Carry Me Back, New Zealand, 1982

Kiwi Films

Director: John Reid
Producer: Graeme Cowley

Associate Producer: Peter Barker

Executive Producer: Garry Hannam

Story: Joy Cowley
Screenplay: Derek Morton, Keith Aberdein, John Reid
Director of Photography: Graeme Cowley

Editors: Simon Reece, Michael Horton

Sound Director: Don Reynolds

Art Director: Jim Barr

Music: Tim Bridgewater, James Hall

With: Arthur Donovan (Grant Tilly), Jimmy Donovan (Kelly Johnson), Aunty Bird (Dorothy McKegg), T K Donovan (Derek Hardwick), Girl (Joanne Mildenhall), George (Alex Trousdell), Brian (Frank Edwards), Craig (Michael Haig), Geoff (John Anderson), Andy (Brian Sergeant), Winton (John Bach), Stanley (Peter Tait), Traffic cop (Bruno Lawrence)

35mm, PG-Contains Coarse language, 84 minutes

Two brothers take their father into the city for a weekend on the town. When the father dies in their hotel, the boys need to smuggle his body back to the farm so they can still inherit the family property. A black comedy showing off our “morbid fascination with death”, director John Reid.

“Carry Me Back is always lovely to look at, sometimes very funny and occasionally awkwardly melodramatic. Above all, it is shot through (if I may use that expression) with local colour. The horseplay and the mateship of the country boys going to town for a Ranfurly Shield match are absolutely dinkum.” – Peter Harcourt, Sequence, October 1982.

Drawing on our collection, the NZ Film Archive is pleased to announce our partnership with the Museum of Wellington City and Sea as part of the 2012 Death and Diversity Exhibition 

From the comic Carry Me Back to the challenging documentary Last Western Heretic, The Film Archive has drawn on our collection to present fictional and non-fictional representations of the mortality of man. Special features include  Macario, the never-screened in NZ Mexican film, Sinead Donnelly introducing her three documentaries, and The Orator, the first Samoan feature length film.

Fear of death and dying, actual death and dying, and what happens to those who have died and those who are left behind will all provide potent dramatic filmic material (and the occasional laugh!)