It tells a story of love and fierce pride, and places it on a bleak New Zealand coast where people live rudely in the rain and mud, struggling to maintain the appearance of the European society they've left behind.

There’s a special sort of thrill that comes from being able to pinpoint the moment at which you fall in love with a film, particularly one that’s entrenched in the Film Canon.

The re-release of Jane Campion’s mysterious film The Piano after 25 years is a chance to taste again its fetishism and voyeurism, its strange story of sexuality denied and displaced.

In 1993, Jane Campion made history when she became the first woman (and the first New Zealander) to receive the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Writer/director Jane Campion's third feature unearthed emotional undercurrents and churning intensity in the story of a mute woman's rebellion in the recently colonized New Zealand wilderness of Victorian times. Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter), a mute who has willed herself not to speak, and her strong-willed young daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) find themselves in the New Zealand wilderness, with Ada the imported bride of dullard land-grabber Stewart (Sam Neill).

Parents need to know that The Piano is a complex adult drama with sexual relationships driving its plot. George is shown fully nude from the front in the beginning of a sex scene between him and Ada.

A mail-order bride, Ada, and her young daughter arrive on the shores of New Zealand with only a few possessions except a large piano, her most treasured item. Her new husband, an unwelcoming cold landowner, can't understand her love for the piano so leaves it on the beach. Baines, her husbands assistant takes in the piano and asks for lessons in return, however they soon begin a passionate affair.

Jane Campion was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and now lives in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Having graduated with a BA in Anthropology from Victoria University of Wellington in 1975, and a BA, with a painting major, at Sydney College of the Arts in 1979, she began filmmaking in the early 1980s, attending the Australian School of Film .

Jane Campion, (born April 30, 1954, Wellington, New Zealand), New Zealand director and screenwriter whose films often focused on women who are outsiders in society.

It is 25 years since The Piano was released in Australian cinemas, on 5 August 1993. Richard Kuipers profiles Jane Campion, whose bold and unconventional work has been acclaimed around the world.

The art film has rarely been a genre of interest to reception studies. Often circulating in marginal exhibition venues and attracting a relatively small, elite audience, it lacks the mainstream film's cultural presence and potential for broad impact, thus appearing to have little to offer to research on film viewers.