The multi-award-winning documentary Last Paradise charts the evolution of adventure sports and begins 45 years ago, when the five main characters, including future Queenstown bungy pioneer A.J. Hackett, are children.
Oakura film-maker Clive Neeson told the Queenstown Times the motley crew he hung out with did not have television, or toys, just the New Zealand wilderness and the Kiwi No 8 wire mentality.
"We go on a journey through their teenage years where they start getting quite extreme with their innovations. That gives birth to whole new way of playing."
Calling from Raglan where he was promoting Last Paradise, Mr Neeson said adventure sport innovation began with the spirit of surfing.
"In the early 1970s, a bunch of mavericks discovered the mountains. As A.J. tells us the story, the surfers discovered the mountains in Queenstown and Wanaka and wanted to take their boards to the mountains.
"It was down there we did the first experimentation and then went to Utah. We heard about some guys in America who were experimenting too and we took the camera there and what we have in Last Paradise is the first snowboarding film by guys from Wanaka.
"I think A.J. actually brought some snowboards into New Zealand, but it was all too early though. It was too ahead of its time.
"It was this concept of trying to have fun in New Zealand's great outdoors and that led to a predicament later on when we had to find careers. We found ways to give the general public a taste of what we we doing and turn it into commercial enterprise.
"It's pretty obvious what A.J. did, but it happened with all the guys."
Mr Neeson's parents were wildlife photographers in Eastern Africa in the 1950s. He bought his own camera at the age of 15 and by 17, in 1973, met individuals who inspired him to film extreme sports around the world, he said.
"They also inspired me to film the world before it all changed. To seek out paradise and film it before it disappeared, so I did."
The writer, producer and director studied atomic physics and electronics under physicist Prof Bruce Liley, graduating with a master's degree. He worked internationally in energy development and technology innovation, including the first climate monitoring systems.
The eco-minded documentary explores the birth of surfing in New Zealand, the earliest attempts at windsurfing, snowboarding, skurfing, wake boarding and more adrenaline-fuelled pursuits.
Mr Neeson blended his own original globe-trotting footage of daredevils he filmed since the late 1960s, with digitally remastered footage, including the clip of Hackett's bungy jump off the Eiffel Tower and highlights from Off the Edge (1976), the first New Zealand film to be nominated for an Academy Award.
"We brought the original film-maker in, found his film and remastered it down at Peter Jackson's [Park Road Post, in Wellington, in 2007].
"We scoured the country for every bit of footage that ever existed, 20 hours of solid good footage"It's the footage Al Gore couldn't get for his movie. We got it because it was here, hiding in closets and lost.
"In Otago, you can see the Tasman Glacier the way it was 35 years ago and it's nothing like today, it's unrecognisable. We walk through the past right round the world to places you didn't know existed and no longer do."
Last Paradise won Best Adventure Feature at the 2011 Cairns Adventure Film Festival and was chosen as its opening film. The documentary won the Most Popular New Zealand Film award, at the New Zealand International Film Festival, in 2010.
It won "Best of Banff" at the Banff Mountain Film Festival, in Canada, and the Ambassador of Green Award, at X-Dance, in Salt Lake City, a festival described as "the Academy Awards of action sports films".
Mr Neeson said he will bring a shorter hour-long cut to the New Zealand Mountain Film Festival, in Wanaka, on July 1 to 5. He screened a special 30min cut at the Queenstown Adventure Film Festival, last year.
"That's touring the world now. We're the most popular film in the Banff Mountain Film Festival and also the Kendal Mountain Film Festival.
"We got into the world touring Best of Banff and now we're touring through Australia and they keep featuring Last Paradise as the feature film."
Mr Neeson said Last Paradise was popular with Americans and had been told it will be well received by Europeans when it is screened on the Continent.
"When I turned 50, I wondered if I'd ever make it. To see it's worked out how I dreamt it would when I was 17 years old is pretty gratifying."
