AllMovie

This documentary is New Zealand expatriate actor and filmmaker Sam Neill's moody entry in the British Film Institute commissioned series, "Century of Cinema," designed to be a collection of the personal opinions of renowned international filmmakers concerning the cinema of their native countries. The film is highly charged with Neill's conflicting emotions about his country, which according to his film, still suffers greatly, cinematically and culturally, from an identity crisis. Through film clips, Neill analyzes not only the earliest years of Kiwi cinema, but also its heyday during the 1950s when it first gained international attention. He also presents a rather dark analysis of the films of contemporary New Zealand.