Coming-Of-Age Cinema in New Zealand

Professor Alistair Fox is Emeritus Professor in the Department of English and Linguistics at the University of Otago

• PrefacePart 1. The Coming-of-Age Genre and National Cinema Chapter 1. The Coming-of-Age Film as a Genre: Attributes, Evolution, and FunctionsChapter 2. New Zealand Coming-of-Age Films: Distinctive Characteristics and Thematic PreoccupationsPart 2. The New Zealand New Wave: 1976-1989Chapter 3. The Formation of a Budding Man Alone: The God Boy (Murray Reece, 1976) Chapter 4. An Angry Young Man Seeks to Justify Himself: Sleeping Dogs (Ian Donaldson, 1977)Chapter 5. An Immigrant Filmmaker Substitutes an Alternative Vision of Adolescence: The Scarecrow (Sam Pillsbury, 1982)Chapter 6. Art-Cinema, Cultural Dislocation, and the Entry into Puberty: Vigil (Vincent Ward, 1984)Chapter 7. A Māori Girl Watches, Listens, and Learns – Coming of Age from an Indigenous Viewpoint: Mauri (Merata Mita, 1988)　Part 3. The Second Wave of the 1990sChapter 8. Creativity as a Haven: An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion, 1990)Chapter 9. Desperation Turned Outwards: Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994)Chapter 10. Confronting Domestic Violence and Familial Abuse: Once Were Warriors (Lee Tamahori, 1994)Part 4. Preoccupations of the New MillenniumChapter 11. An Adolescent Girl Experiments with Sexuality: Rain (Christine Jeffs, 2001)Chapter 12. Asserting Feminist Claims within Maori Culture: Whale Rider (Nicki Caro, 2002)Chapter 13. Family Secrets and Their Destructive Consequences: In My Father's Den (Brad McGann, 2004)Chapter 14. A Gay Boy Comes to Terms with His Sexuality: 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous (Stewart Main, 2005)Part 5. Perspectives on Māori Culture since 2010Chapter 15. Parental Abandonment and the Trauma of Loss: Boy (Taika Waititi, 2010)Chapter 16. A Māori Boy Contests the Old Patriarchal Order: Mahana (Lee Tamahori, 2016)Chapter 17. Delinquency and Bicultural Relations: Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Taika Waititi, 2016)ConclusionBibliographyIndex

In this insightful and lucid study Alistair Fox examines the coming-of-age narrative in New Zealand films, deftly showing how such stories relate to the history of both New Zealand cinema and the nation. Fox demonstrates the centrality of the coming-of-age theme to New Zealand cinema while also providing evidence that New Zealand film criticism itself has come of age.