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Taranaki
Short Film (Full Length) – 1954
Four decades before starring in The Last Samurai, New Zealand’s most symmetrical volcano stole the limelight in this NFU short. Extolling a mantra of progress and change, Taranaki presents New Plymouth as regional hub and suburban paradise, surrounded by bays and gladioli. Narrator Paul Ricketts touches on a conflict-soaked past by recalling his great grandmother’s nightly refuge in a central city stockade, during the 1860s Taranaki Wars. Back in 1954, a fishing license costs two pounds, and co-operatively-run dairy factories produce over half the nation’s cheese.
We’ve been here a 100 years, and we’ve felled the forests of Taranaki, tilled the land and built our towns. About 24,000 of us live in this New Plymouth, the town that’s grown on the site the settlers cleared.– Narrator Paul Ricketts
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