About: Bill Direen, A Memory of Others

Bill Direen, A Memory of Others is a 2017 documentary film produced and directed by that follows Dunedin-Christchurch poet Bill Direen from Dunedin to Auckland on a tour of music and phono-aesthetic poetry. The full 87-minute documentary begins in a small Otago town where Direen is preparing for the tour, leading to interviews at radio stations and live performances in cafés, music foundations, libraries and a children's school. Ogston invited Direen to write poems along the way, which he performed on subjects such as (and in locations related to) writer Janet Frame, composer Douglas Lilburn and poet James K. Baxter. The film shows him rehearsing with the current lineup of his band The Bilders, while playing footage of earlier groups, and showing the process whereby a 16mm film of song Th