June 02, 2017
Indigenous stories told at Wairoa
Indigenous filmmakers from Canada and Hawaii have joined their Maori counterparts for this weekend’s Wairoa Maori Film Festival.
More than 70 shorts, feature films and documentaries will be shown at Kahungunu Marae in Nuhaka, and there’s a gala dinner and prizegiving in Wairoa’s Gaiety Theatre tomorrow night featuring guest speaker Tame Iti.
Organiser Leo Koziol says indigenous film makers feel energized after decades of other people telling their stories.
"It was Hollywood dressing up people to pretend to be Maori or Indian, telling their version of our story, which is normally the white man comes along and saves the day for the natives like in Avatar. Now we are telling our own stories, and cutting it in Hollywood as well – Taika Waititi directing the next big science fiction epic with Thor:Ragnarok," he says.
Canadian and Maori filmmakers will collaborate next week on making shorts to be shown at an indigenous festival in Saskatchewan, Canada.
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