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Download AudioEarly works by some of the country’s leading Māori playwrights have been recreated for the screen.
A documentary on Wellington’s ground-breaking Taki Rua Theatre is in post-production, and images from it have been included in the Film Commission booklet for the Cannes Film Festival in a bid to generate international interest.
Producer and director Whetu Fala is making Taki Rua: Breaking Barriers because she feels many of those who started the Wellington-based theatre company 35 years ago were gone or missing in action, and their story needed to be held.
Because of imminent lockdowns she assembled cast and crew in Whanganui, where she’s now living, and did the filming at the Bason Botanic Gardens.
“It was the perfect place for the series of Taki Rua plays we decided to film vignettes of. Plays by Roma Potiki, Briar Grace-Smith, Wiremu Grace, Hone Kouka, Riwia Brown, of course, all these great writers who got started with Taki Rua, we were able to film some of their early works right here at the Bason Botanic Gardens,” Fala says.
She says for those concerned about co-governance, that’s the model Taki Rua has successfully operated on for more than 30 years.
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