DIRECTOR: Geoff Murphy
PRODUCERS: Sam Pillsbury, Don Reynolds
PRODUCTION CO: Cinepro, Pillsbury Productions, Mr Yellowbeard Productions
SCREENPLAY: Bill Baer, Bruno Lawrence, Sam Pillsbury, based on the novel by Craig Harrison
PHOTOGRAPHY: James Bartle
EDITOR: Michael J Horton
MUSIC: John Charles
WITH: Bruno Lawrence (Zac Hobson), Alison Routledge (Joanne), Pete Smith (Api) 

REVIEWS

“For much of the duration of Geoff Murphy’s The Quiet Earth, middle-aged Zac Hobson (Bruno Lawrence) believes himself to be the last living person on Earth — but Zac was already a loner, even before the so-called ‘Effect’ that put him in this post-apocalyptic state of extreme solitude. After all, he had just resigned from his job at Delenco Research Division, leaving his research team to complete without him the final stages of a global co-operative project (‘Operation Flashlight’) to manipulate energy fields; and the night before the film’s events start, he had committed himself to the very loneliest and most desperate course of human action. The film opens with an image of the Sun, its shape refracted and enlarged by the horizon, rising spectacularly over the ocean, as seagulls fly about noisily. At precisely 6:12am, their cawing stops, and Zac, lying supine and naked in a motel bed, is shocked into wakefulness. Dressing and leaving, he quickly discovers that he is in a world from which every living thing appears simply to have vanished, leaving no trace beyond boiling kettles, running taps and abandoned, sometimes crashed, vehicles. As Zac — shown as a small figure in wide shot — wanders through the eerily empty streets of Hamilton, it is as though the rapture has taken place, and he alone has been left behind. Except that, alongside this religious framework for what has happened, there exists a scientific one, as Zac starts to suspect that Operation Flashlight may itself have changed the world forever…. Loosely based on a 1981 sci-fi novel of the same name by Craig Harrison, Murphy’s film traces Zac’s response to his isolation – his gradual realisation that normal social rules no longer apply in a world for one, as well as his temporary descent into solipsism and suicidal thoughts, megalomania and madness.”

​– Anton Bitel, Little White Lies

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Auckland
Monday, 16 March, 6.15pm

Dunedin  
Wednesday, 25 March, 7.30pm

Wellington
Monday, 20 April, 6.00pm

Wellington   
Monday, 20 April, 8.30pm

​​​Canterbury
Monday, 13 July 7.00pm

​Tauranga   
Wednesday, 22 July, 6.00pm​

Queenstown  
Tuesday, 11 August, 8.00pm​

New Plymouth
​Wednesday, 30 September, 6.00pm

Whanganui   
Monday, 12 October, 7.00pm​

Timaru
​Tuesday, 10 November, 6.30pm
KIWI CINEMA >> ​