Rugby
This collection celebrates rugby in New Zealand as it has been seen onscreen: from classic bios and tour docos, to social history, dramas and protest. In the accompanying backgrounders, broadcaster Keith Quinn looks at the on air history of rugby in NZ; and playwright David Geary asks if rugby is a religion, and argues it is a good test of character.
Score
The theatre of sport is given full-blown operatic treatment in this National Film Unit classic. Footage from the French 1979 rugby tour of New Zealand is rendered in slow-motion and cut to a Tchaikovsky score. The result is an often glorious, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, paean to rugby. Balletic lineouts, driving tackles, and the dark mysteries of the ruck, make for a ballsy Swan Lake in the mud. It includes the Bastille Day French victory over the All Blacks. Directed by NFU stalwart Arthur Everard, it won a jury prize at the Montreal World Film Festival.
Arthur Everard
Arthur Everard spent almost two decades making films for the National Film Unit, including directing award-winning rugby short Score and joining the team behind Commonwealth Games doco Games ’74. In 1984, Everard became New Zealand’s Chief Film Censor, a position he held for six years.
Finola Dwyer
Finola Dwyer, ONZM, began as an editor. After cutting Country Calendar and movie Trial Run, she was encouraged by Larry Parr to become a producer. Three films and a number of TV programmes later, Dwyer began her producing career anew in London in the early 90s. Her work in England stretches from acclaimed Beatles feature Backbeat to Oscar-nominated dramas An Education and Brooklyn.