Two O’Shea Films in New Zealand Series

Independent writer-producer-director John O’Shea, a witty, unpretentious man, resists being labeled “the father of the New Zealand film industry.” Yet O’Shea produced three of the four feature films made in New Zealand between 1940 and 1970.

Two of O’Shea’s early films, “Broken Barrier” (1952), which he wrote but produced and directed with Roger Mirams, and “Runaway” (1964), which he directed and co-wrote with John Graham, screen Sunday at 7:30 p.m. at UCLA’s Melnitz Theater as part of the UCLA Film Archive’s “A Season of New Zealand Films.”

A work of simplicity and lyrical pictorial beauty, the 69-minute “Broken Barrier” was shot silent, doubtlessly due to severe budget limitations, with its hero (Terence Bayler) and other key characters confiding their innermost thoughts to us on the sound track. He’s a personable young man who passes himself as an itinerant worker to a hospitable, prosperous Maori ranching family but is in fact a journalist looking for background for a couple of shallow, sensational pieces on the Maoris.

What he does not reckon with is falling in love with the family’s attractive daughter. (Kai Ngarimu).

“Runaway” is an altogether different kind of film, a work of such sophistication, spontaneity and complexity that it could have been completed yesterday. Its mood of alienation inevitably brings to mind Antonioni and other European filmmakers, but it is distinctly New Zealand in its concerns, flavor and vision.

Colin Broadley, a capable actor, stars as a handsome young Auckland businessman with a secure future whose restless spirit gradually finds him on the run in the wake of a serious of impulsive, reckless petty crimes. During his odyssey, he discovers an overwhelming need to be at one with nature, revealing the stifling conventionality of New Zealand society with its materialism and prejudices. One of the many people Broadley encounters briefly along the way is a pretty boardinghouse maid, played by a very young Kiri Te Kanawa. Information: (213) 206-FILM, 206-8013.