THIS IS NEW ZEALAND + SHORTS
***1/2 out of *****

Reviewed by David Cormack

Screening in the 2007 New Zealand International Film Festival
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Genres
Documentary

C’mon to New Zealand (1969)

Written and Directed by
Arthur Everard  

The first short film we watched was a 1970s tourism video made by Air New Zealand to target the Australian market. The film was unintentionally hilarious as well as being an interesting time capsule of New Zealand 35 years ago. The first thing you notice is that the meals on Air New Zealand have gone considerably downhill since this film was made – the opening clip had air hostesses walking up and down the aisles of the plane pushing a trolley laden with lobsters, gateaux and other such delicacies usually reserved for the haute cusine restaurants of Wellington nowadays.

The film itself had no artistic merits, rather it was more a voyeuristic look at how we used to be. Apparently, 90% of people in New Zealand smoke. We had a burgeoning sex industry (the clip of the stripper getting her cans out followed up by the clip a symphony orchestra was the highligh of the piece), and sideburns were more prevalent than they ever needed to be. There were some moments of cultural cringe, particularly when we were shown the Maori dancers in Wairakei whilst the voice-over, in his wonderful BBC voice, told us “but no one wears grass skirts all the time, it’s just for tourists”. Fears of unintentional racism crept over me but fortunately this was just a brief interlude as the film continued its trip down the country. Contrast was the theme of the film and was nicely summed up by the voice over saying “New Zealand has more contrast in its 100,000 square miles than Australia does in its millions”.

I felt that this was an unnecessary add-on to the feature we had all come to see, though I imagine it would be hard to justify an $11 price-tag for a 20 minute feature, which is the length of This Is New Zealand. That is not to say I didn’t enjoy it immeasurably.

This is Expo (1970)

Written and Directed by
Hugh McDonald  

The next piece was a short documentary made at the 1970 Expo in Osaka where the film was shown. It was made by the same director as the feature and so was heavy in its New Zealand slant; in the beginning they showed us various nation’s display buildings with the Soviet’s being the tallest, the United States being the largest and so forth (this includes the immortal line “here’s the Australian building, and etcetera and etcetera” as the Bulgarian and Indian buildings come into shot). This was the weakest of the 3 films we saw as it seemed it was just shot to show the Government how wonderful the New Zealand display was – and to be fair it did seem to do quite well; there were long lines to get into the exhibit and the New Zealand restaurant and milkshakes seemed to be in high demand (allegedly, the New Zealand restaurant with its “fabulous” geyser display was packed up and re-opened in Japan to remain there after the expo was pulled down).

The script writer seemed to display some psychic skills when we saw the New Zealand night show which gave the history of New Zealand and when the arrival of the Brits was shown the voiceover man said “and here’s the arrival of the British, an event that doesn’t need further comment”. Half a decade before the true surfacing of the treaty grievances.

Again, there was a feeling that this was another unnecessary part used to justify the full price for the film.

This is New Zealand (1969)

Written and Directed by
Hugh McDonald
David Jordan

Finally the piece de resistance, This Is New Zealand. Before going in to the film I struck up conversation with a couple of elderly gentlemen who had seen it the first time round when school kids were bused in from all round the country to watch it, they both said it was wonderful and truly technological. I remained skeptical, how tech could a film be that was made in New Zealand in the 1970s? How wrong I was. The film is shown on three separate screens which sometimes show one image spread out across all three screens or separate images that are linked in some fashion, a personal favourite was the train that came towards us on one screen, away from us on the next then back towards us on the third. Genius. Before going into the film I suspected that I was going to witness basically an Air New Zealand add with fly-overs over the pretty images of NZ on display. This film had more depth than that. We saw All Blacks games, car-racing, children in kindergartens (apparently hammer and nails were freely handed out in kindys back in the day). Basically it was a more slick, more interesting, more  brilliant version of the first film we saw.

The soundtrack was also brilliant with a mixture of New Zealand music and classical (Sibelius was a particular favourite, used as it was in the ‘climactic’ scene of the sweeping ascent up a mountain).

Overall I think the best way to present this would have been to charge less for this and have it run solely by itself, or alternatively, to present it as a pre-screener to all films during the festival.

This film's Wellington run is currently finished. Please refer to the Film Fest homepage for more information on screenings in other parts of the country

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