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Harry Wynn and the Topp Twins. (Photo: Supplied)
Harry Wynn and the Topp Twins. (Photo: Supplied)

Pop CultureJanuary 30, 2025

What I learnt making a documentary about Aotearoa’s queer history

Harry Wynn and the Topp Twins. (Photo: Supplied)
Harry Wynn and the Topp Twins. (Photo: Supplied)

Harry Wynn, director and writer of TVNZ’s Queer Aotearoa: We’ve Always Been Here, reflects on making the groundbreaking documentary series.

The first seed of the idea for Queer Aotearoa came to me during a regular dog walk. I found myself wondering: “when did it become legal for adult men to have consensual relationships in New Zealand?” To my surprise, it was only in 1986 – six years before I was born. Even more shocking, it was only a year after I was born that it became illegal to deny someone a job or rental property because of their sexuality or gender identity. I had always imagined New Zealand as a progressive little utopia at the bottom of the world but, for queer people, progress came surprisingly late compared to places like the UK.

This moment on the dog walk felt like opening Pandora’s box. As someone who benefits from the hard-won rights of activists who risked everything to challenge a repressive status quo, I was embarrassed by how little I knew about our own history. When I searched for documentaries on key events and change-makers in New Zealand’s LGBTQIA+ history, I found almost nothing – just a few old clips from Queer Nation. This glaring gap in access to our own history made me realise how essential it was to preserve these stories. With time running out, it felt urgent to capture the voices of those who had been part of these movements while we still could.

Working with producer Orlando Stewart was a no-brainer. He had made the TVNZ series When Bob Came, a documentary about the enduring cultural impact of Bob Marley’s one and only visit to Aotearoa in 1979. His experience with utilising TVNZ’s extensive archival database, which spans over a century, proved invaluable. This treasure trove helped us visually support the stories shared in interviews. Among the gems we uncovered were experimental documentaries by Geoff Steven about Auckland’s nightlife in the early 1980s, as well as old interviews with queer icons like the Topp Twins, Hudson & Halls, Carmen Rupe and Georgina Beyer. 

I think audiences will be surprised by how progressive some attitudes were in the past. Georgina Beyer’s Wairarapa campaign, for instance, included interviews with several middle-aged rural male voters who said they couldn’t care less about a politician’s identity, that it was her character that mattered most. Then there are also the interviews where reporters reveal blatant intolerance toward LGBTQIA+ people. Condensing all of these stories into six half-hour episodes was no small feat (shoutout to our brilliant editor, Sacha Campbell.) 

Mike Puru and Harry Wynn (Photo: Supplied)

When we started this project, I saw it as history worth telling. But what I didn’t expect was how deeply it would move me. We sat down with 35 interviewees for the series, and many shared the most difficult experiences of their lives. Mike Puru spoke about his fear of being publicly outed – a fear that became a reality for other entertainers. Joan Bellingham, a lesbian nurse, was sent to a psychiatric ward halfway through her training and committed for 12 years, enduring countless rounds of electroconvulsive therapy to “fix” her. Michelle Lewin, a trans woman, had to leave her dream job in the Air Force because it became unbearable to live as someone she wasn’t.

In 2025, events from 1986 or 1993 can feel distant or even irrelevant. But as recent events here and across the world have shown us, knowledge is power, especially for minorities whose rights can be stripped away with the stroke of a pen. Learning what LGBTQIA+ people have endured in New Zealand underscores how far we’ve come and how fragile progress can be. History shows that it doesn’t take much for the silent majority to shift their views on what rights they think minorities “deserve”. That’s why understanding what’s at stake is so important, while still finding the warmth and fun through our wonderful host, Eli Matthewson.

I know that for some in the LGBTQIA+ community, things like pride parades, rainbow flags, and overtly camp imagery can feel off-putting. Our rights are built upon activism and protest movements, and Pride represents activism on our community’s own terms. We gave a lot of thought to how we could make the show broad enough to resonate with people who are still working through their identities, as well as straight cis-gendered people. I hope this show and its exploration of our queer heritage in Aotearoa can serve as a gateway for people, no matter where they are on their journey.

For me, this is the show I wish I had when I was 21. My hope is that it passes down our queer history to younger generations, reaffirming that we’ve always been here – and ensuring that our stories will be here for those who come after us.

Queer Aotearoa: We’ve Always Been Here comes to TVNZ+ on Feb 1.

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Pop CultureJanuary 29, 2025

Review: Vengaboys, 90s Mania, and leaving the past in the past

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Alex Casey attends the 90s Mania concert featuring Vengaboys in Christchurch’s Town Hall. 

I am squarely in the target market for 90s Mania, a “pop royalty extravaganza” nostalgia tour fronted by Vengaboys. The Platinum Album (2000) was among my first CDs, the perfect accompaniment for kicking back in an inflatable chair with one’s Discman. A quarter century later, I still relish in remembering the past, spending my professional life writing about pop culture nostalgia, and my personal life rebuilding my childhood VHS collection. 

Which is all to say, I wanted to love 90s Mania last night at the Town Hall so, so much. In fact, my hopes for it were so high, my nostalgia so strong, that my main motivation for wanting to go was nostalgia I had for another nostalgia tour that I went to in 2019. As I wrote for The Spinoff at the time in a syrupy Lou Bega-induced haze: “it was comforting that people on both sides of the stage were frantically trying to bottle the brief moment of nostalgic joy forever.”

Vengaboys perform during So POP at Spark Arena on February 5, 2019 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo: Dave Simpson/WireImage)

But here in 2025, by way of 1999, something was off. In the foyer, squinting at all the space buns and sequins, you could almost be in the 90s – but the illusion would quickly be shattered by some guy in an All Blacks jersey holding as many beers as humanly and legally possible. Also breaking the spell was a vicious rumour circulating that the main Vengaboys singer, Kim Sasabone, had taken a break from touring and wasn’t even there.

We took our seats upstairs for the opening act Sash, a DJ whose bone-shakingly loud 90s European dance pop was further amplified by the Town Hall’s world-renowned acoustics. I assume Sir Miles Warren and Maurice Mahoney ran out of time to test just how intense an electronica remix of Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’ could possibly sound, but by the end of the night I could not hear near, nor far, nor wherever you are. 

Behind Sash, footage of a much younger Sash, playing to a much larger and more enthused crowd, reminded us all of the crushing passage of time. “You are now in 1997 – do you remember those days?” Sash bellowed into the mic. “They were so much fun… and now they are gone.” As a gaping pit of sadness opened in my stomach, my friend acutely diagnosed the vibe: it was like a fake concert in a horror movie, right before something bad happens. 

Vengaboys took the sparse stage soon after Sash, and the rumour was confirmed: original Vengaboy Kim Sasabone had been replaced, as had “the cowboy one” Roy den Burger (who, as it turns out in my furious post-show research, left the group in 2006). Any confusion about who we were actually watching wasn’t helped by the opening song, a cover of LMFAO’s ‘Party Rock Anthem’ (“Vengaboys are in the house tonight, everybody just had a good time”). 

Thankfully, the Vengaboys were soon playing actual Vengaboys songs, and the vibes needle swung from “horror movie opening scene” to “inappropriate Wiggles show”. As the crowd was instructed to put their hands up and down to the tune of, you guessed it, ‘Up and Down’, the screen onstage displayed a Attenborough-style montage of ladybirds and snails having sex. Later, someone would throw their bra onstage, and the sailor would sniff it way too deeply. 

One positive of the kids-show-vibe was having the extremely simple lyrics projected on screen, which unearthed decades of misinterpretation by me and many of my peers. It’s never too late to learn something new, and last night I learned the song actually goes “I want to go boom boom” instead of “I want a double boom”, and also that the Vengabus travels from New York to San Francisco in “an intercity disco” rather than “an inches elmo disco.”

Perhaps naively, I had been expecting some deep cut album tracks, brushing up on the likes of ‘Yours or Mine’ and ‘Cheekah Bow Bow’. But the ‘boys stuck to just the hits – and apparently everyone else’s hits too. Opening with a 2011 LMFAO track perhaps should have warned us that we were about to enter a chaotic and completely incongruous “90s” setlist including ‘I Was Made For Loving You Baby’ (1979), ‘We Will Rock You’ (1977) and ‘The Harlem Shake’ (2013). 

Much like me deciding which TV Hits posters to hang in 1999, Vengaboys and 90s Mania threw absolutely everything at the wall. When they played their own hits it was a jolt of nostalgic dopamine, but you could never fully relax into it for fear it would suddenly morph into an ‘I Like to Move Move It’ X ice bucket challenge megamix. As they finished ‘Kiss, Kiss, Kiss’, we scuttled out of the doors before the encore. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t look back.  

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