October 08, 2013
Maori films showcased at Toronto fest
Maori film, radio drama and art are being showcased this month at the world's biggest indigenous film and media festival.
Films to be shown at the ImagineNATIVE Festival in Toronto, Canada, include Barry Barclay's 1985 feature Neglected Miracle, which revealed how Indigenous people around the world were fighting to retain cultural ownership of genetic material in seeds, and Merata Mita's Mana Waka, which used the archival footage Princess Te Puea had commisisoned of the making of waka for the 1940 Centennial commemorations.
There's also the recent commercial hit Mt Zion, and short films by Chelsea Winstanley, Desray Armstrong, Mark Ruka, Renae Maihi and others.
Kath Akuhata Brown, who programmed the showcase, says the invitation came through a wider project to create an indigneous distribution network.
She says Maori storytellers and filmmakers seem to be able to reach out to the world in a way many other Indigenous cultures cannot, by treating their culture as a taonga tuku iho or legacy to be treasured.
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