Under the Southern Cross

I saw this movie in October 1998 at the Cinema Muto festival in Pordenone; they screened a print from the New Zealand Film Archive with the original intertitles. Although this is a fiction film, it has more impact as a documentary. Part of this is for a bad reason -- there's really not much narrative in the story on offer -- but most of it is for a much better reason: this movie is filled with gorgeous footage of (mostly caucasian) New Zealanders of the 1920s at work and at play.

We see fun-fair patrons riding the witch's hat at the Atlantic and Pacific show, and attending a race meeting. We see a few shots of Maori natives, with no real examination of the racial situation. There are splendid panoramic shots of Rotorua, Lake Waikaremoana, and the volcano at Ruapehu.

As they say in Kiwi Land: "You'll be right!" My rating for this film: 9 out of 10, and it evoked for me some (not entirely happy) memories of my early years in the Australian outback in the 1950s.