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Whakarāpopoto Kōrero
Kei tēnei pepa ka rapu kōrero hei whakamānawa i te
ihorei, i te wahine Māori tuatahi i tū ai hei tumu whakarae
kiriata, i a Merata Mita (1942-2010), me tāna tirohanga
ki te mahi kiriata. Kua tuhia mai he kōrero mō tā Mita
kaupapa me tāna mahi waihanga kiriata mā te tātari atu
i a Mauri, he kiriata taketake, he mea ponokore e titiro
ana mai waho ki ao o te Māori. No konei ka wānangahia
te ariā mana whakahaere me te whakawhiti kōrero
ā-ahurea mā te tātari i tā te Pākehā waihanga kiriata,
pērā i tō Barry Barclay ariā o roto o “Fourth Cinema”. Ko
tā te kōrero nei he whakapae ina whakaaro ana ki te taha
ahurea o te Māori hei tātari, hei wānanga, ko Mauri tētahi
o ngā kiriata nui whakahirahira kua puta mai i te hunga
waihanga kiriata o Aotearoa.
Abstract
In this paper an attempt is made to pay tribute to the pathfinding,
first Māori female film director, Merata Mita (19
June1942- 31 May 2010), and her powerful aesthetic of
ahua (the cinema). An examination is provided of Mita’s
kaupapa and film-making practice principally through an
analysis of Mauri, an indigenous quasi-“ethnographic”
fiction-feature film. From this frame a notion of Māori
empowerment and inter-cultural communication by
counter-colonising the Western discourse of film is
hypothesised, one that builds upon Barry Barclay’s
concept of “Fourth Cinema”. The analysis offered here
suggests that, culturally and ethnographically (emically),
Mauri is one of the most important feature films made to
date within the emerging canon of New Zealand cinema.