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?!