Keri Hulme’s Booker Prize-winning novel The Bone People is being reimagined by and for a new generation.
Set on Aotearoa’s wild West Coast, The Bone People is a haunting tale of trauma, identity, and connection, interweaving Māori and Pākehā worlds.
Writer and director Cathasaigh Ó Fiannachta says the animation allows the team to honour Hulme’s legacy while respecting her wishes and protecting tamariki from the story’s tougher scenes.
“She was ahead of her time in so many ways by recognising that there is a world in the future where people really inherently understood the significance of not creating harm to create art. And so yeah, a big part of our journey was going great. We want to create a new pathway for this work. We want to honour Keris wishes that it be ethically created and that no one is harmed in the process,” says Ó Fiannachta.
Writers and artists are now developing the first chapter, Portrait of a Sandal, as both a pilot and a study in collective storytelling.
