Lands of Our Fathers

A white Englishwoman’s decision to become a New Zealander led to her need to know about her childhood in Rhodesia

Lands of Our Fathers - My African Legacy, New Zealand, 2005

Bushcraft Films / Gaylene Preston Productions
Producer/director: Jennifer Bush-Daumec
Executive producer: Gaylene Preston
Editor: Paul Sutorius
Director of photography: Donald Duncan

70 minutes, Exempt

“A white Englishwoman’s decision to become a New Zealander led to her need to know about her childhood in Rhodesia. She grew up there - among jacaranda trees, scrubbed white schoolgirls, black nannies and the adults playing tennis at the club - while her father slowly died of emphysema. A brown suitcase and its contents compel her to journey to uncover puzzles about her past, racial identity and the legacies of colonialism both in Zimbabwe and in New Zealand. In order to live more fully in today’s multi-racial world - a world where the fight for domination of one culture over another, one race over another continues; where differences in skin colour are still mistrusted rather than celebrated - she returns to the country she left 40 years earlier, Rhodesia now Zimbabwe.” www.bushcraft.co.nz

Lands of Our Fathers screened on 15 July 2009.