As a visitor to these shore my knowledge of the local film industry in pretty much non-existent. I have seen Once Were Warriors, The Piano and Whale Rider, of course, and who hasn’t heard of Peter Jackson’s oeuvre?
I won’t bore you with a rundown of NZ films (you can find those at the NZ Film Commission website), just a few Did You Know’s:★ NZ has the highest per-capita cinema going in the World.
★ Broken Barrier was the first internationally distributed NZ film
★ Pacific Films, one of the first independent commercial film studios, used to shoot rugby games on saturdays and have 10 minute summaries in the cinemas by the following Tuesday.
★ TV transmission started in the 1960’s, in Auckland only at first, and only between 6 and 9 pm. Colour came in the early ’70, as did a second TV channel.
★ There was no network, film reels were shipped round the local TV stations by planes.
★ The 1977 premier of Sleeping Dogs sees the first commercial feature film made in NZ with a NZ theme (what if Vietnam happened in NZ).
★ 1980 saw the introduction of tax-deductible investment for films, which led to a rash of feature being made. Since many of them were not specifically NZ-themed, it was decided to end this kind of financing and to only finance films that had a NZ story and setting, and were directed, produced and written by NZ talent.
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