Dirty Bloody Hippies

Dirty Bloody Hippies is a hippie trip back to 1970s New Zealand.

The documentary explores a colourful time in New Zealand’s social history beginning in 1969, a couple of years after San Francisco’s infamous “summer of love”. US Vice President Spiro Agnew visited New Zealand to drum up support for the unpopular US-led war in Vietnam and his visit caused an outpouring of youthful protest and anger on the nation’s streets shocking the country.

Anti-war protests soon spilled over into a more general rejection of the conservative values and institutions of 1960s New Zealand. Many young people set up their own communities where they could experiment with alternative lifestyles.

Former radical and current Invercargill mayor Tim Shadbolt puts it, “We thought, right, let’s go back to a primitive village lifestyle and see if we can evolve a different country altogether, where materialism isn’t the main motivator for our communities”.

But youthful idealism soon comes up against the realities of making a living, getting along with one another and the hostility of conservative neighbours sceptical about the new arrivals’ drug use and sexual behaviour.

So what happened to the great hippy experiment? Director Salmon tracks down many of the former hippies to find out in this fascinating, funny and often poignant trip back to 1970s New Zealand.