Erewhon

Widely exhibited New Zealand photographer Gavin Hipkins takes inspiration from Samuel Butler’s 1872 utopian satire Erewhon: Or, Over the Range to create his first feature-length film, loaded with images of the natural world and described as a "pictorial essay".

"Butler had worked on a South Island high country sheep station and it’s easy to suppose that his objectification of a wholly invented ‘native people’ is an ironic posture owing something to his experience in colonial New Zealand. Likewise his concerns with the coming dominance of industry chime eerily with contemporary concerns: vegetarianism is the law in Erewhon and machines have been banished to museums for fear of their becoming conscious.

"On the soundtrack Mia Blake reads from the book, while Hipkins’ imagery seems to fill in the years since, finding the persistence of Butler’s themes in the New Zealand landscape. His imagery seems so finely etched in the greenness and dampness and reflected light of Aotearoa, it’s surprising to learn that he also shot extensively in Queensland and Northern India." (New Zealand International Film Festival)

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