Kia ora Te Rerenga Wairua fans, I'm editor for NZ On Screen. It's great to see such a rich korero take place around an awesome wee film. In reply to those of you who are off-island who are frustrated that you can't view it: we share your pain! Ideally everything on NZ On Screen would be freely available to view, everywhere, and as a 'public good' principle we push for this in licensing material for the project. In this case the NZ Film Commission are the sales agents for the film and asked that it be geo-blocked as a license condition. As a backgrounder: geo-blocking a handful of shorts onsite was a compromise we made this year in order to be able to screen some of the more recent short films that the NZFC represents (eg. so as not to threaten potential territorial sales agreements; or eg. so as not to risk the short's chances of festival selection if they're still doing the festival circuit - some festivals don't look kindly on films being available online - old-fashioned I know but that's the way it is). In particular the geo-blocking was an NZFC license condition to enable a (very popular) embedded weekly NZ short film series we did in partnership with them and Stuff.co.nz (where contemporary Kiwi shorts were watched in numbers unseen since since the days when they used to screen in front of features at the theatres -- but that's another story!). BUT I'm curious as to why an older film like Te Rerenga Wairua has been geo-blocked. We'll investigate and see if we can get the geo-blocking reviewed -- it sounds like Joe would be happy for this to be the case?! I'll keep you posted on how we get on ...
Best,
Paul Ward, editor, NZ On Screen

ps. Joe we'd be very keen to collect some of the background info together on the page for the film (and update the credits appropriately) if you're cool with that?

I still have difficulty though with the problem of some contextual material being cobbled together from uncredited print sources.

Hi Geraldene. What content are you referring to specifically on NZ On Screen? The issue of attributing sources for the long profiles is something we have been addressing since it was raised with us in June 2010. Partly it was a growing pain of the fact that the profiles (alongside the project's success) become something more extensive than they were originally planned to be. Now - as a matter of course- every long biography we present is appropriately attributed, and we're retrospectively working through the backlog, though (for evident reasons - small team etc) this is not something that will happen overnight. We are a knowledgeable, conscientious and passionate content team and I trust that commitment shines throughout the project. Paul Ward (editor, NZ On Screen)