Making Utu

Making-of documentary from Gaylene Preston, filmed on the set of Geoff Murphy's classic 'puha Western', Utu.

'Gaylene Preston’s 1983 TV documentary celebrates the chutzpah, ingenuity and burgeoning national pride of a bunch of young cowboys out in the wild making the epic New Zealand movie of their dreams. Training her camera on the face of assistant director Lee Tamahori as the rebel Te Wheke and his gang throw a grand piano to its spectacular demise, she captured for all time an essential satisfaction of movie-making for boys: making stuff and wrecking it. (In the case of Utu, once they’d wrecked a set, they’d reassemble the pieces into another set.)... Utu was more invested in tikanga Māori than any feature film since the works of Rudall Hayward... Director Geoff Murphy wants authenticity. It is fascinating to see how willingly, and how tentatively, all concerned consider who can tell whom how to get it right.' (Bill Gosden, NZIFF 2013)

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