Neighbourhood of Truth
Cushla Donaldson and Quentin Lind
2021
46 minutes

In 1996 a letter was received by detective Brent Garner, 'COP, you drew the straw. Chapter 1 starts. You will die, I guarantee. The Executioner.' These words began what would become one of Aotearoa’s most bizarre crime cases, fuelling existing ‘Satanic Panic’, a recurrent symptom of the dominant culture's floating anxiety. Donaldson and Lind’s Neighbourhood of Truth examines the surveillance, fear and othering mirrored in this 'once-in-a-century-crime'. The film then probes further to unveil sensitivities and fractures within the settler colonial psyche and it’s ideologies.

Neighbourhood of Truth has previously been screened at Artspace Aotearoa, Wellington City Gallery and Christchurch Art Gallery.

Cushla Donaldson
Cushla Donaldson grew up in the Manawatū region of Te Ika-a-Maui. Guided by her observations growing up in a provincial settler colonial context, her practice gives form to the restive and political relationship between weakening dominant ideologies and the growing cogency and power of unacknowledged realities. The filmic documents of personal and socio-political events reflect Donaldsons practice which transverses sociological and artistic expressions.

Donaldson presented the acclaimed participatory work 501s (2018- ongoing) with the Physics Room at the Melbourne Art Fair in 2018 and with them developed a parallel collection of commissioned essays and artworks Through That Which Separates Us, published in 2021. She is currently based in the Netherlands where she is a PhD candidate in the Sociology of Law at Leiden University. She received a post graduate diploma in Sociology with distinction from the University of Auckland, her MFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and her BFA from Elam School of Fine Arts.

Quentin Lind
Quentin Lind was born in Manukau, raised in the Manawatū, but was transient throughout Aotearoa during their formative years. Influenced by their early transience, Lind's work is motivated by the visual and cultural languages specific to their geographic identity. Their work has explored working class ritualism, ranging from private to energetic collective actions, which exist as forms of personal and cultural self-fashioning.

Currently, Lind's practice is propelled by their interest in horror cinema and the extended field of documentary. They view genre cinema as a site for exploring the political imagination and an entry point to explore and re-evaluate historical memories. Lind attended Quay School of the Arts in Whanganui during the process of its closure, then completed their studies at Elam School of Fine Arts in 2016, graduating with an MFA.

Lind’s film A Map So Big It Blocks the Sun (2023) is screening at Enjoy until 3 February 2024.

Contact the host of Film Screening: Cushla Donaldson & Quentin Lind, Neighbourhood of Truth, 2021