Aspiring

...John Drawbridge was the sole surviving member of the original shoot. He travelled back to the Matukituki Valley with the film crew, revisited the Aspiring Hut, reliving his earlier experience "of both confinement and liberation away from society ... and being together as a group for what seemed like a long time".

– Scriptwriter Gregory O'Brien on the new Aspiring documentary, 3 June 2006

This is the story of a film that never was.

– Narrator John Bach, at the start of this documentary

At the centre of this story is an artist now in his seventies, painter John Drawbridge, who returns to one of the great experiences of his life. In the summer of 1949, aged 18, he spent a month in the Southern Alps working alongside some of the greatest artists in this country’s history, on a radical film project.

– Narrator John Bach, at the start of this documentary

Such a close relationship between artists working in different media has characterised much of the greatest New Zealand art over the past century.

– Narrator John Bach, late in this documentary

...when he [James K Baxter] went with [Brian] Brake and [Douglas] Lilburn and the others up into the Matukituki Valley, what he was doing was producing work that represented that shift of mind. So he was trying to come up with something that creatively represented this country and what it meant to identify with it, to be part of it and to draw your inspiration from it.

– Academic Paul Miller on poet James K Baxter starting to think of himself as a New Zealand poet, instead of an English poet

I was having trouble convincing a bureaucratic regime that they should use a poet for narration. They said 'What does he know about promoting skiing in Australia?'

– Brian Brake on getting permission for James K Baxter to write his Oscar-nominated film Snows of Aorangi (1955)

He certainly also appreciated very much what painters were doing, and it kind of gave him inspiration for what he was trying to achieve in music — to find a personal voice that belonged to this place and this time.

– Jack Body, on fellow composer Douglas Lilburn

Revisiting the Matukituki Valley and Mount Aspiring, it was a dream-like feeling that I’d seen it before and I'd been there before. But in another way it was an entirely new experience, and one which hopefully will continue on into the paintings I’ve yet to do. It was the most extraordinary experience of my life.

– John Drawbridge on returning to the location of the 1949 Aspiring expedition, late in this documentary