Patu!

Patu! (1983)

New Zealand's Eight Week Civil War

In 1981, the New Zealand government invited the South African rugby team to tour New Zealand. This effectively split the country in half. Patu! is the story of the protest movement, HART (halt all racist tours). This documentary shows footage of protester meetings, rugby games and various beatings meted out to protesters from police.

Date of release
1983-07-23
TMDB
7.5 / 10 (6)
Runtime
1h 52m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Merata Mita

Casting

Interesting facts

Patu! is a 1983 New Zealand documentary film directed by Merata Mita about the controversial 1981 Springbok tour. It follows the inner workings of the campaign against the tour, and captures scenes of violent conflict between police and protesters. It is a significant work of activist and indigenous filmmaking, and of New Zealand filmmaking in general.

Production history

In Wellington thirteen film makers, independent of Mita, coalesced around Vanguard Films and some also filmed in other parts of the country. This was our film, our "fight for egalitarianism." "We begged and borrowed to document our taonga fight, we never saw a penny." All that material forms a large part of Patu.

The editing process lasted two years, complicated by the various types of film stock used, the refusal of television networks to lend footage, and the need to protect the negatives from being seized by police as evidence. Mita complained of police harassment as they regularly visited her house on this pretence.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended