A Letter to the Teacher

Short Film (Full Length) – 1957 Documentary

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Part one of two from this full length documentary.

Part two of two from this full length documentary.

Pioneering woman director Kathleen O’Brien looks at NZ Correspondence School education in this 25-minute National Film Unit short. Lessons are sent from the school’s Wellington base to far-flung outposts, for farm kids and sick kids, prisoners and immigrants, from Nuie to Northland. Letters, radio and an annual ‘residential college’ at Massey connect students and teachers. In a newspaper report of the time, O’Brien remembering being stranded at Cape Brett lighthouse “for four days without a toothbrush and wearing only the clothes she stood up in”.

Key Cast & Crew

Kathleen O'Brien

Director, Writer, Editor

Ron McIntyre

Camera

Paul Ricketts

Narrator

See all 4 credits

The lessons have travelled many hundreds of miles so that small fry on a lighthouse can learn the three ‘R’s.
– From the narration

Produced by

The National Film Unit

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