Aunty and the Star People

Aged 50, Jean Watson sold her Wellington house to buy land for a children’s home in southern India. In 2013, filmmaker Gerard Smyth (quake chronicle When a City Falls) spent two months in India, chronicling Watson and some of the many lives she had changed. Smyth’s documentary also harks back to the 1960s, when Watson wrote novel Stand in the Rain, and hunted crocodiles with Barry Crump. The result won solid audiences at the 2014 NZ Film Festival. The Listener gave it four stars; The Dominion called it “unpretentious but unashamedly enjoyable”. Watson died in December 2014.

...exactly the quietly spoken, unpretentious but unashamedly enjoyable film that Watson's story deserves.

– Graeme Tuckett in the Dominion Post, 15 September 2014

Key Cast & Crew

Scott Flyger

Editor, Writer

Jo Coffey

Executive Producer

Gerard Smyth

Writer, Director, Cinematographer

Joy Cowley

Subject

Jan Sandle

Sound

Jean Watson

Subject