Life imitates art at the Wairoa Maori Film Festival
The cinema is not the obvious place to head on New Zealand’s first long weekend in five months, and when it’s 24 degrees Celsius outside. But the Wairoa Ma¯ori Film Festival is my idea of a good time.
It is a chance to rub shoulders with film-makers and stars from around New Zealand, and though the international Indigenous and First Nations contingent is missing this year due to Covid-19, that didn’t dampen anyone’s enthusiasm.
And yes, it all happens in the northern Hawke’s Bay river town of Wairoa, at the art deco Gaiety Theatre, which boasts the largest screen in the southern hemisphere.
Wairoa is within the tribal homeland of festival founder and co-director Leo Koziol.
Kuia Pauline Tangiora had attended a Ma¯ori film festival in France, of all places. She laid down the wero (challenge) that if France has a Ma¯ori film festival, why not Aotearoa.
Koziol took up that wero, despite scepticism there wouldn’t be enough Ma¯ori films and noone would come to Wairoa. Fifteen years on, those sceptics have been proved wrong.
This festival is a chance to see short and feature length films from New Zealand and the world that you might not find elsewhere. Stories this year ranged from the deeply emotional Loimata, about the serious and secret issue of sexual abuse in a Samoan family, to a thighslappingly funny short film, Hangi Pants, about two love-crossed women who fight it out through their karanga at the tangi of the man who did them wrong. Only in Aotearoa.
As art imitates life, there was even a film, Same but Different, about a same-sex couple who met at the Wairoa Ma¯ori Film Festival, fell in love, got married, then made a romantic comedy based on their true story that’s become a box-office hit. Truth really can be stranger than fiction. With Aotearoa’s other film festivals mostly online this year, it was great to have real face-toface communication and to sit in a cinema.
Get a bunch of storytellers together and the offscreen tales are equally as rich as those on-screen.
I go as often as possible to this festival, and always stay at the marae because the ko¯rero over breakfast, and the friendships made, are the core of the kaupapa.
For me, this year’s star storyteller was a Samoan matai, who drove taxis in Australia for 30 years, played bass guitar with The Drifters, and is not involved in the film industry at all.
In past years, the festival centred on Kahungunu Marae in Nu¯haka, a 30-minute drive from Wairoa.
Screenings were shared between the Gaiety Theatre and the wharenui at the marae. Sleepy filmgoers could lounge on mattress to watch the movies.
But this year, the marae is closed because of Covid-19 so everything screened at the delightful Gaiety Theatre.
One of the advantages of Nu¯haka was its proximity to Mo¯rere Hot Springs where a short bush walk takes you to this middle of nowhere gem. The festival is usually held mid-winter at Queen’s Birthday weekend, so this was a popular hangout spot between movies.
This year, we stayed at Taihoa Marae in Wairoa and the festival gala dinner and awards night took place in the exquisitely carved and tukutukupanelled dining hall. This is not Hollywood, it’s something way more authentic and meaningful.
Wairoa is an hour south of Gisborne and close to Te Urewera forest. It’s part of that East Coast Ma¯ori film-making lexicon that includes Nga¯ti, Mauri, Boy, Whale Rider, The Pa¯ Boys and the Oscar-winning Taika Waititi.
After all that, Wairoa seems the most logical place in the world for a film festival.
Kim Webby is a film-maker, and was hosted by the Wairoa Ma¯ori Film Festival.