JEAN BATTEN - THE GARBO OF THE SKIES

Jean Batten, star of the 1930s, died alone on a Spanish island in the mid-1980s. Some say she paid the ultimate price for her secrecy.

Using archival footage, clippings, photographs and quotes from her letters and diary, this film looks at the life of “the aviator with the glamorous exterior”; her youth in New Zealand, her relationship with her mother, her string of adoring men and of course her heroic flights.

Jean Batten left New Zealand for London in 1930 telling her father she was going to study music. Instead she learned to fly. She set a world record flying from England to Australia, was the first woman to fly the South Atlantic and in 1936 flew from England to New Zealand.

Acquaintances speak of a lonely woman who was “curiously unfulfilled”.