Aunty and the Star People

Aged 50, Jean Watson sold her Wellington house to buy land for a children’s home in southern India. In 2013, filmmaker Gerard Smyth (quake chronicle When a City Falls) spent two months in India, chronicling Watson and some of the many lives she had changed. Smyth’s documentary also harks back to the 1960s, when Watson wrote novel Stand in the Rain, and hunted crocodiles with Barry Crump. The result won solid audiences at the 2014 NZ Film Festival. The Listener gave it four stars; The Dominion called it “unpretentious but unashamedly enjoyable”. Watson died in December 2014.

When I first came to India I was just going to be a tourist. It was all chance and circumstance. I think it was karma.

– Jean Watson

Key Cast & Crew

Gerard Smyth

Director, Writer, Cinematographer

Jo Coffey

Executive Producer

Scott Flyger

Editor, Writer

Joy Cowley

Subject

Chris Sinclair

Sound Design

Jan Sandle

Sound