Friday 14 March | Our taster for Māoriland, the world's largest indigenous film festival

Madeleine Hakaraia de Young I think we're a bit under the radar still being in Ōtaki and down the south coast of the island, but it's a growing secret because we take over the whole town. People who come to the festival have a really incredible experience and just spread the word, one person at a time. I look at how successful Te Matatini [the biannual national kapa haka festival] was last week and something of that scale is so extraordinary, to have crowds that big. We're not comparable to that size-wise, but we are the biggest international indigenous film fest.

Madeleine Hakaraia de Young Sure. We founded Māoriland 12 years ago here in Ōtaki. It came about because of a short film that had been made with our aunties called The Lawnmower Men of Kapu. This film it was the first time our whanau had the opportunity to see themselves on screen, to be part of film festivals. That film, which was written and directed by Libby Hakaraia and produced by Tainui Stephens went to over 30 film festivals around the world.

Our aunty and uncle, who are lawn mowing contractors and had provided their lawn mowers for the for the film, said to Tainui, “Why can't we have one of those at home?” And Tainui and Libby had been going to festivals all over the world for some years and had been getting the same question: “Where can we come in New Zealand to show our films?” So from there, Māoriland was born.

I was brought on that first year. About 3000 people showed up. It was really about showing our community what indigenous film is, because Ōtaki doesn't have a cinema, doesn’t have a hotel, but we are natural ambassadors. So we thought if we can just get the community on board, we can make something magical. Because of that grassroots approach, it also means that the community got to get really close to the filmmakers.

We put Taika Waititi on trial for crimes against filmmaking because Boy had just come out. We had the team from a film from Australia called Mystery Road come out and the filmmakers forgot to bring the film with them, so we had to get it from United Video. It was a really fun, community-led event. And since then it has grown exponentially and this year at the festival, we've got 130 films and digital works in the programme.

We also have a full exhibition of indigenous art that takes place afterwards as well as public artworks out on the streets, big sculptures from Tama Iti and Richard Bell, who is an Indigenous Australian protest artist, murals from Regan Balzer. And there's food trucks and the kids' screenings and all of the industry events.

A lot of film makers have Aotearoa on their bucket list, so they really make an effort to come out. If you come to a screening at the festival, you're more than likely to see the filmmaker and be able to ask some questions or see them on the street or while they’re getting coffee. The relaxed environment means that everybody who comes to Māoriland feels like they’re part of something and it kind of invigorates everyone who is part of it.

Madeleine Hakaraia de Young Yeah, I think so. And I think that's something that is also present throughout Ōtaki itself. This is a really Māori town. We are home to Te Wānanga o Raukawa [a Tikanga Māori university] and te reo Māori is spoken on the street. It's the sort of town where you pop into the dairy or go to the sushi shop and everybody says kia ora to you on the street or strikes up a conversation with you. If you go to the café next to our building on Main Street, everyone's just talking to each other across the table. And so it's a community that invites people in.

Madeleine Hakaraia de Young As we were programming this year, I started to see that there were a large number of films from across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific. There were a lot of films that spoke to climate change and impacts of climate change, specifically in the Pacific, as it’s creating enormous pressures for a number of island nations around the world. But at the same time, when we look to what's happening on land, how we interact with our waterways is also connected to our own health, to our own hau ora, to how we find our place of home.

And when you look underneath the water, I think that's where some of the scariest impacts of climate change can be seen. With the emergence of intrusive invasive seaweed like Caulerpa, which has been found in the Bay of Islands, but it's a massive problem around Aotea, Great Barrier Island. We've got a film about that, so that was one of the reasons for the festival theme was looking specifically to how our hau ora as a planet is fundamentally linked to the moana.

But also I think that whakatauki is often used to speak to the hidden strength within us, to the magic within people, and I think that's something that you see throughout all of the films in the festival from Kōkā, our opening night film, through to our closing night film, Te Puna Ora, you see these people who are moved by an internal sense of purpose that is much bigger than them and so leads into these epic films and stories that span everything from really serious environmental activism or political activism to just fun, silly films that make you laugh or scary films and music videos. There are films of every genre in our festival and that that theme really encapsulated the whole lot of them.

Madeleine Hakaraia de Young When we were thinking about what we want to share at Britomart, we decided to look into our theme for this year's festival and pick some of our favourite films from previous years that reflected it. The films that we've selected are a range from across the Pacific. There's a film called Mahika Kai, which is about tuna down in the South and it is extraordinary. Tuna, or eels, are one of the animals which really inspired us with our programme because they are about to start on their journey back out to the Pacific right now.

Aikāne is an incredibly beautiful animated short film from Hawai’i. Katele (Mudskipper) is from Australia, by a filmmaker called John Harvey who makes the most incredible films. An indigenous woman working in a laundromat goes into the dreaming place of her tribal lands through one of the washing machines. It's this beautiful combination of how even when you're working, doing menial, boring work, you carry the stories of your ancestors with you. I think you can say that of a few of the films, like Pasifika Drift is about a young man who has strayed from his Papua New Guinea identity, and as his first baby approaches, his aunties are calling him into line, reminding him of who he is.

Voyager’s Legacy is a children's interpretation of the dawn raids from a really exciting young filmmaker called Bailey Poching. And then there’s a couple of films for which we have the features of at this year’s festival. Standing Above the Clouds is about the fight for Mauna Kea. It's a Hawai’ian film, spearheaded by Pua Case and a number of really incredible Hawai’ian women. We're really lucky to have the feature film version of that screening at this Māoriland Film Festival. The filmmakers will be coming out to Aotearoa for the festival.

Finally, Washday was the proof of concept for Kath Akuhata Brown's feature film Kōkā. We've got a special presentation of Kōkā that will be the first opportunity New Zealand audiences get to have a peek at the film before it comes out in cinemas in June. So if you want to get the backstory of where Kath started with this project, it's a natural choice. 

Madeleine Hakaraia de Young Yeah, definitely. It's open to the public. Tickets are on sale online. I travel between Tāmaki and Ōtaki almost every week, and you know, it's not that far. We've got an airport just 15 minutes down the road, so I think it's well worth the trip, whether it's a road trip of mates or popping in to come and see the film's on by plane.