Film in NZ

The great Aotearoa/New Zealand film industry is one of the wonders of the modern world. It is a story told in a land with incredible locations and natural beauty. But, even with those fabulous advantages, our film industry still owes its existence to a group of women and men who dreamed, built what they needed, and invented a way of putting their ideas onto a screen that the whole world has fallen in love with.

Like our artists, musicians, and sports teams, the filmmakers of Aotearoa/New Zealand are a unique and excellent breed. On these pages, we tell their stories, and celebrate their achievements.

The story of Aotearoa/New Zealand film starts way back, in 1896. The first public screenings of films had happened in North America and Europe in 1893 and 1894. But within a year or two, the technology to project films for a paying audience had arrived here.

Which is kind of astonishing, when you consider the difficulty and expense that must have been involved in transporting early films and heavy projecting equipment, across thousands of miles of ocean on a cramped steamer. Clearly, someone was already confident that Kiwis would become a nation of movie lovers. They were right.

We were making our own films only a few years later. The cinema pioneer Alfred Henry Whitehouse made at least 10 short newsreels and documentary pieces in and around his base in Auckland, including a film of soldiers departing for the Boer War in 1900.

Our first proper feature film was Hinemoa in 1914. It is sadly now lost, probably forever. The film was directed by George Tarr, who had moved to New Zealand from Australia as a young man, intending to become an actor, producer and theatre director. Hinemoa opened in Auckland and then toured the country. It attracted good crowds here, and it was also shown in Australia. So our very first feature film was also an international success!

Our best known and most influential filmmaker of this very early era is undoubtedly Rudall Hayward, who came to New Zealand as a five year old with his parents, who were early theatre and cinema impresarios. Rudall's first feature was an ambitious 71-minute romance and adventure called My Lady of the Cave, which was shot over seven weeks in 1921 and 1922, mostly on Tuhua/Mayor Island.

My Lady of the Cave was a local success. But the film Rudall is best remembered for today is his 1925 epic Rewi's Last Stand, which depicted the bloody battle at Ōrākau pā in early 1864. Rudall remade this film with sound in 1940. The same battle was recreated in 2024 for director Michael Jonathan's (Tainui, Mātaatua, Te Arawa) feature film Ka Whawhai Tonu, released internationally as In the Fire of War.

The New Zealand government founded the National Film Unit (the NFU) in 1941. At first, it was focused on making newsreels and promotional films for the country. But from its inception to 1945, it became an important creator of wartime information — and propaganda — that could be shown at home and to the troops in Europe, North Africa and around the Pacific. After the war, the NFU became a training ground for a generation of filmmakers, some of whom would become major figures in the New Zealand industry.

In 1952, the feature film Broken Barrier was released. It was written, directed and co-produced by John O'Shea, with Roger Mirams, who also served as the film's cinematographer. Broken Barrier is remembered as an attempt to re-establish New Zealand as a feature filmmaking nation, and it at least gave O'Shea the confidence to make the adventurous Runaway in 1964, starring Barry Crump and Kiri Te Kanawa, and Don't Let it Get You in 1966.

In 1970, the astonishing documentary This Is New Zealand was made and projected across a three-screen set-up at Expo'70, in Osaka, Japan. Rudall Hayward returned to directing in 1972 to make his last film — and New Zealand's first feature in colour — To Love a Māori.

Writer and director Paul Maunder made his debut television feature Landfall in 1975. But it was shelved due to its content and was not shown until 1977, at the Wellington Film Festival.

From 1977 onwards, film in New Zealand entered a mini golden age. Roger Donaldson's Sleeping Dogs and Geoff Murphy's Wild Man were both released, and the New Zealand Film Commission was launched in 1978 to "encourage, participate and assist" in the making, promotion, distribution and exhibition of films.

David Blyth's erotic thriller Angel Mine was the first film funded by the NZFC. Prime Minister Rob Muldoon was so scandalised that he privately threatened to shut the Film Commission down. But, he failed to follow through on the threat. So, in the next couple of years, helped by some very beneficial tax laws, Skin Deep, Sons For the Return Home, Middle Age Spread, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, Goodbye Pork Pie, Smash Palace, Utu, The Quiet Earth, Came a Hot Friday, Vigil, Sylvia, Mark II, and many others made their way into our cinemas.

By the 1980s, filmmakers including Merata Mita (Patu!), Melanie Rodriga (Trial Run), Vincent Ward (Vigil), John Laing (Dangerous Orphans) and Gaylene Preston (Mr Wrong) would all release feature length films. In 1987 alone, Merata Mita's Mauri, Barry Barclay's Ngāti, and Leon Narbey's Illustrious Energy all appeared in New Zealand cinemas. They were joined in December 1987 by the blood-soaked cult film Bad Taste, from a young, first-time director from Pukerua Bay, by the name of Peter Jackson.

A good handful of New Zealand films had been released in overseas markets before the 1990s. Vincent Ward's The Navigator and Peter Jackson's Meet the Feebles both played in Europe, Asia and North America in 1988 and 1989. Feebles was also the first collaboration between Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Richard Taylor, and it was the first film to have a Wētā Workshop credit.

But from the 1990s onwards, overseas success began to be almost expected of a local film. Jane Campion's An Angel at My Table (1990) won awards at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, and the following year, David Blyth's Grampire (My Grandpa is a Vampire) became a minor cult hit in North America. In 1992, Peter Jackson's Braindead and Alison Maclean's Crush both played internationally, and in 1993 and 1994 the floodgates opened with Campion's The Piano, Jackson's Heavenly Creatures and Lee Tamahori's Once Were Warriors all earning serious worldwide accolades. The Piano was a joint winner of the Cannes' Palme d'Or, and was also nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. Heavenly Creatures would be nominated for Best Original Screenplay the following year.

By 1995, the New Zealand film industry was well enough established, with such a distinct personality, that it was included in the British Film Institute's Century of Cinema series, with Sam Neill co-directing and presenting an hour-long segment called Cinema of Unease.

As the 20th century became the 21st, film in New Zealand continued to evolve and adapt. Filmmaking became more accessible, as digital cameras and home computer editing systems democratised the medium in a way that would have been unimaginable only a few years earlier.

Internationally, New Zealand films continued to sell and attract critical acclaim, with the global triumph of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy especially opening doors to Kiwis, and training up a generation of technicians who could work on a project of any size — and who also had the skills and resources they needed to tell their own stories, closer to home.

Established filmmakers continued to make movies, and a new generation, including Taika Waititi, Niki Caro, Rob Sarkies, Chris Graham, Jackie Van Beek, Christine Jeffs, Briar Grace-Smith, Ant Timpson, Roseanne Liang, Toa Fraser, Jonathan King, Florian Habicht, Tearepa Kahi and many, many others, have emerged. Some of these directors have achieved significant overseas success. But others have focused on making films that will always have their greatest impact at home.

And there are others who have left us far too early. Brad McGann's 2004 debut feature In My Father's Den might be one of our strongest ever dramas. Brad died before he could make another.

Today, the film industry internationally is in a precarious place. Many studios have never properly recovered from the downturn caused by COVID-19, and the rise of streaming platforms has caused cinema chains around the world to contract or collapse. But people still have stories to tell, and a big screen with a proper sound system is still the best place to watch a movie, by far.

New Zealand filmmakers have always been early adopters and restless inventors. Whatever the next years and decades bring, you can be sure there will still be Kiwis behind cameras, making sure the story gets told.