INTERFERENCE

*WATCH THE TEASER ABOVE*

Imagine what it would be like to be fired from your job, booted from your home, refused service in shops. Imagine losing your family or even ending up in prison –  because of telling the truth about who you love. 

It’s not that long ago that Welby Ings, David Oxenbridge, and Justin Pemberton – members of the team who have been working so hard to get this film up and running – risked all of these things. 

It’s also the experience of the men and women at the heart of the storytelling. Lifting their heads up to appear in a film like this could have landed them in a world of trouble. Lesbian women even had their children taken away by the family courts.

And all this was happening within our lifetimes. Some of it still does, in our communities. Here, in New Zealand.

So we're making a documentary and it has been a ton of work getting it this far. So many of our supporters have said it’s a story that’s long overdue, but documentary funding is hard, really hard, and we need your help to get this over the line.

LOGLINE:

1980s New Zealand, where being gay means hiding in plain sight and local homophobes, backed by the Far Right churches of Reagan’s America, are hell bent on destroying any liberal fantasies of change. With money and power behind them, they wage open warfare on New Zealanders fighting for their right to be different.

We know the broad political story of how homosexual law reform was won in the 1980s, but we don’t often hear the voices of the amazing men and women who lived it. The gritty activists who were spat at and reviled, who risked jail and losing their families. They fought both local and international hatred, taking to the streets in anger and in celebration. "Cynthia Bagwash" who disrupted meetings in her stylish fox-fur and white gloves, the lusty anthem singers harassing Salvation Army anti-reform petitioners, the heartbroken nurses working in the AIDS wards, and the man tasked with bringing his cousin’s body back to the marae.

The conservative opposition fought back with hatred and vitriol, backed by American religious fundamentalists modelling themselves on Jerry Falwell's "Moral Majority"

It was brutal, it was dangerous, at times it was funny as hell … and it changed our nation forever.

THE DIRECTOR

There's no director in the country who can tell this story with more passion and authenticity. WELBY INGS ( Punch 2022, Sparrow 2016, Boy 2005, long listed for the Oscars ) knows the story intimately. In the early 80s, he started his small town’s three person pressure group, Gay Rights of Taihape ( GROT ). Arrested several times and with his teaching career under threat, he threw himself into the national campaign, protesting, infiltrating and interfering as much as possible with the opposition.

In the years since, as Professor of Design at AUT, he has focussed his activism on scholarship, design and film making. His critically acclaimed first feature film, PUNCH, premiered in 2022 at NZIFF, launched internationally at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and is now being distributed worldwide. You can watch the trailer HERE

WHY NOW?

Because homosexuality was deemed illegal in New Zealand, vast amounts of LGBTQI= history are missing as our culture was driven underground and our archives destroyed in arson attacks. Our activists are the people Welby fought alongside but we have so little time now to capture their untold stories. Their recollections are brutal and beautiful - very different to the small cluster of accounts that currently circulate through our historical retellings - and they deserve a cinematic platform.

This is the first known time American churches actively interfered in our local politics, yet this part of the story is rarely told to the public, and never before on film. Today a disturbing lurch towards populism is happening worldwide and the long fingers of religious fundamentalism are right in the middle of it HERE and HERE. Be it books pulled from library shelves, women’s rights retracted, or drag queens and trans-people turned into political scapegoats – history rhymes and INTERFERENCE calls it out. The documentary will hold a mirror up to our past and we will see in it, our present reflected.

OUR TEAM

Write and Director : Welby Ings
Executive Producers : Alex Lee and John Davies
Producer : Marilyn McFadyen
Line producer : Leela Menon
Associate Producer : David Oxenbridge
DOP : Grant Mackinnon
Sound Recordist : Deb Frame
Editor : Roger Grant
Music : David Long
ANZ Distributors : Antidote Films Australia and John Davies, Arkles Entertainment NZ

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

This project has been a huge labour of love since 2018 and has been through several evolutions, generously supported by the NEW ZEALAND FILM COMMISSION’S DOCUMENTARY DEVELOPMENT FUND. We are now in that gut wrenching “DO OR DIE” moment of submitting our application for Production Funding to NZFC. But unless we can raise at least 10% of the budget ourselves, we won't even be allowed to apply.

WE CAN’T DO THIS WITHOUT YOU and every dollar donated will go towards our first shoot at our location at Makahuri, near Wellington. But it's not just about the money, it's also about proving we have an audience. The more people who come to the party here, even with a couple of anonymous dollars, the more convinced NZFC will be that an audience DOES exist for this extraordinary film and you have shown you wish to be part of it – with your stories, with love and good will and with your precious funds. We are humbled and grateful for any support you can offer

TAX

Boosted is an “All or Nothing” campaign - If we don't make our target we don't receive any of the funds. So every donation, no matter what size, counts.

Remember, your donations qualify for a tax credit. NZ income earners earn a 33% tax credit on their donations, with a receipt automatically provided by The Arts Foundation. ( A registered charity )

Every person who donates will receive a heartfelt thank you in the film’s final credits and we will keep you all updated on the progress of making and releasing the film.

PLEASE SHARE THE NEWS AND WE'LL SEE YOU ON THE RED CARPET!