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Credits: Thanks Robin!
Links: Cinema of Unease Images | Cinema of Unease Details | Sound Bytes | Sam Neill Home

Sam Neill narrates this documentary.

• expatriate.wav -- I am an expatriate. Like all those who are separated from their country, I dream of home. I dream of New Zealand. (116k)

 
• whyspot.wav -- Why this particular spot? (18k)

 
• thisroad.wav -- I've been up and down this road many times before and never seen, never heard another car, another living soul. (67k)

 
• permittodream.wav -- I now have a permit to dream cinematic images that are of our own place, and this is my place. (92k)

 
• lonelyroad.wav -- It also seems to me that this lonely road through this indifferent landscape, this isolated space, is the story of cinema in New Zealand itself. (112k)

 
• goinghome.wav -- I'm going home. (10k)

 
• childhood.wav -- Every time I return to New Zealand, it's a return to my childhood. (43k)

 
• kangaroos.wav -- I asked my father if there were any kangaroos there, and he said "No, don't be bloody silly," so that was that. There are, however, 55 million sheep here. I've never thought that was much a compensation. (128k)

 
• thesedays.wav -- These days, whenever I come back I never fail to be exhilarated by the air, the space, blue sky down to your feet. I just can't wait to hit the road. <Sounds of car door closing and gear grinding> If I can find the gears.... (194k)

 
• twohours.wav -- Two hours of bliss. (15k)

 
• jaffa.wav -- This is a Jaffa. It's a a delicious orange and chocolate sweet, but here at the Rex, now sadly a pie shop, it was the weapon of choice. (110k)

 
• thrownwith.wav -- Thrown with sufficient force, one of these could put a pretty good dent in another chum's head-- usually mine. (56k)

 
• forbidden.wav -- Forbidden cinematic fruit, and just the sort of thing we wanted to see. (40k)

 
• riskingpsychic.wav -- If we were really brave, this is the road that we'd take to school, risking some kind of psychic infection. (69k)

 
• peopleafraid.wav -- It was a paranoid time in New Zealand. People were afraid, afraid of communism, of trade unions, of the Yellow Peril, of... of Rock and Roll. (97k)

 
• greatestfear.wav -- The greatest fear of all was of madness, paradoxically for many the only way out. (57k)

 
• picturesque.wav -- <Film reels spinning and then shut off> Aaahhhhh! Stop this! See, as New Zealanders we have this impulse: give us a box Brownie and we have to make everything picturesque. (124k)

 
• foreignaccents.wav -- All our heroes had foreign accents and all the adventures happened somewhere else in the world. There was no one we recognized, no place we knew on the screen. (124k)

 
• mythicalengland.wav -- The architecture of a place like this speaks volumes, full of affection and longing for somewhere else-- in this case a mythical England where things are supposedly older and better than here, where people spoke properly, smoked Du Maurier from silver cases, and inherited impeccably cut tweed jackets. (189k)

 
• anotherstory.wav -- But that's another story. (13k)

 
• doourduty.wav -- We would stick by Britain; <crowd cheers> they would stick by us, no matter what. We would do our duty. (63k)

 
• sheep.wav -- And how many sheep lost their lives for the British Empire, one wonders. Well I can tell you: 340 million sheep were raised here, slaughtered, sent to Britain at basement prices and converted into overcooked Sunday roasts. (136k)

 
• abandoned.wav -- We felt abandoned and incredibly stupid. (31k)

 
• growup.wav -- It was time to grow up. (14k)

 
• whatweneeded.wav -- What we needed was a sense of ourselves, a culture of our own. (44k)

 
• twopeople.wav -- Two people, betrayed, living uneasily side by side in paradise. (75k)

 
• notorious.wav -- And the best film ever made-- Notorious. (26k)

 
• beonscreen.wav -- Afterwards I'd stumble out of here, blinking in the sunlight, and I was James Mason or Bill Holden for about five minutes, but it never occurred to me for a second that I myself might be on the screen one day. (118k)

 
• realjob.wav -- I bluffed my way into my first, and last, real job. (29k)

 
• upliftingfilms.wav -- Its function was primarily to produce picturesque short films of an uplifting nature, and designed to convince people at home and abroad that this was indeed God's own country. (106k)

 
• iwasoff.wav -- I was off, too, overseas on my own solitary road. (48k)

 
• watchfilms.wav -- When I watch films, it's often for the sheer joy of watching other actors at work. (44k)

 
• performers.wav -- I put the case that a national cinema gains its distinctiveness as much by its performers as by its auteurs. (73k)

 
• oblivion.wav -- I've often had the feeling that perhaps this is the edge of the world and maybe these narrow islands really are adrift and that we may all just topple over the edge into oblivion. (104k)

 
• irritating.wav -- The irritating thing about a place like New Zealand is you leave because it drives you nuts and it's never going to change and then when you come back it's all the things that have changed that drive you crazy. (103k)

 
• transformed.wav -- A number of outstanding films have radically transformed not only New Zealand cinema, but also our perceptions of ourselves. (82k)

 
• extraordinary.wav -- From the start we were aware we were working on something extraordinary, and it was-- romantic, gothic, unique. (85k)

 
• reflection.wav -- The Piano raised for me however, the intriguing but worrying thought: if a national cinema is a reflection of ourselves, then ours is a troubled reflection indeed. (119k)

 
• chumsclub.wav -- Chums club was dead, the Jaffa reduced to a mere confection, the cultural cringe was no more. (82k)

 
• soilstained.wav -- This soil, forever stained by blood. (32k)

 
• missit.wav -- I rather miss it. (12k)

 
• timetoleave.wav -- Eventually, as always, the time comes to leave. (39k)

 
• migratory.wav -- I continue to return like a migratory bird. (26k)

 
• hollywood.wav -- Wherever films are made in English, the magnetic force of Hollywood is both measurable and problematic. (54k)

 
• dreamofhome.wav -- But what I want to know is: when they dream of home, what do they see? (79k)