Direction...Margaret Thomson

1993 BetaSP 47min

This documentary about the first New Zealand woman to become a film director was conceived in 1989, shot in 1991 and shown in 1993 on morning television. After being told that “the boys wouldn’t be interested” in funding such a subject by Television’s CIP spokesperson, I was fortunate to receive a grant from the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council.

I had to work on the pre - and post - production whenever my young son had a nap, or else late at night. The project was absorbing; Margaret had lived and worked in London, then New Zealand, during a unique period (the 1930s to 1950s). She directed a variety of informational documentaries, such as Storing Vegetables Indoors and Troubled Minds (about psychiatric nursing), and became a member of a highly unusual community of film workers that also functioned as her family. She had a foot in both worlds: she loved the bare expanses of Cass in Arthur’s Pass and the excitement of the film-making units in London’s West End.

When we filmed her, she was in her early 80s and living independently in North London. I hoped to make a documentary that showed not only how she lived and what were her pleasures, but also the way she had incorporated the lessons of her documentaries into her life. - Julie Benjamin

See also

The Railway Worker
Circus Roundabout