Making Utu
Gaylene Preston's behind the scenes doco
Goodbye Pork Pie
Geoff Murphy’s preceding feature
Kaleidoscope - NZ Cinema, the Past Decade
A cinematic survey featuring Utu
The Quiet Earth
Also directed by Murphy and starring Bruno
Blerta Revisited
The Utu film school
The New Zealand Wars
Doco series on Māori vs Pākehā colonial conflict
Wild Man
An early feature from the Blerta merry pranksters
Never Say Die
A later Geoff Murphy feature
The Scarecrow
This film screened in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes...
Tank Busters
A very early Murphy heist film
The Governor - He Iwi Ko Tahi Tatou (Episode Four)
Another colonial epic co-written by Keith Aberdein
The Mackenzie Affair - Tancred (Final Episode)
The hunt for another colonial outlaw
Close Up - Utu
A Close Up special on the production of Utu
This is Her
Another revenge tale
Savage Islands
More colonial kidnap and adventure
E Tipu E Rea - Te Moemoea (The Dream)
Anzac Wallace also starred in this
In 1983, director Geoff Murphy stormed out of the scrub of the nascent Kiwi film industry with a quadruple-barreled shotgun take on the great NZ colonial epic. Set during the New Zealand wars, this tale of a Māori leader (Anzac Wallace) and his bloody path to redress 'imbalance' became the second NZ film officially selected for Cannes, the second biggest local hit to that date (after Goodbye Pork Pie). A producer-driven recut was later shown in the US. This 2013 redux offers Utu “enhanced and restored”.
The glorious peak achievement of the new feature film culture that burgeoned here in the 70s, Geoff Murphy’s 1983 Utu is unveiled afresh in its ravishing, pictorial splendour. Here it is, our own turbulent history, transcribed with cinematic élan — and an elegiac, absurdist vision of the devil’s mischief in paradise.– 2013 New Zealand International Film Festival programme
Produced by
Utu Productions
Availability
Available to buy and rent from NZ Film on Demand.
More information
Acknowledgements
Utu Redux was funded by the initial equity partners in the production of the original film, the New Zealand Film Commission, the New Zealand Film Archive and Park Road Post Production, which also did all the technical restoration work. The offline edit was done at The Dub Shop and digital scanning by Weta Digital.
Music
Score composed by John Charles.