The Beaconsfield Films

In the late 1960s Graeme Cowley and Michael Heath were university students, making films around Wellington. Today they can look back on a long career in film (Cowley shot Utu and Smash Palace, while Heath wrote Moonrise and made A Small Life). Cowley later restored three of their early shorts, collectively naming them after the flat the pair had shared with fellow filmmaker Rex Benson. On the Mud is an irreverent study of a student anti-Vietnam War protest. Heath stars in fantasy And So Began the Day, while dapper Erskine Hewitt gets beaten up in Inky Godfellow, the only scripted film. Cowley writes about the films here.

Cinemagoing was popular in New Zealand at the time, and new films from overseas were in vogue ... at Beaconsfield we were in our element: we had our own projector and were able to source many of these films for our own private viewing.

– Graeme Cowley on living with other student filmmakers at their Beaconsfield flat in Wellington, in the 1960s, in his backgrounder

Key Cast & Crew

Michael Heath

Creator, Narrator, Composer, Actor, Writer

Graeme Cowley

Creator, Camera, Editor

Rex Benson

Creator, Actor

Erskine Hewitt

Actor