NZIFF: Patu! - With John Minto

In 1981, South Africa’s rugby team, the Springboks, were invited to tour New Zealand. The decision was extremely controversial; some people saw it as a tacit endorsement of apartheid while others insisted that politics had nothing to do with New Zealand’s favourite sport. Patu! captured what followed.

As thousands of New Zealanders took to the streets to demonstrate their solidarity with the victims of apartheid, battalions of filmmakers and photographers recorded the confrontations with police and rugby diehards.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Springbok tour, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision have produced a newly preserved version of the 1983 theatrical release of Patu!, for screening in 2021.