The Te Kooti Trail

16 May, 2003
Bank of New Zealand Travelling Film Show 2003 has already this year completed a tour of the Taranaki region and the West Coast. As usual, the Film Show was greeted by enthusiastic audiences.

Bank of New Zealand Travelling Film Show has made the Film Archive collection much more accessible to all New Zealanders as has the expansion of the new Film Archive web site and the launch of the national educational programme, On Tape, which presently has up to 2000 school children a week using the library programme. The success of these projects reinforces how vital this work to collect, preserve and project our moving image heritage is through the sponsored Bank of New Zealand Reeltime Project.

Bay of Plenty audiences will soon have the opportunity to see the recently restored early New Zealand feature film The Te Kooti Trail.

One of four silent feature films produced by pioneer filmmaker Rudall Hayward The Te Kooti Trail was released in 1927, its mix of whirlwind action, high comedy and romance was a success with local audiences and it remains one of the great achievements of the early screen era in New Zealand.

In 1984 The Te Kooti Trail was transferred from the National Film Library to the Film Archive who proceeded with the much needed preservation work. The restoration process took ten years and in 2000 earned the Film Archive the prestigious Haghefilm Award.

The gloriously restored tinted print premiered at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, a silent film festival in Northern Italy in 2001. Early in 2003 a special screening for the descendants of characters, actors and crew involved in the film was held at Te Hokowhitu-a-Tumatauenga Marae in Whakatane.

Set in the Bay of Plenty in 1869, The Te Kooti Trail is a dramatisation of events that occurred at Mill Farm, a small settlement at Te Poronu. Adapted from a newspaper serial written by Frank Bodle, which was based on an account given by historian James Cowan in volume two of The New Zealand Wars, the film is a more simplified version of the actual event with the introduction of a love story and comic routines that appear in all of Hayward’s silent films.

The film concerns the Ngati Pukeko who have been given a mill by Sir George Grey as a reward for their work and friendliness to the British. The mill is attacked by a war party sent by the great military genius, Te Kooti (played by Te Pairi Tu Te Rangi). The miller, a Frenchmen called Jean Guerrin (H. Redmond), is killed, as is his wife’s sister, Monika (played by Tina Hunt) who refuses to tell the whereabouts of hidden ammunition. An attempt by the Corps of Guides, led by Lieutenant Gilbert Mair (T. McDermott), to prevent the tragedy is unsuccessful and Mair spends another year attempting to defeat Te Kooti before finally succeeding in an attack near Rotorua.

In keeping with the tradition of the Travelling Film Show the free screening of The Te Kooti Trail will have live musical accompaniment with Tama Karena on the piano.

The Te Kooti Trail (NZ, 1927) dur. 103mins

Whakatane
Little Theatre, Memorial Hall
Wednesday, 28 May at 6.00pm & 8.15pm
Free tickets available from Bank of New Zealand Whakatane

Tauranga
Baycourt Theatre
Thursday, 29 May at 7.30pm
Free tickets available from Bank of New Zealand Tauranga and Baycourt Theatre

For further information contact
Monika Ahuriri (04) 384 7647