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Chunuk Bair
Film (Trailer and Excerpts) – 1991
Feature film Chunuk Bair dramatises an ill-fated Kiwi offensive during World War l. On 8 August 1915, the Wellington Battalion seized Chunuk Bair, a pivotal peak in the Gallipoli Peninsula. Nominated for NZ Film Awards for Best Film and the work of first-time director Dale Bradley, Chunuk Bair is an intimate portrait of a group of Kiwi soldiers on the ground, while their inept British commanders are largely off-screen. The excerpt features Colonel Connolly (Kevin J Wilson) motivating his troops, after learning there's no back-up on the way. The script is adapted from Maurice Shadbolt's 1982 play Once on Chunuk Bair.
Filmed on the coastal hills of Wellington on a modest budget, Chunuk Bair is more a confined chamber piece than an epic, but Bradley uses this to his advantage to create claustrophobia. It is war in close-up ... Like End of the Golden Weather, Angel at My Table and Mauri it is compulsory viewing if we are to begin to understand ourselves as a nation.– Reviewer Mark Tierney in The Listener, 6 April 1992
Key Cast & Crew
See all 43 credits
Produced by
Daybreak Pictures
Music
Music performed by composer Stephen Bell-Booth and Rob Winch
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