JOYful Days

9 Aug 2015

MIFF 2015: The Ground We Won

Society & Culture, Sports & Recreation, TV & Film

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Sonja Hammer talks in the JOY 94.9 studio with filmmakers from NZ Chris Pryor and Miriam Smith about their documentary film The Ground We Won a ‘stunningly gorgeous, this is a funny, against-type tour through grassroots rugby union that offers a fresh look at both sport and manhood.‘ it is playing in Australia at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival.

‘The Ground We Won is a vérité documentary study of manhood as observed through the rites and rituals of a rural New Zealand rugby club. With great bawdiness and camaraderie, an eclectic rugby team of farmers strive to redeem themselves from a long run of bitter loses. In the face of the hefty demands of farming and fatherhood, the Saturday game becomes the focus of the men’s passions and the ground on which their worth is proved.’

Miriam and Chris explain a lot about the doco they have made, about what is was like to be ‘outsiders’ of the game of Rugby and the male bastion that rugby is in the community of Reporoa in NZ and how it inspires men young and older to support each other in this traditional dairy farming community.

A previous film of Miriam and Chris’s here called How Far Is Heaven

be sure to catch the LAST screening of The Ground We Won at MIFF Monday the 10th of August at 9.00 pm in Melbourne. The Ground We Won co-screens with Clan :’Rejected by his family and struggling with his identity, a young man finds a new clan to belong to – Australia’s first gay Rugby Union club, The Sydney Convicts.’