Anna Majavu
A new mini-documentary which celebrates 20 years of Pacific Journalism Review is set to premiere at the PJR’s 20th anniversary conference and celebration in November.
The short film’s director and writer, Sasya Wreksono, gave the Pacific Media Centre newsletter Toktok a sneak preview of the documentary, which features interviews with contributors who have been writing for the journal almost since it began in November 1994.
Dr Philip Cass, a senior lecturer in Unitec's postgraduate programme in communication studies, and Professor Wendy Bacon, a professorial fellow at the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) are both interviewed, having both been associated with the journal since its Port Moresby days in the mid-1990s when the PJR was based at the University of Papua New Guinea.
In 1998, the PJR moved with its founding editor Professor David Robie to the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. By 2003, the journal had moved again, this time to the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand where it has now been based for 11 years.
The film describes how the Pacific Media Centre was established out of a core of research issues into Pacific journalism and once that happened, it became the new home of the PJR.
The PJR has subscribers from all over the world, including the US Congress Library, and has won awards from different countries, including China’s Global Culture Industries Academy.
The film explores PJR's focus on current events in journalism, such as an edition that was produced in 2001 to reflect on the previous year's attempted coup d'etat in Fiji, where businessman George Speight and renegade soldiers stormed Parliament, kidnapping 36 MPs and holding them hostage for 56 days.
Cartoons edition
The PJR has also showcased the work of Pacific journalists. After Solomon Islands cartoonist, Campion Ohasio (the first Solomon Islands full journalism degree graduate at the University of Papua New Guinea) contributed several cartoons to the PJR, a special edition entitled Ting Ting Bilong Mi was dedicated to his work.
In the video, Dr Robie also discusses the PJR's focus on investigative journalism as a research methodology, and the PJR's leading role in the debate about media freedom in the Pacific.
Wreksono, a third year communications studies student majoring in Television and Screen Production says making the documentary has been a fascinating three-month experience.
The TV and Screen Production final year students all take turns to work as crew on each other's documentaries but the responsibility for directing, writing and editing the documentary was Wreksono's alone.
Documentary is such a visual medium so initially it was quite difficult to visualise how to make a film about an academic journal.
But Wreksono says she was helped along by reading lots of academic journal articles that her mother, a PhD candidate, is currently writing and by advice from her tutor on bringing the 20-year existence of PJR into life through storytelling.
"I am excited but also nervous about the premiere because everyone who has ever been involved with the journal will be there,” says Wreksono.
‘Nerve wracking’
“It’s a bit nerve wracking because this is something that they have all worked on for a very long time and this is my take on it.
"Hopefully everyone with the journal really likes it," she says.
The mini-doco will be posted on the PMC's YouTube channel after the conference screening.
The conference in November will also feature acclaimed journalist and filmmaker Max Stahl from Timor-Leste - the man who exposed the 1991 Indonesian massacre at Santa Cruz cemetery to the world.
Other keynote participants include New Zealand film maker and AUT television lecturer Jim Marbrook with a special presentation about his new documentary on nickel mining on indigenous lands in New Caledonia, Cap Bocage – screening next month at the 2014 NZ International Film Festival - and Dr Lee Duffield from Australia with a comparative history research paper about Pacific Journalism Review.
Conference information and registrations:
http://tinyurl.com/kra5jju
Anna Majavu
