Hone Tuwhare

This is a warts-and-all tribute to one of the country’s best-known, best-lived and most colourful literary figures.

Hone Tuwhare lives in a tiny house in the South Otago settlement of Kaka Point, where he continues to write prolifically.

Early in 1996 he allowed a film crew to observe him at home, around Kaka Point, and travelling the country reading his work.  The result is a punchy portrait of a remarkable poet and a great New Zealand character.

The documentary shows him shaping and polishing a new love poem…visiting old drinking haunts around Dunedin…reading to a hall full of entranced school pupils in wellington…and long the way expounding his distinctive views on everything from the Bible to Karl Marx’s love life.

Hone reads some of his best-known poems in this film – including Rain and No Ordinary Sun – as well as more obscure and even unpublished work.  Old friends, colleagues and neighbours – both famous and unknown – give their impressions of an unforgettable person, but Hone is mainly allowed to speak for himself.  He is shown as a modest master of language who, after a tumultuous life, has found active contentment in one of the most beautiful corners of New Zealand.

 

Promotional Trailer

Coming soon

Production Details