A drama about a Maori family living in Auckland, New Zealand. Lee Tamahori tells the story of Beth Heke’s strong will to keep her family together during times of unemployment and abuse from her violent and alcoholic husband.
A contemporary story of love, rejection, and triumph as a young Maori girl fights to fulfill a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognize.
The film told the Māori legend of Hinemoa and Tutanekai. It is the first dramatic feature film produced in New Zealand.
The Pa Boys is an energetic, uplifting road movie capturing the best of New Zealand's culture, beauty, talent and music, whilst exploring themes of identity, friendship and discovering your roots.
When an academic unearths a forgotten history, residents of the small township of Pukekohe, including kaumātua who have never told their personal stories before, confront its deep and dark racist past.
This 1972 documentary explores the world of a dying generation of Māori female elders or kuia — “the last of the Māori women with tattooed chins”. Narrator Selwyn Muru extols the place of the kuia in Māori culture, and of wahine tā moko. Among those on screen are 105-year old Ngahuia Hona, who cooks in hot pools, rolls a cigarette, and eats with whānau, and “the oldest Māori” Nga Kahikatea Wirihana, who remembers the Battle of Ōrākau during the land wars, and has outlived four husbands. Into Antiquity was an early documentary from veteran Wayne Tourell.
Aroha depicts a young Māori chief's daughter who embraces the modernity of the Pākehā world (attending university in Wellington) while confronting her place with her own people (Te Arawa) and traditions at home. The NFU-produced dramatisation is didactic but largely sensitive in making Aroha's story represent contemporary Māori dilemmas (noted anthropologist Ernest Beaglehole was the cultural advisor). Watch out for some musical treats, including an instrumental version of classic Kiwi song, 'Blue Smoke' and a performance of the action song 'Me He Manu Rere'.
In March and April 1921 several weeks were spent by Elsdon Best, Johannes Anderson and James McDonald, of the Dominion Museum, at Koriniti, Hiruharama and Pipiriki in the Whanganui River valley. The scenes in this film record games such as skipping and string games, crafts such as dyeing and weaving of harakeke, cultivation and fishing. The making of hinaki for eels and the setting of traps in the weirs are shown in detail.