History

New Zealand has been involved in film exhibition and film production since film’s beginnings. In 1895, English immigrant A.H. Whitehouse screened the first film in using Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope. Three years later, in another first, Whitehouse filmed the opening of the Auckland Exhibition and race day at Ellerslie.

People were quick to embrace the technology and the opportunities film offered. The Salvation Army, for example, established the Biorama Company in 1902, moving around the country shooting sequences with local people, developing the films and screening them, before moving on to the next location. James McDonald, working for the New Zealand Tourist Department, toured the country filming Maori communities, footage which is today regarded as a precious ethnographic record. Rudall Hayward with his wife Hilda, and later with his second wife, Ramai, shot a number of comedies, dramas and news items in these early days, while film-maker Ted Coubray was responsible for many technical innovations in film, most notably in the recording of sound.

People were quick to embrace the technology and the opportunities film offered. The Salvation Army, for example, established the Biorama Company in 1902, moving around the country shooting sequences with local people, developing the films and screening them, before moving on to the next location. James McDonald, working for the New Zealand Tourist Department, toured the country filming Maori communities, footage which is today regarded as a precious ethnographic record. Rudall Hayward with his wife Hilda, and later with his second wife, Ramai, shot a number of comedies, dramas and news items in these early days, while film-maker Ted Coubray was responsible for many technical innovations in film, most notably in the recording of sound.

People regard the first glimmerings of a film industry in New Zealand as developing out of the narrative films of Gaston Melies, who arrived here from Tahiti in 1912. His films – Loved by a Maori Chieftess, Hinemoa and How Chief Te Ponga Won His Bride –set the scene for the Maori-themed dramas that were to follow.

More to come....