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Jos (E, 46mins) Directed by Dave Kwant and Robyn Janes ****
As this thoughtful and thoroughly entertaining short documentary’s subtitle suggests, he was the forgotten photographer who saved a town.
The Czech-born immigrant who came to New Zealand’s West Coast seeking a personal fortune, but instead captured a community – both with his friendly demeanour and photography skills.
Following-up from their well-received 2020 tale Whispers of Gold, Dave Kwant and Robyn Janes return to the former mining settlement of Waiuta to investigate the man who – by rights – should have been its best-known inhabitant.
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Arriving in 1910, with (as he wrote in one of his many letters brought to life here) “almost empty pockets and a bundle”, Joseph (Jos) Divis began building a house within three days (despite possessing “only 18 shillings of possessions, no mortgage, no building plans and without carpentry skills”).
Apparently fascinated by the mix of cobblers, lawyers and army generals who had all joined him in “trying their luck”, he started documenting their everyday life and the constantly changing surroundings, as New Zealand’s most lucrative gold mining town (the area allegedly yielded the equivalent of around NZ$1.6b in today’s money) evolved and expanded.
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Jos Divis was a Czech-born immigrant who came to New Zealand’s West Coast seeking a personal fortune, but instead captured a community – both with his friendly demeanour and photography skills.
Amusingly, almost half of the always snappily-dressed Divis’ photographs that still exist (thankfully now safely housed in the Wellington-based Alexander Turnbull Library) feature the man himself, leading the film-makers to muse that he was arguably the “inventor of the selfie”.
In fact, Kwant and Janes deserve plenty of credit for managing to distil Divis’ adventures (which also included two extensive journeys around the globe and an almost three-year internment on Somes Island during World War II) into such a succinct running time, without it feeling forced, or once-over-lightly.
Jane Scadden
Brian Scadden attempts to recreate one of Jos Divis’ most enduring images under the watchful eye of documentary film-maker Dave Kwant.
While interviews and commentary from Divis’ great niece Veronika Schmidtova, biographer Simon Nathan and those from the area who remember him from when they were children, are fascinating – and photo historian Brian Scadden’s enlightening attempts to recreate some of Divis’ most intriguing images are a clever conceit – it’s the adroit use of the photos themselves (as well as rare footage of Divis) that really shine.
Jos is now screening in select cinemas nationwide.
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