A screening at the Auckland Office of the Film Archive, 300 K'Rd

Director Keith Hunter will be present and the screening will be followed by an informal Q and A.

Murder On The Blade? is a feature-length documentary questioning Scott Watson’s conviction for the murder of  two young people who disappeared from a party in the Marlborough Sounds on New’s Eve 1997.
 
In November 2008, Watson provided copies of the film and the subsequent book, Trial By Trickery, to the Governor General as the grounds for his application for a pardon. The book and film undermine the integrity of both Watson’s trial and his subsequent appeal hearing. A screening of the film is apposite now because four years later the pardon application remains unanswered.
 
The film reveals that the prosecution  case put to the jury was frequently false, that none of the evidence against the convicted man stands up to scrutiny, and that all the principal eyewitnesses relied on by the Crown had retracted their identifications of Watson as the guilty man. Those same eyewitnesses had said from the beginning that his yacht was not the boat the missing pair were last seen boarding.
 
At the New Zealand Screen Awards 2005, Murder On The Blade? was awarded as “Best Documentary” for the two year period 2003 - 4. It played on Television One at 7.30pm on Friday 7 November 2003, inheriting an audience rating of 8 from ‘Holmes’. During the broadcast the audience rating rose to 17. New Zealand Herald polls before and afterwards showed that it changed the minds of 15% of New Zealanders from believing Watson guilty to believing him innocent.
 
"As well as bringing Scott Watson’s story up to date, discussion after the viewing may encompass the latest developments in the saga of the Crewe Murder case and show that Watson is to become the new Arthur Allan Thomas, convicted after an incompetent and corrupt  police inquiry and kept in prison by a Justice System that is incapable of conceding it could be wrong. Watson and Thomas suffered under a system of criminal law that puts the pursuit of justice aside in favour of competitive sport, where a special immunity from the law allows and encourages lawyers to mislead our courts in order to play and win the game".
 - Keith Hunter