Grahamstown Gazette bonus: Falling inn love with Thames on screen

Bonus!! Here's an extra Gazette article for anyone who found my blog after the final Gazette was published in December. I wrote this when we were planning a bumper-sized summer issue of the Gazette, as I thought the summer touristy cafe crowd might be more keen on this topic than my usual, more localised fare. Let me know if you can think of any films or TV shows I've missed; I'd love to get a comprehensive list going!

Thames and Hollywood don’t have an awful lot in common, although there has been plenty of buzz in the media about Thames as a filming location since Falling Inn Love premiered earlier this year. The cheesy Netflix rom-com was far from Thames’ first brush with film, nor even its most recent; part of Grahamstown was closed for filming the upcoming drama The Justice of Bunny King in October, local documentary House of Champions recently made stars of our Special Olympics athletes, and rumours abound that The New Legends of Monkey are filming scenes for their second season somewhere up The Pinnacles. 

Thames is often chosen as a filming location for its small-town charm, historic vibes and enthusiastic locals. Award-winning Sunday theatre biopic Jean chose the Thames Airfield in 2016 to double as the Mangere Aerodrome as it was in the 1930s. Jean called in a huge crowd of locals to act as Jean Batten’s adoring fans, cheering as she completed her historic flight from England. The film also shot in Moanatairi, using the old A&G Price buildings as a stand-in for Sydney’s docks.

1982’s The Scarecrow cast Thames in a more gothic light, standing in for the creepy fictional small town of Klynham. The thriller, based on the novel by Ronald Hugh Morrieson, follows two teenagers who cross paths with a murderer. An image of the Workingmen’s Club and the Cochrane St corner features prominently on the film’s promotional posters. The Scarecrow became the first New Zealand feature film to be selected for the Cannes Film Festival.

Another international festival favourite was Mega Time Squad, a quirky time-travel comedy where Thames is just as much a character as the film’s hapless leads. Director Tim van Dammen wrote the film while working at Pak n’ Save, and it was a hit at several international film festivals in Canada, London and New Zealand.

Thames isn't just a scenic backdrop, though; we were was also one of the first places in New Zealand to screen a film. New Zealand’s first public screening of a motion picture (known as a ‘kinematograph’) played at the Opera House in Auckland on 13th October 1896, as part of a performance by Charles Godfrey’s Vaudeville Company. The travelling show made its second stop in Thames later that month, making Thames only the fourth town in Australasia to host a ‘Kinematograph exhibition.’ Boldly billed as ‘the Event of the Year’ in the Thames Star, the film screening took place at the Academy of Music.