"For Helen Clark, politics was everything. She ate, slept and drank it."
The words of John Key, seemingly in admiration of his former political foe, open a documentary premiering on TV3 tonight.
Inside New Zealand: Helen Clark gives a rare, candid insight into the life of former Prime Minister and Labour leader Helen Clark.
The two-part documentary takes a wide-ranging look at her life: from her rural upbringing, early political career and years as Prime Minister to her current gig as head of the United Nations Development Programme.
It includes rare interviews with her family about their formidable daughter, sister and wife.
Ms Clark's father George Clark is among her biggest fans, despite being a hardcore National Party member who was once the chairman of the party's Waikato branch.
"Her father has been a wonderful archivist of her life, and so as well as the family photos you'd expect to have, he's kept clippings from the beginning," says the documentary's co-director Dan Salmon. "He's got scrapbook after scrapbook of clippings; you could spend weeks with it!"
Ms Clark's sisters recall how Helen would bring her "left-leaning, long-haired friends" home to the farm, while her husband, introverted academic Dr Peter Davis, also opens up about being married to one of New Zealand's most powerful women.
Salmon says he was touched by Dr Davis' willingness to be interviewed, especially given the smear campaigns by some media in the past falsely outing him as being gay.
"He was treated terribly, and so for him to front up and share quite intimate stuff with us is really special. That's one of the things that we've tried to do with the documentary, balance the political with the personal."
Although Ms Clark was a willing participant in the documentary, some topics – the infamous 'corngate' interview, for example – remained out of bounds.
So too did some of her adversaries – Jenny Shipley and Bill English refused to be interviewed. Others were able to be talked around.
"It took a little bit of convincing with Don Brash, because he'd had a documentary made about him (The Hollow Men) that he wasn't happy with," Salmon says.
"I talked to him about New Zealand history and how he had to step up and speak if he wanted to be remembered as part of that history. And so he did, and he was really good."
Ms Clark's former colleagues appear too – Judith and Dame Cath Tizard dismiss the lesbian rumours once and for all, and Jim Anderton talks about the strain politics put on their friendship.
Peppered throughout the documentary are scenes shot at the United Nations headquarters in New York, where Salmon found he was welcome… most of the time.
"We'd go in, we'd meet people, we'd see everyone sitting down [at a meeting] and then Helen Clark would say 'Now we'll just goodbye to our little friends', and we'd have to turn the camera off and shuffle out of the room!"
Salmon says he hopes the documentary will leave viewers re-energised, rather than jaded, about politics.
Part one of the documentary, Road to Power, screens on TV3 at 9:30pm tonight. Part two, Hard Labour, is at 9:30 on July 30.
Inside New Zealand: Helen Clark was jointly funded by NZ on Air's Platinum Fund and TV3.
3 News
source: newshub archive
