PRESS RELEASE
The world’s greatest story of adventure and innovation Last Paradise will come to the Australian big screens this year.
An inspiring, thought-provoking mix of science and extreme adventure travel that has been a lifetime in the making, Last Paradise will kick-start its Australian theatrical tour in Perth Western Australia and be introduced by special guest and celebrated local author, Tim Winton.
The film will travel around Western Australia before working its way through to the eastern seaboard via Adelaide, Melbourne before arriving in Sydney and heading north to Queensland, with each including a Q&A session with physicist-come-filmmaker, Clive Neeson.
In the remote wilderness, when necessity was the mother of invention, a maverick bunch of kids began experimenting with something that would change the world of adventure travel. In 45 years of stunning original footage, experience first-hand the adventures of early adrenalin seekers and join them on the roads less travelled to discover just how the world used to be and the science of restoring it.
Filmed over four decades by Clive and our extreme adventure pioneers, the original and breathtaking footage has been expertly restored by Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings technical team and described as “the most extraordinary footage we have ever seen”.
Passionately driven to innovate new ways of tapping into nature’s forces for adrenalin, Clive joined likeminded thrill seekers through the 1960’s and 1970’s in a global quest for adventure paradise. The culmination of their 45 year global search turns out to be our own Australia, the “Last Paradise”.
The film was hailed in the USA as coining a “new genre” of film by using an exciting adventure story to subliminally address the world’s biggest issues.
Through this unique original footage, a series of stories emerge with a relevance that connects to audiences, young and old. In and amongst the adrenaline and adventure, Last Paradise weaves issues of energy development, deforestation, species loss and urbanization as particular audience takeaways. But it’s all hidden under the bonnet of an exhilarating cinema experience.
“It is my life’s work. We captured on film the pioneering of extreme sports, that is, those which engage the wilderness and push the limits with the forces of nature. It began with my mother, who was raised in an orphanage and escaped it all to become a wildlife cinematographer in Africa during the 1950’s. My parents raised four boys remotely and we all became addicted to that daily brush with danger. I began filming at the age of 15 with a broken camera that I bought in a pawn shop because as a kid I was driven by the dream of what this film would be,” Clive said.
With a Master’s Degree in physics and a career in technology innovation, including the first digital movie camera and climate monitoring system, Clive skillfully incorporates scientific and educational elements into an eye-opening fun filled cinema experience for any age. He hopes “Last Paradise” will become an inspiration for the youth of today as well as a tool for education and social change.
“I wanted to use the world’s biggest adventure story to address the world’s biggest issues – in this sense the film is an open letter to a generation inheriting a world vastly different to the one I and my friends grew up in. We cannot see where we are going unless we see where we’ve been and only original footage can give us that experience” Clive said.
The winner of a string of international awards including Most Popular Film at the New Zealand Film Festival, Best of BANFF in Canada and The Ambassador of Green Award at XDance USA, Last Paradise will be screened nationally in through May and June.
To view the trailer and book screening tickets: www.lastparadisefilm.com