‘This Is New Zealand’ And ‘No Ordinary Sheila' Film Screenings

Whanganui, February 4, 2025 — The ‘Friends of the Whanganui River’ will be conducting two documentary film screenings during the coming month with the first one being one of New Zealand’s most iconic films.

The Friends of the Whanganui River have now made an arrangement with the owner of the Boyd’s Auto Barn Museum whereby they can screen films in the small cinema that has been constructed within the private museum at 3 Pickwick Road in Whanganui.

The secretary of the society, Graeme Moffatt said “I remember seeing this film in 1971 and was totally blown away at the cinematic portrait of New Zealand, spread over three screens that were side by side, not knowing that I would become intimately connected to it some fifty years later.”

Mr Moffatt went on to say that “I began my filmmaking career in 2003 and soon met up with Hugh Macdonald, the principal director of ‘This is New Zealand’, and soon thereafter was privileged to be able to see the very first digital reproduction of this film in one of Peter Jackson’s Wellington cinemas.”

New Zealand suddenly had to start promoting itself to the world, and the star attraction at that event was this revolutionary 20-minute film that no-one could have predicted how this would become a watershed moment in New Zealand's film-making history.

The film, originally screening at the World Fair Expo ’70 at Osaka in Japan from the beginning of 1970 to over 1,500,000 people, was produced as a result of Britain preparing to join the European Common Market in the 1970’s and it returned to be screened in the four main centres to another 400,000 New Zealanders.

The film was made by the National Film Unit, and introduced visitors at the New Zealand pavilion to a glorious three-screen presentation with highly inventive camera work and editing, showing everyone where we are, who we are, and what a spectacularly beautiful land we live in.

'This is New Zealand’ weaved together a tapestry of cinematic mastery daring to stretch the boundaries of technical restraints, providing visual effects with an incredible sound track, not thought possible in the era in which it was produced and described by Sir Peter Jackson as ”A genuinely creative piece of filmmaking”.

Mr Moffatt went on to explain that in 2021, after the film had been digitised and improved by Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post in Wellington, it screened in the 2007 New Zealand International Film Festival, and early in 2021 Hugh revealed that he had acquired the copyright to the film.

Following this a decision to screen it throughout the country to smaller independent cinemas, where it had not been shown previously, was made and a number of cinemas from Dannevirke in the north to Akaroa in the south were provided with a modern digital version until the COVID lockdowns put a halt to the programme.

‘This is New Zealand’ will be screened at 7pm on Saturday the 15th February along with a documentary about who, why and how the film was made, that Mr Moffatt was involved in the production of.

Mr Moffatt continued, “I was also involved in a major way in the production of Hugh Macdonald’s last film before dementia took hold of him, and this is about an inspiring New Zealander who became a close friend of well known New Zealand writer Janet Frame, during their university days in Dunedin.

The film unfurls the life story of the adventurous, multi-talented Sheila Natusch, from first opening her eyes to nature while growing up on Stewart Island, as the daughter of a ranger and an artist and filmmaker Hugh Macdonald directs this portrait of a lover of nature and life, her joy unbowed by age in his film titled ‘No Ordinary Sheila’, after a comment made by Kim Hill when she was interviewing Sheila on Radio New Zealand, for the making of this documentary.

This film will be screened at 7pm on Saturday 1 March and as seats are limited to only 16, it will be first in first served, and bookings must be made for both films on the society’s web site at https://friendsofthewhanganuiriver.com/friends-of-the-whanganui-river-movie-night/ .

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