"Sedition" screenings

Apologies for the formatting. I'll deal with it later.

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“SEDITION: The Suppression of Dissent in World War II New Zealand”

A Documentary by Russell Campbell.



This is screening twice in Christchurch as part of the International Film Festival.



Both screenings will be at the Rialto Two Cinema.

Thursday August 11, 2.15 p.m.

Sunday August 14, 1 p.m.



Russell Campbell will be speaking at the Sunday screening.



Screenings in Auckland and Wellington sold out, and extra sessions had to be held. So book early and avoid disappointment



Synopsis



In 1916, at the height of World War I, Labour Party activist Peter

Fraser condemned military conscription, declaring: ‘It rests with the

people to say how long they will stand for it.’ He was imprisoned for

twelve months for sedition.



By 1940 he was Prime Minister. World War II had broken out, and Fraser

headed a government which introduced conscription as a means of

combatting the Nazi threat. But in the meantime many New Zealanders,

outraged and horrified by the carnage of the battlefields, had formed a

movement committed to rejecting war as a means of settling

international disputes. Government and pacifists were on a collision

course; and Communists, too, were actively opposed to New Zealand’s

involvement in the war.



Intent on assisting Britain in its hour of peril, the government would

brook no dissent. The state machine pressed down relentlessly on any

opposition to its war policy. Three batches of emergency regulations

were passed, each more draconian than the last. Dissenters were

stringently fined or imprisoned for speaking on street corners or

publishing anti-war statements.



When conscription was introduced, conscientious objectors went before

appeal boards. Some appeals were allowed, but many were not, and eight

hundred men found themselves incarcerated in detention camps for the

duration of the war. Many c.o.’s in the camps, especially men who had

been members of the Christian Pacifist Society, took their protest

further by refusing to co-operate with the authorities, and were

subjected to harsh penal regimes as a result. The men remained in the

camps or in prisons as the war escalated into a conflict which killed

six times as many as World War I, culminating in the massive firestorm

of Dresden and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.



“Sedition”, a feature documentary, is the story of those who stuck to

their passionate anti-war commitment through thick and thin. It’s the

story of Ormond Burton, decorated World War I soldier turned Methodist

minister and staunch pacifist, imprisoned four times during the war for

speaking up against the slaughter; of A.C. Barrington, leader with

Burton of the CPS, a former company secretary whose gift for

organisation and stubborn dedication to the pacifist cause made him a

formidable opponent of the government; of Connie Summers (Jones), a

young member of the CPS, given three months’ hard labour for attempting

to speak publicly against the war; of Chris Palmer and Merv Browne, who

escaped from their detention camp in 1944 and trekked to Wellington to

bring their call for peace to the notice of the New Zealand people.



Incorporating precious interview material (filmed in 1990) with many

World War II conscientious objectors, newsreel footage and radio

recordings from the period, and commentary by historians and political

scientists, “Sedition” is a sobering account of the lengths the state

went to in an effort to silence those who repudiated war as an

instrument of policy.



Director’s Statement



I have a great respect for outsiders and rebels, especially people who

stubbornly make a stand for progressive social change. My partner in

Vanguard Films, Alister Barry, had filmed many interviews with World

War II pacifists and conscientious objectors back in 1990, but had not

then been able to obtain funding to make the documentary he planned.

When the opportunity arose to revive the project, I seized it. In

watching the tapes and researching the history of the period, I became

increasingly impressed by the steadfast integrity of those who

repudiated warfare as a means of settling international disputes, and

increasingly disturbed by what I learnt of the New Zealand government’s

determination to stifle all dissent. There was a story here to tell. My

object in Sedition has been to pay tribute to those who had the courage

of their anti-war convictions and spent months or years in detention as

a result, while analysing the actions of a wartime government for whom

civil liberties counted for little. It is a story told by historians

and political scientists, but more importantly by those who were there

at the time and fought for what they believed in, and who recollect

their experiences vividly, with anger and sadness but also more than a

touch of self-deprecating humour.



Biography



Dr Russell Campbell is a senior lecturer in film at Victoria University

of Wellington and a documentary filmmaker with Vanguard Films. Among

his films as director or co-director are “Rebels in Retrospect” (about

the Progressive Youth Movement of the Vietnam War era), “Islands of the

Empire” (on New Zealand’s military relationship with the United States),

and “Wildcat” (the story of a struggle for democracy in the Timberworkers

Union). He has written widely about film, and his book “Marked Women:

Prostitutes and Prostitution in the Cinema” will be published by the

University of Wisconsin Press in December. He is also a script

consultant and screenwriter.