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Show Credits
Colin McCahon - I AM
Colin McCahon is the first New Zealand painter of major international importance, and his stature in the arts of Australasia is unique.
McCahon's work includes the exploration of the nature of spiritual belief and experience. Also central to his work are the issues of identity and spirituality through the New Zealand landscape, an exploration of Maori and environmental concerns and an attempt to engage with the challenges of "modernism" and abstraction.
The McCahon documentary follows three story threads over a fifty-year period. Firstly his work, which began as totally iconoclastic and took its own unique path to become visionary. Secondly the film tracks the changing cultural landscape of New Zealand as it gradually cut the umbilical cord with Mother England. In addition, there's the story of the man. McCahon followed the path of a modernist painter in the middle of the depression - twenty years before the first dealer gallery in New Zealand even existed. A brave and uncompromising path that saw him derided and misunderstood for most of his career, by both the art establishment and the general public.
I AM is a story of single-minded obsession that is tinged with ultimate sadness. This is a strong, compelling and important story in 20th century art history that is unearthed for the first time in McCahon, I AM.