Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Cinema & TV
If you first got interested in NZ by watching it on the silver screen, you're in good com-
pany. Sir Peter Jackson's NZ-made
The Hobbit
and
Lord of the Rings
(
LOTR
) trilogies
were the best thing to happen to NZ tourism since Captain Cook.
Yet NZ cinema is hardly ever easygoing. In his BBC-funded documentary,
Cinema of
Unease,
NZ actor Sam Neill described the country's film industry as 'uniquely strange and
dark', producing bleak, haunted work. One need only watch Lee Tamahori's harrowing
Once Were Warriors
(1994) to see what he means.
The
Listener
's film critic, Philip Matthews, makes a slightly more upbeat observation:
'Between (Niki Caro's)
Whale Rider,
(Christine Jeffs')
Rain
and
Lord of the Rings,
you can
extract the qualities that our best films possess. Beyond slick technical accomplishment, all
share a kind of land-mysticism, an innately supernatural sensibility'.
You could add to this list Jane Campion's
The Piano
(1993), Brad McGann's
In My
Father's Den
(2004) and Jackson's
Heavenly Creatures
(1994) - all of which use magic-
ally lush scenery to couch disturbing violence. It's a land-mysticism constantly bordering
on the creepy.
Even when Kiwis do humour it's as resolutely black as their rugby jerseys; check out
Jackson's early splatter-fests and Taika Waititi's
Boy
(2010). Exporting NZ comedy hasn't
been easy, yet the HBO-produced TV musical parody
Flight of the Conchords
- featuring a
mumbling, bumbling Kiwi folk-singing duo trying to get a break in New York - has found
surprising international success.
It's the Polynesian giggle-factor that seems likeliest to break down the bleak house of
NZ cinema, with feel-good-through-and-through
Sione's Wedding
(2006) netting the
second-biggest local takings of any NZ film.
New Zealanders have gone from never seeing themselves in international cinema to hav-
ing whole cloned armies of Temuera Morrisons invading the universe in
Star Wars
. Famili-
ar faces such as Cliff Curtis and Karl Urban seem to constantly pop up playing Mexican or
Russian gangsters in action movies. Many of them got their start in long-running soap op-
era
Shortland St
(7pm weekdays, TV2).
Other than 2003's winner
Return of the King, The Piano
is the only NZ movie to be nominated for a Best Pic-
ture Oscar. Jane Campion was the first Kiwi nominated for the Best Director Oscar and Peter Jackson the
first to win it.
