Editorial - Knockout film showing in Bay today | Hawkes Bay News | Local News in Hawkes Bay

Among the many good things about moving to Hawke's Bay last month was the unexpected bonus of seeing the 2010 New Zealand International Film Festival twice.

Thanks to a happy quirk of timing, the festival followed me to Napier, so I've had a rare second chance to catch the movies I missed the first time round.

Unfortunately, even with a second bite of the cherry, I messed it up: I missed Homegrown, the collection of New Zealand short films, I missed cowboy classic Once Upon a Time in the West, and I let the live cinema experience of The Marvellous Corricks pass me by.

Luckily, there's still some good stuff to come.

Screening tonight is the film by Irish-New Zealander Lydia Monin, From Poverty Bay to Broadway, about boxer Tom Heeney.

Heeney could be the biggest Kiwi sports star you've never heard of - he was a World Heavyweight contender in 1928, putting New Zealand boxing on the world map some 70 years before David Tua put the O in awesome.

He fought Gene Tunney in New York for the heavyweight title, losing the bout but picking up a challengers check of US$100,000.

Even today that's a lot of money for a boy from Kaiti, Gisborne - in 1928, it must have been unimaginable riches.

And while I haven't seen the movie, from what I've read about him, Heeney sounds like a true, honest-to-goodness Kiwi bloke, straight-up and doggedly determined - it speaks volumes that his nickname was Honest Tom.

Oh, and he represented this region in rugby too, playing for Hawke's Bay-Poverty Bay against the Springboks in 1921.

The film screens just once in Napier, at the Century Cinema tonight. I'm pleased I got a second chance to see it.