Shirley Horrocks: a wider story

A scary moment for prolific documentary-maker Shirley Horrocks ONZM: sitting beside Allen Curnow at the 2001 premiere of her film about the influential poet.

“I looked at him partway through and he had tears. So, I thought, ‘I don’t know if he’s crying because it’s so bad or whether it’s reaching him!’ I hadn’t shown it to him before the first screening. I never did that again.”

Allen turned out to be happy enough to repeatedly attend Early Days Yet. It includes beautiful visual interpretations of his poems: as he reads, we see swimmers (aka “free-standing engines”) and the “spinifex’s incontinent seed vessels bowling downwind”.

Shirley says she felt cheeky attempting these poem videos. But “a lot of people were a little bit scared of his poetry. And afterwards people said, ‘oh, this poetry is not so scary after all’.”

Enabling the nation’s creative people to be more widely known or more deeply understood is a key motivation for Shirley. Her subjects include many University of Auckland staff and graduates: Merimeri Penfold (mostly in te reo Māori, with great help from the late Lucy Kapa), Lisa Reihana, Albert Wendt, Dame Juliet Gerrard, Merylyn Tweedie, John Reynolds, Alison McLean, Richard von Sturmer, her own stepson graphic novelist Dylan Horrocks – the list goes on.

Often, Shirley thinks well-known talents deserve more thoughtful attention; she’s currently filming musician Don McGlashan. She doesn’t want to make a “hagiography” – a biography that idealises its subject – she says, but “I just want to show them as they are. People fascinate me. It’s a real education each time.”

Her stand-out moments: following photographer Marti Friedlander around London’s East End, where Marti insisted her orphanage childhood was lucky, given the alternatives; and realising, during filming, that another photographer, Peter Peryer, was dying. Poignantly, “he was trying to get everything done before he passed away … he said he wasn’t ready to die.”

Shirley has also made documentaries about disabled people, and Deaf culture, even staying at the Deaf community’s Gallaudet University in Washington D.C. where the tables were turned. Not knowing how to sign, “you walk into the cafeteria for breakfast as somebody with completely no language, no idea. Everybody there is signing.”

The only child of a Dominion Road pharmacist, Shirley flies under the radar by choice. Yet her success stands out: she has shown more films in the New Zealand International Film Festival than any other local filmmaker.

She wouldn’t have believed that possible when she first studied at the University of Auckland as a young mum with two children (unusual in the early 1970s). She juggled childcare and lectures, thanks to three fellow students – nuns – who would kindly save her a seat when she was late.

Shirley majored in Italian – a beloved grandfather had enjoyed singing Italian opera – and continued into postgraduate study. Impressively, she successfully lobbied the University Senate to allow students to complete masters degrees part time. This flexibility was a feminist win: useful for people who were employed or looking after children (or both).

Then, after three years’ high school teaching, she left to do a Diploma of Drama, for which she made a documentary about the former Theatre Corporate. She never looked back. “I just really wanted to tell a wider story, like somebody’s life,” she says.

By now, she was divorced and had met academic Roger Horrocks (the University’s media and screen pioneer). The couple still edit each other’s work.

They spent 1980 in New York where Shirley helped ambulance-chasing news camera teams. But when she offered her skills to TVNZ, the response was, ‘Oh, thank you, dear, but no.’

“I’m glad it didn’t work out, because I think this way’s been much more rewarding.”

The news room’s loss; documentary’s remarkable gain.