03 August 2010
A documentary about 1930s aviatrix Jean Batten is now online, to watch for free.
http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/jean-batten---the-garbo-of-the-skies-1988
Batten broke solo distance flying records and achieved international fame.
Directed by her biographer, Ian Mackersey, Garbo of the Skies chronicles Batten's life through archive footage, interviews, narration from her unpublished memoirs and reconstructions of her epic flights.
The film also reveals a lonely private world: a domineering mother, romantic tragedy, an itinerant fall into obscurity, and death in a Majorcan hotel (a mystery solved by research for the film).
“In flying I found the two things that meant everything to me: the intoxicating drug of speed and the freedom to roam the earth; I knew I was destined to be wanderer.” – from Batten’s unpublished memoirs