Ryan’s Daughter was hugely influential on me as a young film maker.

David Lean’s masterpiece was released in 1970, during my last year at school. I was preparing my first film, Thursday’s Child when I first saw Ryan’s Daughter at the Empire Leicester Square in London, at the time said to have had the world’s best 70mm projection. I was spellbound from those opening titles, with dawn breaking over the Irish coast, one moment exquisitely beautiful, the next menacing and threatening, like the opening of a great novel.

Whilst the projection and print quality at the Rialto Dunedin was no match for the Empire Leicester Square, it was wonderful to see this film, with its unparalleled 70mm cinematography, back where it belongs on the giant cinema screen!

No other film, in my view, has so effectively captured nature’s permanence over human frailty.