6 Rewarding ag contributions Vol 20 No 1, January 17, 2022
farmersweekly.co.nz
$3.95
Incl GST
WIDESCREEN: Stock manager Leora Werner, Alastair and Graeme McKnight from Braeside in Central Otago’s Ida Valley, the setting for the awardwinning movie The Power of the Dog. Photo: Jan MacKenzie
Big country on the big screen Neal Wallace
T
neal.wallace@globalhq.co.nz
HE owner of the Central Otago farm where part of the award-winning movie The Power of the Dog was set, sees it as a vote of confidence in the way the South Island high country has been managed. Parts of the western drama, based on the 1967 novel by Thomas Savage, were filmed on
Braeside in the Ida Valley and Hawkdun Range foothills in early 2020. The 5500ha property is run by Alastair McKnight, his wife Philippa Pope and his brother Graeme McKnight, the fourth generation of the family. The Otago tussock landscape depicted in the movie has received international praise and Alastair says the Dame Jane Campion-directed movie reflects how generations of farmers have sympathetically and responsibly managed the land. The movie, which stars Benedict
Cumberbatch and Kirsten Dunst, scooped two Golden Globe awards last week, with Campion named best director and the movie winning best picture. He says it was a random approach from a scene scout that kick-started five months of activity in a remote corner of his property. In October 2019 builders and tradesmen constructed the set and the following January hundreds of crew and actors began six weeks of filming. He was pleased the film crew employed local people and businesses.
“They came here because they wanted the landscape and they got that and also a very supportive community,” Alastair said. His cattle appear in the movie, but another scene requiring a larger number was shot near the Poolburn dam involving cattle from Ida Valley and Stonehenge stations. “We literally have to pinch ourselves, it’s hard to believe it happened here,” he said. “When the movie came out and we saw it, it was not just about our farm but the whole district.”
They came here because they wanted the landscape and they got that and also a very supportive community. Alastair McKnight Farmer
