Geoff Murphy helped put the New Zealand cinema on the map with the success of his first feature, Goodbye Pork Pie (1981). With Utu (to be screened September 28), in 1983 New Zealand's first official entry in the Cannes Film Festival, Murphy's reputation as a filmmaker of international import was assured. The Quiet Earth is Murphy's latest feature. Geoff Murphy's film career dates back to the early sixties when he traveled with actor Bruno Lawrence in the satirical jazz, poetry and film sideshow Blerta. Lawrence has starred in all of Murphy's films.

The Quiet Earth
One morning a scientist, Zac (Bruno Lawrence) awakens to find that he is alone in the world. It seems that the top-secret energy project on which he has been working has malfunctioned, creating what is known as “the effect"--the tilting of the fourth dimension to alter the fabric of the universe. Humanity has been wiped out, but its trappings are left intact, so while searching for survivors, Zac indulges his materialist fantasies until his sad realization that he, alone, has been “condemned to live.” When Zac encounters two other survivors, a woman (Alison Routledge) and a man (Maori actor Peter Smith), the film takes on a critical emotional and, eventually, spiritual edge. Together, this “eternal triangle” must struggle to become a circle if they are to survive “the effect,” and what began as a kind of existential soliloquy becomes a moving ensemble experience. The Quiet Earth, a long-cherished project of producer Sam Pillsbury, has been hailed by critics as among the most accomplished New Zealand films to-date.