How Far is Heaven

Wednesday 23 July at 7.30pm

Christopher Pryor & Miriam Smith | New Zealand | 2012 | 99 mins | M offensive language

This lively, visually beautiful documentary takes us up the Whanganui River into the lives of the remote community of Jerusalem/Hiruharama and the three nuns stationed there.

“The film which Chris Pryor and Miriam Smith shot while they lived at Jerusalem on the Whanganui River is first and foremost a rapt pictorial response to its beautiful setting through four seasons. Its recurrent subject is whether three Pkeh nuns, kaitiaki of the church and convent founded in the 1880s by Suzanne Aubert, are serving any useful social purpose there in 2011. We meet the sisters working the land, discussing scripture, making jam and preserves… We see the most recent arrival, Sister Margaret Mary, volunteer-teaching at the local school… But the taniwha under the bridge exercises a stronger hold on young imaginations in Jerusalem than the Christmas Nativity play. Several of the students come into sharp focus; Chevy, a beautiful, open 13 year old, smart beyond her years; Damien, a gleeful pint-sized maniac; and the charming oddball DJ, a Kiwi filmmakers dream boy gifted with a face that registers amazement with every emergent thought… As Pkeh artists, Pryor and Smith are perfectly placed… as they too achieve connection with this bewitching bend in the river and its hospitable, bemused tangata whenua. Bill Gosden, New Zealand International Film Festival 2012