Archive for the ‘National identity’ Category

This post was originally published on NZ On Screen.

The late Merata Mita was a key figure in the story of Māori filmmaking. Through documentaries, interviews, public speaking and her 1987 dramatic feature Mauri, she was a passionate voice for Māori and an advocate for social change.

Swimming against the tide becomes an exhilarating experience. It makes you strong. I am completely without fear now. Merata Mita

Merata Mita grew up in the Bay of Plenty town of Maketu, the third eldest of nine children. She had a traditional rural Māori upbringing, and recalls watching newsreels when films were projected onto the walls of the local wharenui.

Later, during eight years teaching at Kawerau College, Mita began using film and video to reach supposedly unteachable high school students, many of them Māori. “What they were all good at was expressing themselves through art, image, drawing.” The experience taught Mita “how powerful image was in reaching people who don’t have other communication skills”.

Mita worked on her first documentary in 1977, helping a Pākehā filmmaker organise interviews with Māori people. But she soon began to grow disenchanted at Māori misrepresentation on film, and at how Māori seemed to be employed only to liase with Māori communities for Pākehā filmmakers.

In May 1978 Mita got a telephone call telling her “to get a film crew up to Bastion Point”. Mita arrived just in time to film police removing Ngāti Whatua protestors from the site. Lack of funds meant that Bastion Point: Day 507 (co-directed with Gerd Pohlmann and Leon Narbey) would take another two years to complete.

Mita went on to direct and co-direct films about the trade union movement and the Hokianga Catholic Māori community. The Bridge (1982) co-directed with Pohlmann, chronicles the longrunning Mangere Bridge industrial dispute. She also worked as a reporter and presenter for Māori TV news show Koha, and collaborated with Martyn Sanderson on cross-cultural documentary Keskidee Aroha.

Patu! was Merata Mita’s passionate record of clashes between protestors and police during the 1981 Springbok tour. The subject of intense media coverage, Patu! was described by filmmaker/ Listener reviewer Peter Wells as “the hottest documentary ever made in New Zealand”. It was also the first feature-length documentary in New Zealand directed by a woman. Local cinema chains refused to screen it. Patu! went on to screen at film festivals around the world. 

Mita followed Patu! in 1988 with Mauri, only the second feature film drama to have a Māori woman director (1972’s To Love a Māori was co-directed by Ramai Hayward and husband Rudall). Mauri’s plotline centres around issues of birthright and racism in an isolated rural community, with land rights activist Eva Rickard playing the central role of the grandmother. 

The film was a training ground for many young Māori crew members; Mita argued that “what you gain from Māori people is an incredible intensity and passion about the work being done”.

Mauri won a best prize at Italy’s Rimini Film Festival. After some negative reviews of the film at festival screenings back home, Mita argued against Pākehā reviewers who were “not qualified to assess it”. She asked not that people liked the film, but that they view it with an open mind.

In making Mauri, Mita consciously rejected Pākehā traditions of storytelling. Instead she embraced a layered approach, in keeping with the strongly oral tradition of Māori people. “These are differences that Pākehā critics don’t even take into account when they’re analysing the film.”*

1989 saw Mita and longtime editor Annie Collins at a Steenbeck editing bench on Turangawaewae Marae. Mita had accepted the challenge of making Mana Waka (1990), a documentary which used abandoned footage chronicling the creation of four special wakas commissioned by Princess Te Puea, for New Zealand’s 1940 centenary.

Mana Waka met with its own ownership complications: at one point descendants of the original Pākehā cameraman ran off with an early print of the film, despite having already agreed to let Mita direct.

Mita also made documentaries on artist Ralph Hotere (Hotere, 2001), rastafarians in Ruatoria (The Dread) and judicial injustice (The Shooting of Dominick Kaiwhata, 1993). She also directed the video for Che Fu’s Waka, which won the Music Video of the Year Award at the 1999 Hawaii Music Awards. In 1998, Mita was herself the subject of television documentary Rangatira.

Mita spent much of the 90s working in America, alongside then partner, director Geoff Murphy. As an actor, she appeared in Murphy’s Utu and a TV adaptation of Rowley Habib’s The Protesters. She was later on the producing team behind Murphy’s Kiwi-set feature Spooked (2004) and 2010 box office smash Boy, and was executive producer on 2004’s The Land has Eyes, the first feature directed by a native Fijian. 

Mita hosted workshops and spoke on panels about indigenous filmmaking in many countries. She also taught critical studies at the University of Hawai’i.

In 1996 Mita was awarded the Leo Dratfield Lifetime Achievement Award for documentary, by the Robert Flaherty Foundation.

Mita collapsed suddenly outside an Auckland television studio on May 31, 2010. The same year she had received the order of merit in the New Year’s Honours. Her long cherished dream of adapting Patricia Grace novel Cousins into a feature remained unfulfilled. 

Moe mai e te rangatira, moe mai.

* Quotation from Parekowhai, Cushla. “Kōrero Ki Taku Tuakana: Merata Mita and me.” Illusions Issue 9, December 1988.

NZ On Screen celebrates 50 years of television in Aotearoa with some fantastic golden oldies … as well as some recent memorbable moments. Check out Solid Gold Hits from the box.

June 1st 2010 represents half a century of seeing ourselves reflected on the telly. To celebrate, NZ On Screen presents a collection of the gold hits, from The Governor to Gliding On to Gloss, from Country Calendar to Close to Home, from Shortland St to Selwyn Toogood , Billy T and Thingee.

Included in the collection era-defining dramas (Pukemanu, The Governor, Close to Home, Gloss, Shortland Street), cultural cringe-defying comedy (Billy T, A Week of It, Hudson and Halls, Country Calendar’s spoofs and Town and Around’s turkeys in gumboots), iconic newsreaders through the years, current affairs classics (Dennis Conner’s walkout, Post Office strike breakthroughs, Muldoon meltdowns), landmark documentaries (Tangata Whenua, and the Landmarks series itself), national-bonding events (Top Town, Telethon), the shows that generations of Kiwi kids grew up with (After School , Spot On, Under the Mountain, Play School, What Now?, Nice One, Count Homogenized ), magic moments (Thingee’s eye-popping) and much more.

In a background piece, pop culture writer Barney McDonald gets square eyes surveying the best of NZ On Screen. The Sunday Star-Times’ film reviewer and Pavement founder looks at the shows as notches on both a personal and national growth chart.

“… the box was the glue that bound us together as a modest nation, epitomised by televised All Black games, It’s in the Bag and Telethon. Now, perhaps, it’s the Internet, talkback radio and morning TV weather presenters visiting more corners of the country than Selwyn Toogood ever could …”

And screen historian Roger Horrocks provides a history of TV: a précis of the screen-scape from black and white beginnings, and pubic service vs commercial debates, to the challenge of the Internet.

From “you’re not in Guatemala now Dr Ropata” to “Keep Cool ‘til After School”, from “Jeez Wayne” to “Nice one Stu-y!”

Re-live the best of the box … online.

$10,000 to kick-start your digitisation project!*

Make it Digital has two awards of up to $10,000 on offer for organisations who have New Zealand content they want to digitise and make easier to find, share and use. Entries must be from an organisation that is a New Zealand legal entity. Individuals with project ideas should team with a relevant organisation and submit their idea collaboratively. Entries close on Monday February 1 2010.

For more information, check out the Make it Digital Award page.

Make It Digital is a place for people who are interested in making content digital. New Zealand is a small place with big ideas, and we need to be creating and digitising more content – be it our pictures, our stories, our 3D creations, or our knowledge and culture. Need some advice, got a digitisation project, got some expertise to contribute? Make It Digital is the place for you. Check out more information about the project, what people are doing and how it’s going over here.

*Terms and conditions apply, so read all the small print.

They say time flies when you’re having fun and from the sounds of it that’s what NZ On Screen have been doing for the last year. But a whole year? I hear you ask. That’s right, NZ On Screen celebrates its first birthday this month and we’re taking this chance to wish them a very Happy Birthday and thank them for all the hard work they’ve put in to bring New Zealand television and film to our desktops.

Here are a few of the highlights from the collection:

Don’t Let It Get You
Sir Howard Morrison (as himself) and Rotorua are the stars in the tiki-flavoured tale. This 60s classic is a melange of madcap, pep-filled musical fun. Made by John O’Shea, it features Kiri Te Kanawa, Lew Pryme and Aussie star Norman Rowe.

Gliding On
In an age before Rogernomics, well before The Office, there was the afternoon tea fund, Golden Kiwi, and four o’clock closing: welcome to the early 80s New Zealand Public Service. The Roger Hall series was the first hit Kiwi sitcom: “Morning Jim!”

A Dog’s Show
Man. Dog. Sheep. This was an unlikely formula for Kiwi TV gold. Showing sheepdog trials from around the country, A Dog’s Show ran from 1977 to 1992. This episode is from the same year as the Springbok Tour, but the only riots here are ovine.

Enjoy!

Howard Morrison, at left, performs with the Quartet (from the cover of Te Ao Hou)

It’s a song that many throughout the world know. A song that was given to our local tongue by Howard Morrison when he sang ‘Whakaaria Mai’ for the Queen at a Royal Command Performance in 1981. It’s a song that today is in my mind, and perhaps in the minds of many, as we remember Sir Howard Morrison, who died in Rotorua today, 24 September 2009, aged 74.

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By David Luoni

Cuba Crisis No.1. Image courtesy of Tauranga Art Gallery, from a private collection.

Gore’s Eastern Southland Gallery is hosting a compelling retrospective of Edward (Ted) Bullmore’s art entitled ‘A Surrealist Odyssey’. Ted Bullmore was a southern lad who grew up on the family’s farm at Balfour but his talent lent itself to acquiring cultural rather than rural capital. Gore has now caught up with Bullmore’s genius and is proudly celebrating it. If only we’d had the foresight to do this 40 years ago when Bullmore needed it, having returned home from a productive nine year stint in Europe only to find himself working in relative obscurity in Rotorua. Sadly, Ted Bullmore died young, aged only 45, after having a heart attack in 1978.

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An opportunity that’s too good to miss: cultural tourism and the Rugby World Cup 2011

Crowds at the Auckland War Museum; photo by Nicole Scheid (flickr @*Nicci*)

It’s the third largest event in the world. A tournament lasting 44 days, at 14 venues, involving 20 teams, plus 60,000-70,000 international visitors and 2,000-3000 international media – all with time on their hands between matches. Not to mention a ‘stadium of 4 million’ – that’s us – Aotearoa New Zealand: the host nation.

The Rugby World Cup 2011 is an amazing opportunity for New Zealand to showcase itself to the rest of the world. It’s also an opportunity that’s too good to miss for the cultural sector.  It’s a chance to show the world that New Zealand has more to offer than a wonderful landscape and adventure tourism.  It’s an opportunity to show that we have a rich and diverse culture, that our arts are among the best in the world and that our history is just as interesting and engaging as anywhere else.  Research shows that for many international visitors New Zealand is a ‘must-see destination’ – one day.  The Rugby World Cup is the catalyst that will get them here – it will turn the desire into action.  For those who don’t come this time, the TV exposure is an opportunity to create a lasting impression of what New Zealand has to offer.

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The latest Asia:NZ Outlook report – Asians in Wellington: Changing the Ethnic Profile of the Capital City – was launched by the Mayor of Wellington, Kerry Prendergast on 1 September 2009 at the Michael Fowler Centre.

Mayor Prendergast commended the report as a “fascinating snapshot of Wellington’s transformation into a truly international city”. “Wellington now has 85 ethnic groups within its boundaries. This dynamic will give Wellington the platform to go confidently into the future,” she declared.

Asia:NZ Executive Director Dr Richard Grant pointed to the fact that, as a proportion of population, New Zealand is already more Asian than Australia and the United States. “This series of papers [on Asian populations in New Zealand's four largest cities] makes a significant contribution to the debate about New Zealand and its changing demography,” he added.

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Vanguard Films have waved the flag for the dispossessed and the underdog, for social and peace activists, for women and working people, teachers and unionists, anyone essentially, not of the ruling class, over the past thirty long years, as well as tackling environmental issues.

Vanguard is a small, socialist collective of Wellington-based filmmakers who’ve remained dedicated and active over the last three decades. To celebrate this 30th anniversary, the Film Archive presents Vanguard Films: 30 years – A better world is possible – two weeks of screenings spanning the collective’s output from 1981 to 2008.

The Film Archive have set us this challenge – “From The Hollow Men, to the Waihopai spy base, if you’re not familiar with these documentaries and you call yourself a New Zealander, you need to get watching”.

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I’ve just finished watching the double-boxset of the TV series Rome (again!), the factitious and bawdy remaking of Rome’s slide from republic to empire. Much of the story evolves around the characters Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, on-again-off-again members of the famous 13th legion, and it’s their ‘real life’ (ok, ok, it’s a TV show and might not be totally real) stories that provide a lot of the colour.

Fast-forward a couple of millennia and the stories of one of New Zealand’s own famous fighting units are now being given life on the web. The launch this week of the 28th Māori Battalion website brings together the historical overview, interactive campaign maps, photos, video and audio, a full Battalion roll from the Cenotaph database, and resources for further research into the Battalion’s story.

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