Kaleidoscope - NZ Film Archive

Television (Excerpts) – 1982

In less than 20 years all the pre-war film will be irretrievable, and the present rate of restoration is not keeping pace with the rate of decay. But coming to the rescue is the New Zealand Film Archive, an organisation dedicated to finding, restoring and preserving old moving pictures.
– Reporter Gordon McLauchlan

We were really just thrilled to find that Witarina [Harris] was still around, because she’s an absolute delight.
– Jonathan Dennis, on finding one of the stars of 1929 film Under the Southern Cross (aka The Devil's Pit) was still alive in the early 1980s

We feel that we’re not preserving these films and these related materials in isolation. If there’s no public access to them, then we may as well not be doing it. We want people to use what we have.
– New Zealand Film Archive director Jonathan Dennis

What struck me was what a handsome man Mr Markey was. He was the director of the film and I thought, 'oh, so handsome and so well-groomed'. And he didn’t seem to get ruffled at all…
– Witarina Harris on working with Hungarian-born Alexander Markey, the original director of Under the Southern Cross (aka The Devil's Pit)