Insight Into Rainbow Warrior's Women

Insight Into Rainbow Warrior's Women
http://www.times.co.nz/news/story_00010707.shtml

AUCKLAND (Howick & Pakuranga Times/Pacific Media Watch): Artist Claudia Pond-Eyley is completing a new television documentary about the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior, bombed by French secret agents in 1985.

The Women Who Launched a Rainbow, her earlier documentary, focuses on the personal stories of five women who worked on the Rainbow Warrior since its launching or at the time of the bombing.

The documentary was first released on New Zealand's Waiheke Island last year to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the bombing.

A long-time Greenpeace activist, Pond-Eyley says she created the documentary to educate viewers and air the stories of the women - Susi Newborn and Hilari Anderson, founding crewmembers in Britain in 1977; Bunny McDiarmid and Hanne Sorensen, crew members on the ill-fated 1985 voyage to the Pacific; and Margaret Mills, the shipboard cook from Waiheke Island.

³It¹s time to hear what the women did - I knew I had an amazing story,² she says.

Pond-Eyley completed the documentary through a Creative New Zealand grant and stresses she has not profited from its release.

³If I did it for commercial gain, that would be wrong,² she says.

David Robie, author of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, applauds the documentary for recording an ³iconic piece of New Zealand history².

³It¹s a tremendous project,² says Robie.

³These were five of the key women who did so much crucial work to ensure there would be a nuclear-free Pacific. They were catalysts for change.²

Pond-Eyley hopes the documentary will inspire young people to follow their dreams.

³I¹m hopeful it will go international,² she says.

Also a lecturer in architecture, Pond-Eyley is working on a follow-up documentary called Departure and Return.

* Copies of The Women Who Launched a Rainbow were made available at schools and libraries throughout New Zealand.

+++niuswire

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