Tēnā kotou katoa.

I have had two very different experiences in the last week that were refreshers on what it is to be Māori in the New Zealand film industry.

The first was when I attended the down-home  Māoriland Film Festival in Otaki from last Friday to Sunday, run by Māori power couple Libby Hakaraia and Tainui Stephens.

The festival is in its second year and brought together a programme of Māori, Aboriginal Australian, Sanmi and other indigenous features, shorts and documentaries for the enjoyment of the predominantly local population, although a number of our filmmaking colleagues attended from Aotearoa, Australia, Canada, Scandinavia, and the U.S. A Māori short I produced in 2013 was one of the films on offer.

Otaki is the home of Ngāti Raukawa, who moved to the area with Te Rauparaha in the 1800s, and the site for tertiary education provider Te Wānanga o Raukawa.

The architecturally stunning Nga Purapura Wānanga of Fitness Facility provided one of the screening venues and it’s where I watched the Māori story The Dead Lands for the first time. (I say Māori story because I subscribe to the Ngā Aho Whakaari definition of a Māori film as a film with a Māori story, and with Maori in the three key creative positions of writer, director and producer.) The other two screening venues were the local hall and the small Civic Theatre.

In this small community from which festival director Libby comes, the aroha, whanaungatanga, manaakitanga and kotahitanga were clearly evident. I felt a part of the Hakaraia extended whānau, welcomed by both whānau and iwi who played an integral part in the festival, and at one with the place and the people, both of the land and the industry. This is the penultimate experience of a Māori event for me. This spirit is not limited just to Māori , though. I felt the same way at imagineNATIVE, the world’s largest indigenous film festival in Toronto, and at the Pacific Islanders in Communications Conference and the Hawaii International Film Festival on Oahu, which I attended last year.

Māoriland is a celebration of indigenous storytelling on screen, and continues a tradition started by the Wairoa Māori Film Festival, which sees its 10th anniversary this year.

The second experience was when I was fortunate enough to be invited to the set on the first day of shooting for The Patriarch, which kicked off on Wednesday.

It’s been twenty years since director Lee Tamahori and producer Robin Scholes worked together on Once Were Warriors. They have come together again to put on screen Witi Ihimaera’s novel Bulibasha, about two warring shearing gang families.

My colleague and friend Brad Haami is Māori consultant on the film in the absence of kaumātua Hare Williams due to illness; Robin my old boss from years ago. I spent the morning listening as Brad engaged with core cast Temuera Morrison and Nancy Brunning over Māori aspects of the script.

Once Were Warriors paved the way for the commercial and or critical success of Māori stories and Māori films to come, from Whale Rider, The Dead Lands and The Dark Horse to Boy, Mt. Zion and The Pa Boys. It also catapulted Lee Tamahori into the directing big leagues of an international career. It was an honour to hear Lee as he addressed the crew, telling them what it meant to him to be returning to filmmaking in New Zealand after all that time to make The Patriarch, a film based on a story from his own rohe. And I clearly saw a Māori director who was in charge of his film and his vision.

Māori stories and films are the unique differentiator for New Zealand film in the international marketplace. And on the domestic scene they make up six of the top 10 box office successes, with Boy sitting at No. 1.

In an interview with Māori Television’s current affairs programme Native Affairs, actor and Sundance Film Festival founder Robert Redford, who is here for the filming of Disney’s Pete’s Dragon, said  that New Zealand is like a country with a smile on its face. In the film world, Māori in front of and behind the camera are increasingly bringing smiles to the faces of domestic and international audiences, filmmakers and film industry people alike.

That’s got to be good for all of us.

Have a happy and safe Easter!

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

Last updated on 12 March 2018

5 March 2015

Faced with a blank page and no hot topic I’m left to update you on some of the recent traffic across my desk.

Screen Industry New Zealand (SINZ) got together last week for the first time in over a year. SINZ is an informal gathering of guilds (Writers, Directors & Editors, Producers, Actors) and associations (WIFT and Nga Aho Whakaari) to share information and highlight those issues that affect us all, and individually. SINZ does not have the mandate to speak or act collectively. Rather, it’s a conduit for communication so that we can all stay up with the state of play. Discussion centred on digital rights, the ongoing changes at the NZFC and gender equality. While we all have a different take on issues, we can also see where thinking meshes. From a DEGNZ perspective, expect to see us working more collaboratively with other organisations to help achieve tactical and strategic objectives.

If you follow the DEGNZ Facebook page, you may have noticed a post announcing that the Australian Directors Guild (ADG) was officially recognized as a union last week. This is a major achievement by the ADG after years of struggle, and deserves our heartfelt congratulations. The ADG can now legally represent all their directors in negotiations with producers. The power of the Directors Guild of America and the Directors Guild of Canada lies in their ability to negotiate collectively on behalf of their members, setting work terms and conditions as well as providing other services and benefits. New Zealand has for many years now been a union-unfriendly environment, as evidenced most recently in our industry by The Hobbit and Outrageous Fortune disputes. Rest assured that even without collective bargaining power, how to assure the creative, cultural and financial wellbeing of our members is at the forefront of the minds of the DEGNZ board and staff.

Last week saw the launch of the Vista Foundation, an organisation set up by cinema and film software solutions company Vista Group. The foundation is joining together with the NZFC to launch a marketing and distribution training programme for selected filmmakers led by long time producer John Barnett. This is just one of many initiatives Vista hopes to get behind. It’s a matched funding arrangement that sees private and government cash come together around film. NZFC CEO Dave Gibson is enthusiastic about getting private money into the industry, so that filmmakers become less reliant on the NZFC as the funding source. Not everyone has the pulling power of Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi to raise US$400,000 plus in a marketing and distribution crowdfunding campaign however, so filmmakers will welcome the up to NZ$75,000 carrot the NZFC is offering top dog out of the programme.

Next week the Minster of Broadcasting Amy Adams is hosting a 25th anniversary celebration of New Zealand On Air (NZOA) content. While Dr Ruth Harley in her John O’Shea Memorial Address at the SPADA conference in late November last year lamented the serious mistakes she made when leading the organisation, we still have much to thank NZOA for. Without a public broadcaster in sight these days, NZOA still helps deliver a broad range of content on screen that wouldn’t get made without it. Let us hope there are more anniversaries to celebrate with them.

Finally… what a difference a little over a year and five percent makes. I was speaking to a producer yesterday who has struggled to crew a feature film about to shoot. Everybody’s busy—crew anyway. The NZ Screen Production Grant is doing the business, particularly with international productions. More importantly, international TV series shooting here are on the up. This means drama directors and editors have the opportunity to gain long term employment working on projects with big budgets and lots of toys, especially if the shows move beyond a first series. But what about NZ feature film and the employment opportunities there for directors and editors?

The NZFC’s development and production budgets aren’t seeing any significant increases. Development (including training) has remained relatively static at around $2million per year for the last five years, while production financing seems to have been going down year on year, from just under NZ$16 million in the 2009 – 10 period to just over NZ$10 million last financial year (changes in reporting methodology may account for some of this difference.)

Yes, last year we had a much higher number of NZ films hit theatres than usual, thanks primarily though to the lo-budget flow through from Escalator and other schemes. Budgets for film are being driven down globally for features.

One NZFC response has been to target low-budget films in the $250 – 500k range with an emphasis official or not on genre product. Another is to keep first time director budgets to under $1. 5 million or so. These initiatives could well help to keep the number of films up to the level of last year. The inevitable outcome here however as occurred with Escalator is that pay rates are forced down to fit the budgets—More jobs, but less pay.

At the Hawaii International Film Festival last year I suggested to the Oahu Film Commissioner that she apply a small tax to every incoming production to help stimulate the almost non-existent local dramatic feature film industry—an idea that would go down like a lead balloon here.

Maybe it’s time for NZFC budget increases to get our filmmakers busier, and hopefully pay them what they are worth.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

Last updated on 12 March 2018