I reckon you all did an amazing work that showed respect and empathy.
The bigger film would be great, and there's lots of time to do it. If the funding is available now such a big project has been covered.
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Hard News: Hope and Wire, in reply to Rob Stowell,
What you said! Well put all of it.
This thread is giving me new viewpoints, for which I am very grateful. It' easy to get tangled in emotion and the layers it all brings up.
Alice: I feel for you. Declare another birthday for a bit: celebrate then, and acknowledge yours in a quiet way in Feb 22. The mass sentiment will die down: this year I was quietly curmudgeonly about the simple act of tossing flowers in the river having been organised and sanitised, squeezing the magic out of it.
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Hard News: Hope and Wire, in reply to Russell Brown,
Is the particular offence here that the pictures were used in a dramatic context?
Briefly, yes. It's triggering; hugely. Goes against all best practice for psychosocial disaster recovery, and as you can tell, it's personal.
I know if I watch the whole series there will be people I know in the quake footage in states from death to shock: I don't want to see that.
Would you splice, for example, a Roastbusters rape with a dramatic scene in Outrageous Fortune? (Not trying for offence: it's the only parallel I can think of quickly).
Greg was involved with When A City Falls, but that is not colouring my response. WACF was edited hugely. When Greg was working on the development -- reframing the story after Feb 22 changed everything -- he had on the PC rough footage. (That was before editing because of the tight timeframe.) He told me not to watch it. I thought, I'm a hard old journo, seen a lot, so I watched. It was so awful that I vomited. The few minutes would have added to the story, but its graphic content made it unuseable from a humane point of view.
It looks like that consideration was not adequately addressed in the way Hope + Wire was structured.
And do you think any dramatic treatment could have been right for you? Perhaps a smaller narrative that didn’t claim to tell everyone's story?
I think that the more dramas, and documentaries, and comedies, and novels, and paintings, and other artworks the better. Some will appeal to me; other will not. This is our generation's life-changing event: when our innocence was lost. --- I love Jane Zusters' photographs "Unruly Memoirs: Nature Bites Back" (in Auckland recently).---
Whatever, create sensitively. Don't come from outside, claim the monopoly on our stories, hoover up millions in public funding, bring all the main players in from outside when many local actors have no work and take the post-filming work out of town.
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Didn’t watch it: wrong time for me. I caved this morning and watched the clip on the Press website. That’s enough.
The incessant PR campaign Gaylene Preston has waged over the last few weeks in which she claims tenuous links to Christchurch is beyond insulting. The empathy shown in that piece of film is zero.
Splicing the clips of people on the street just after the Feb 22 quake with a Christchurch caricature piece of acting is disgusting.
In that clip I see Greg’s office, I see his colleague (a trained rescue worker) – who ran straight out of the office and on to the collapsed building – digging people and bodies out with his bare hands. Several people died at that corner, in that rubble. Greg was injured across the road.
I see the old lady in black, who I watched on youtube months later when I was able to face it, staggering down High Street. What happened to her? Did she have family or friends to go home to? Did she have a home to go to? Was she one of the elderly who died month later, death brought on early by the trauma?
I see the terror and shock in the teenage boy’s face as the ground heaves again. That series of 5.8 and 5.9 shocks in the first 30 minutes after the first one were terrifying. I wonder if he was at school when it happened? At the school my boys go to now? Which is in its second temporary home since the quakes (on the other side of town, in Gerry’s Ilam, where the residents object to us parking for five minutes in the street to pick up our kids – who otherwise spend 80 minutes on a bus trip that should take 35 minutes).
The use of these images, unless express consent from the people has been obtained, is foul. It may be legal, but it’s inhumane.
Avoiding the series’ publicity has been impossible: it’s been stressful not watching it.
When I saw my son’s face go white during the TV ad this week, I realised that this series not going to help us.
I hope he doesn’t start screaming (not yelling – screaming) in the night. Asleep. Running around the house asleep, screaming. That happened for a year after the quakes stopped.
So maybe you can understand when I say to the cultural opportunists: these are our lives, our stories, our town. Go away.
That mild statement doesn't convey the fury I feel. The layers upon layers of havoc that the quakes have wreaked in my family's lives are blistering and many-faceted. It's not only about buildings: health, jobs, finances, education, daily life, friends, loss of family, loss of future.
To have it reduced to a postcard to Auckland....
(Do I gets points for no swearing? )
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I am not a polling nerd! I'm saving the rest to read until my brain has rebooted.
Great show Russell and everyone else; this looks like it will settle into a fine groove: informative without po-facing.
Andrew and Gavin: thanks for your insights into the trade. It's a minefield of worms.