Island Bay and Surrounds 1933 - 1984

Island Bay and Surrounds 1933 - 1984 [The Traveling Film Show]
(NZ, 1933 - 1984, Exempt, 70mins)

The Film Archive Traveling Film Show, which tours curated film screenings around the country, now comes ‘home’ at the end of each month to screen for Wellington audiences.

They say you can’t beat Wellington on a good day which is certainly true, but it’s interesting to look back at the way the city we know has been shaped by its past inhabitants.

This selection of early home movies, Newsreel footage and promotional clips, provide professional and amateur accounts of life in the capital of New Zealand from the 1930s until 1984.

While many now know Truby King’s residence in Melrose as a good place to walk the dog 1933 ‘Cradle-Land’ footage shows the Karitane Home founded by Truby King in action. Babies and toddlers are cared for under the guidance of Karitane nurses as the voiceover intones, “Bathing and feeding babies is all in a day’s work for these very efficient young ladies.”

Such personal slices of life are contrasted in this programme with the changing geography of the city as it stretches it’s reach and expands over five decades on screen.

Those who now live in Oriental Bay, Island Bay, Kilbirnie, Lyall Bay, Happy Valley, Beramphore, Melrose and Brooklyn will delight in the visible changes to their suburbs. In the 1957 clip ‘Airport Preparations....Moving House’ houses are relocated from a street in Rongotai to a reclaimed land development site in Evans Bay.

Don't miss this snapshot of Wellington in times gone by.

Event listed by Film Archive

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