Thursday June 5 at 6.45pm – Event Tower Cinemas, Newcastle
Filmmaker Clive Neeson Available for Interview
Last Paradise reaches Newcastle on Thursday June 5 at the Event Tower Cinemas, Newcastle with local special guest, surf pioneer, Peter McCabe. It is a rare occurrence that Peter McCabe makes a public appearance. But this is an adventure film with global significance. It has received major awards from around the world with Australian film legends, Dick Hoole and Alby Falzon along with the scientific community singing its praises.
Last Paradise is the story of adrenaline and innovation – how a bunch of surfers pushed the limits to pioneer the modern concept of extreme sports and adventure travel. For physicist-film maker, Clive Neeson it has literally been a lifetime in the making and the journey has revealed major issues about our planet.
The late legend, Allan Byrne tells the story with pioneers Peter McCabe, George Greenough, Gerry Lopez, Miki Dora, AJ Hackett and Brian Conley. The 45 years of golden unseen footage was restored by Peter Jackson’s team who discovered it as the result of an accident during making of “The Lord of the Rings” and declared it as “the best footage we have seen”. Music legends including Cat Stevens came on board to provide a classic soundtrack.
For Tim Ryan Peter McCabe – WNewcastle’s Peter McCabe early 1970s, Last Paradise
The film begins and ends stalking monster waves in the Aussie outback where after decades of global exploration, the true meaning of paradise unfolds. Peter McCabe features in incredible unseen surfing footage with friend, Gerry Lopez as they discovered the paradise of Bali before tourism.
The evening will conclude with a Q&A session with physicist-come-filmmaker, Clive Neeson. Last Paradise is a big screen sensation and promises to be a great night out. All tickets purchased go in the draw to win a seven day Samoan Holiday package incl. flights.
In the remote wilderness, when necessity was the mother of invention, a maverick bunch of kids began experimenting with something that would change the world of adventure travel.
Passionately driven to innovate new ways of tapping into nature’s forces for adrenalin, Clive joined likeminded thrill seekers through the 1960’s and 1970’s in a global quest for adventure paradise. The culmination of their 45 year global search turns out to be our own Australia, the “Last Paradise”.
Through this unique original footage, a series of stories emerge with a relevance that connects to audiences, young and old. In and amongst the adrenaline and adventure, Last Paradise weaves issues of energy development, deforestation, species loss and urbanization as particular audience takeaways. But it’s all hidden under the bonnet of an exhilarating cinema experience.
“It is my life’s work. We captured on film the pioneering of extreme sports, that is, those which engage the wilderness and push the limits with the forces of nature. It began with my mother, who was raised in an orphanage and escaped it all to become a wildlife cinematographer in Africa during the 1950’s. My parents raised four boys remotely and we all became addicted to that daily brush with danger. I began filming at the age of 15 with a broken camera that I bought in a pawn shop because as a kid I was driven by the dream of what this film would be,” Clive said.
With a Master’s Degree in physics and a career in technology innovation, including the first digital movie camera and climate monitoring system, Clive skillfully incorporates scientific and educational elements into an eye-opening fun filled cinema experience for any age. He hopes “Last Paradise” will become an inspiration for the youth of today as well as a tool for education and social change.
“I wanted to use the world’s biggest adventure story to address the world’s biggest issues – in this sense the film is an open letter to a generation inheriting a world vastly different to the one I and my friends grew up in. We cannot see where we are going unless we see where we’ve been and only original footage can give us that experience” Clive said.
The winner of a string of international awards including Most Popular Film at the New Zealand Film Festival, Best of BANFF in Canada and The Ambassador of Green Award at XDance USA, Last Paradise will be screened nationally in through May and June.