Nambassa Festival

The three day Nambassa Festival, held on a Waihi farm in 1979, is the subject of this documentary. Attended by 60,000 people, it represented a high tide mark in Aotearoa for the Woodstock vision of a music festival as a counterculture celebration of music, crafts, alternative lifestyles and all things hippy. Performers include a frenzied Split Enz, The Plague (wearing paint), Limbs dancers, a yodelling John Hore-Grenell and prog rockers Schtung. The only downers are overzealous policing, and weather which discourages too much communing with nature after the first day.

I have read here and there that the Split Enz Nambassa show was patchy. Phooey! I was blown out of my high perch by an inspired, awesome, display of edgy, driving pop music.

– Mike Chunn in his 1992 Split Enz book Stranger Than Fiction, page 162

Key Cast & Crew

Philip Howe

Director, Editor

Peter Terry

Producer

Dale Farnsworth

Producer

Andrew McAlpine

Camera Operator

Doug Jane

Stage Sound

Dave Hurley

Sound Mix