A Pacific spin on Cook’s landing
Lala Rolls’ new documentary returns Captain Cook’s navigator Tupaia to his rightful place. reports.
When film-maker Lala Rolls set out to make a film about Tahitian artist, priest, navigator and diplomat Tupaia in 2006, she never imagined it would take 14 years for it to be released. But the debut of documentary Tupaia’s Endeavour at Wha¯ nau Ma¯ rama New Zealand International Film Festival late next month – coinciding as it does with Black Lives Matter protests and a broad movement towards rejecting colonial narratives – could not be more timely.
The story of Tupaia is that of a highly trained, aristocratic navigator, geographer, map-maker and linguist who, at first a curiosity to the crew of Endeavour, became invaluable during Captain James Cook’s first voyage of the Pacific, but then largely disappeared from the dominant narrative of New Zealand’s colonisation.
‘‘Last year was 250 years since Cook [landed in New Zealand] and we had hoped to have [the] release then,’’ said Rolls.
‘‘By that time, it had been delayed so long that we thought, ‘Great, we’re on the right year’ and then it didn’t happen. And then all this other stuff started happening and lots of that came from talk about statues and identity. Ihuma¯ tao happened, and it’s like, actually, people are ready for it now, the film is stepping into the moment.’’
One prominent participant in Tupaia’s Endeavour is Nick Tupara, the Gisborne artist who last year erected a monument to his ancestor Te Maro. He was also instrumental in the removal of the city’s Captain Cook statue as part of the city’s commemoration of 250 years since Cook’s landing. One could almost not imagine a more relevant context for the film’s release.
Eminent historian Anne Salmond, whose 2003 book, Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas, spurred Rolls’ interest in Tupaia and who appears frequently in Tupaia’s Endeavour, said the film was not ‘‘anti-colonial’’.
‘‘In the old narratives, Ma¯ ori or people in the Pacific kind of sat there like mute tattooed masks just watching the Europeans get on with making history. But that isn’t how it was.’’
One of Rolls’ goals for the film was to give viewers a sense of the rich and complex societies Cook met in the Pacific.
‘‘Life didn’t stop on the island of Tahiti [when Cook arrived], they weren’t like, ‘Oh my God the Great White People are here.’ They were like, ‘Right, we’re in the middle of our Matariki celebrations and so we’ll keep doing our rituals and these fullas happen to be here, so we’ll just include them.’ ’’
Rolls collaborated closely with artist Michael Tuffery on Tupaia’s Endeavour, aiming to tell this Pacific story in a Pacific style, using art, haka, song and storytelling alongside interviews and re-enactments.
‘‘It transforms the film-making process,’’ said Salmond. ‘‘You’re going to Tahiti with Ma¯ ori actors and film-makers and people who are meeting their ancestors. That changes the whole way the filming proceeds as well.’’
There is a feeling throughout the documentary that the viewer is part of the film-making experience.
There are some pivotal discoveries that are made as cameras roll. Outrageous Fortune actor