Former Chch teacher to produce film

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32640, 23 June 1971, Page 8

Former Chch teacher to produce film

A former Christchurch schoolteacher, Mr R. E. W. Edward, whose mother lives in Clonburn Place, Ricarton, will this month finish teaching at a Canadian school and embark on an 18-month project to produce a feature-length underwater film.

The film will be distributed in theatres throughout North America and will deal with marine life in hte Pacific coral reefs, big-game fishing, natives hunting octopuses, free-diving Polynesian pearl divers, wrecks, and shark attacks. Some of the surface scenes will include wildlife, rare fauna on several island reserves, fire-walking, and the tower divers of Pentecost Island, in the New Hebrides. Mr Edward, aged 26, has been teaching at Langley, a town about 30 miles from Vancouver, for three years, but he has put all his resources into a company, Sea Life Enterprises, which has been active in encouraging interest in underwater studies around Vancouver. Film for families

Mr Edward and his two partners in the project felt that there was a lack of family entertainment films, so decided to make one, similar to Cousteau’s “The Silent World,” suitable for general exhibition.

The company was reformed to enable the film to be shown uninterrupted in New Zealand Australia, New Caledonia, Fiji, and other Pacific countries.

The company hopes to begin filming on the Great Barrier Reef in September and if all goes well the film will be shown in Northern American theatres in 1973. Since being in Langley Mr Edward and his partners have been engaged in several community activities, including a series of lectures and films on Pacific marine life and salt-water aquariums at the Vancouver Aquarium to help to raise money for a new whale pool. They have also produced a one-hour semi-documentary film for a Vancouver television station entitled, "Exploring Inner Space.” It dealt with the history of man’s exploration of the sea, the training and equipment of a scuba diver, and marine life and underwater recreation in the Georgia Straits and the Gulf Islands. Alaskan visit

During his summer holidays in 1969 Mr Edward travelled for two months along the north-west Pacific coast through Alaska to beyond the Arctic Circle, and back through the Yukon and British Columbia by the Alaska Highway. When in the Yukon Territory Mr Edward added Christchurch to the hundreds of towns and cities shown on 26 signposts at Watson Lake. The first sign was put up by a homesick American soldier

working on the Alaska Highway in 1942. Mr Edwards received his secondary education at Christchurch Boys’ High School and trained at the Christchurch Teachers’ College.