JEAN BATTEN - THE GARBO OF THE SKIES

Rights Information
Year
1988
Reference
F20063
Media type
Moving image
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Rights Information
Year
1988
Reference
F20063
Media type
Moving image
Place of production
New Zealand/Aotearoa
Duration
0:52:00
Production company
Energy Source Productions, Ian MacKersey
Credits
Producer: Ian MacKersey
Writer: Ian MacKersey
Director: Ian MacKersey
Narrator: Stuart Devenie
Research: Caroline MacKersey
Photography: Mike Haworth
Photography: Bayly Watson
Additional Photography: Michael Gore
Additional Photography: Alan Locke
Additional Photography: Trevor Johnson
Quotes Spoken: Megan Edwards
Music: Bernie Allen
Sound Mix: Craig Perry
Editor: John Gilbert
Executive Producer: Peter Sainsbury

Jean Batten, star of the 1930s, died alone on a Spanish island in the mid-1980s. Some say she paid the ultimate price for her secrecy.

Using archival footage, clippings, photographs and quotes from her letters and diary, this film looks at the life of “the aviator with the glamorous exterior”; her youth in New Zealand, her relationship with her mother, her string of adoring men and of course her heroic flights.

Jean Batten left New Zealand for London in 1930 telling her father she was going to study music. Instead she learned to fly. She set a world record flying from England to Australia, was the first woman to fly the South Atlantic and in 1936 flew from England to New Zealand.

Acquaintances speak of a lonely woman who was “curiously unfulfilled”.