Film director John Anderson, who died in Kiribati in August, age 73. Photo: Supplied
John Anderson, a New Zealand-born television director who devoted the later years of his life to highlighting the culture and issues of the people of Kiribati, died on 19 August of a heart attack on the main island of Tarawa. He was 73.
Mr Anderson was raised in the lower North Island town of Woodville and later became a primary school teacher, but, embracing his love of drama, he eventually went on to create some of the most popular television dramas of 1980s New Zealand. But he increasingly turned his attention to documentaries and, harnessing a long-burning love of the Pacific islands, he later moved to remote Kiribati where he established a film unit with his third wife, Linda Uan, which documented the lives and struggles of the people of the small atoll nation.
It was when Mr Anderson first moved to Wellington in the early 1970s that he became active in the local theatre community and joined Paul Maunder's Amamus theatre group and went on to perform in a number of plays that reflected New Zealand's history, including productions about the 1951 waterfront dispute, the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign of World War I, and a production in which he played a colonial missionary.
"He was a young man with a lot of energy, a need for expression - something like that. He could play the ordinary Kiwi bloke very well," Mr Maunder wrote of Mr Anderson in a memorial post on his website.
In 1973, Mr Anderson joined the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation and worked with the state broadcaster's purchasing and assessment team, which was responsible for checking incoming films and determining whether they were appropriate for screening in New Zealand. But he continued to work on plays, and in 1975 joined the acting ensemble in Mr Maunder's feature film "Landfall," according to a biography on NZ on Screen, and later travelled to Samoa with Mr Maunder to work as the assistant director for another film, "Sons for the Return Home."
Jonathan Dennis and John Anderson (right) in the 1976 stage production "Gallipoli". Photo: Paul Maunder
It was there, Mr Maunder said, that Mr Anderson, a palagi, began his strong relationship with the Pacific islands: "Experiencing village life, experiencing community, had a big impact on us settler lads who were brought up in the last days of modernism."
Mr Anderson went on to create his own community video projects with his second wife, Allison. The pair made several documentaries, including films about Polish refugee war children in New Zealand, whales around sub-Antarctic Campbell Island, and several more about the Pacific islands, which included the 1980 film "Children on Samoa," which documented the lifestyle of the small village of Matautu.
In New Zealand, Mr Anderson became a director for the pioneering New Zealand soap opera "Close to Home," which revolved around the trials and tribulations of a suburban Wellington street, the anthology series "Loose Enz," the post-war rural drama "Country GP" and the television road movie "Mark II," about three Polynesian teenagers who set out on a road trip from South Auckland, blissfully unaware they were being chased by a van-load of vengeful thugs. The film received widespread plaudits.
In the early 1990s, Mr Anderson's interests in theatre and the Pacific would coalesce when he travelled to Vanuatu to work with the newly-established Wan Smolbag Theatre group as it prepared for its first tour. It featured in a documentary he made about community theatre across the Pacific region.
John Anderson worked with Vanuatu's Wan Smolbag Theatre group Photo: RNZI / Moera Tuilaepa Taylor
After he taught himself to film and edit footage, Mr Anderson relocated to Kiribati, a collection of 33 coral atolls and reef islands scattered across a swath of the central Pacific Ocean. In 1997, with his third wife Linda Uan, a Kiribati citizen, he founded a video unit called Tabera Ni Kai, which was dedicated to telling the stories of the country's people.
Kiribati is one of the nations most physically and economically vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather events. Most of the country, a former British colony of 110,000 people, lies no more than a metre above sea level. For close to 20 years, Mr Anderson and Ms Uan filmed Kiribati's plight in the face of climate change and how its people have reacted, both for locals as well as audiences around the world, including at international climate summits.
In 2010, when massive storm surges washed over the island of Tarawa, engulfing houses and sea walls and causing extensive damage, it was the images of muddy waves smashing through Mr Anderson's lagoon-facing balcony that spread around the world. He was also there to film the resilient locals, as they worked to plant mangroves and build back walls in their quest to fight back the sea.
"[There's] a strong feeling in Kiribati that the world was not listening," said Mr Anderson in a 2008 interview with RNZ International. "The Kiribati voice needed to be heard. It's a real thing, it's a human thing."
Tarawa, Kiribati Photo: Supplied
But it was not just climate change that Mr Anderson and Ms Uan recorded. Since 1997, Tabera Ni Kai has made over 400 productions, in both English and i-Kiribati, ranging from coverage of official state events, to videos on breast feeding, domestic violence and HIV/AIDS, as well as films of local song and dance. The unit also produced footage from the country for a global live broadcast of the millennium celebrations on New Year's eve 1999, which was seen by more than three billion viewers worldwide.
The couple were also heavily involved in the governance and fundraising for the country's only school for special needs children, which was opened in 1991, and has more than 180 children.
Mr Anderson died on Friday 19 August from a heart attack on Tarawa, where he was buried. In New Zealand, a memorial will be held at the Nga Taonga film archive in Wellington on 17 September, where there will be a screening of some of his work.
