The film ‘Canterbury is One Hundred’ was produced by the National Film Unit in 1950 to celebrate the region’s centennial. Written and directed by Oxley Hughan, it emphasises the bucolic agricultural productivity of the Canterbury region, particularly through the lambing and wheat-growing industries. Life in Canterbury’s cities is presented as people ‘taking pleasure in their neat gardens and comfortable wooden houses’, in contrast to the rustic huts built by the early settlers a century earlier. The film is also a poignant tribute to Christchurch’s celebrated Neo-Gothic architecture, much of which was destroyed following the February 2011 earthquake.
The film includes re-enactments of the early settlers in Canterbury.
Material from Archives New Zealand. The Early settlers were played by members of the Canterbury Repertory Theatre Society. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.