A wee heads-up about a very inter­est­ing (and FREE) film screen­ing this Sat­urday at 7pm at the Film Archive.

Shot in 1954 by a UK team, The Seekers is a very colo­ni­al take on first con­tact between Maori and Pakeha in a bizarre NZ ‘Wild West’ style fea­ture film.

Both riv­et­ing and shock­ing view­ing (there’s erot­i­cised dan­cing and plas­ti­cine moko for a start) it’s also one of the few films made in NZ the late fifties/early six­ties. A com­bin­a­tion of the intro­duc­tion of tele­vi­sion and a lack of gov­ern­ment sup­port for inde­pend­ent film mak­ing at the time means we have only the occa­sion­al inter­na­tion­al pro­ject like The Seekers to show for nearly 15 years of New Zealand’s fea­ture film his­tory.

The Seekers promotional poster

Wit­ness people fall­ing live into boil­ing mud, gey­sers explod­ing around sail­ors etc etc – all used for max­im­um impact to rep­res­ent our great ‘Land of Fury.’

And did I men­tion it’s FREE?!