Pasifika directors will be looking to make their mark when the Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival gets underway next week.
For the first time, a Pacific person is selecting the finalists for the festival’s NZ short film competition, and there’s a strong showing in other categories.
New Zealand Best Short Film Competition entries have been chosen by the renowned Samoan-New Zealand film-maker Tusi Tamasese.
Mr Tamasese is the first guest selector of Pacific heritage.
The Orator and One Thousand Ropes director said being born and raised in Samoa has shaped his outlook.
“How we see the world in a different way. Sometimes I’m looking for a certain sort of originality, something that I haven’t seen before,” he said.
“It’s also because Pasifika films are coming through and it’s bringing just a little bit of how just how we see the world, Pasifika see the world, in story telling.”
This year’s selection reveals a wide range of human emotions and experiences, he added.
His views are echoed by one of the curators of the festival’s Ngā Whanaunga Māori Pasifika Shorts, Leo Koziol.
“For about nine years now, myself and Craig Fasi of the Pollywood Film Festival, we’ve put together a programme of Maori and Pasifika shorts and this year’s a great year once again to have the best of Maori and Pacific short film making, you know the real new talents coming through.”
And the six talented Māori and Pasifika film-makers will be competing for the inaugural Wellington UNESCO City of Film Award for Best Film this year with a prize of $NZ3000. Jurors from fellow UNESCO cities of film Mumbai and Sarajevo join the third from Wellington to judge the competition.
One of the talented film-makers competing, said Mr Koziol, is the Cook Island and New Zealand Maori audio-visual artist Robert George whose movie I Am the Moment profiles Tongan performance artist Kalisolaite ‘Uhila.
“Who is based at Tokyo who does performance and art and is actually exploring the Japanese traditions of performance art and integrating them with Tongan and that’s a beautiful artistic film.”
Another entry Kapaemahu, he explained, explores the relationship between the ancient healers of Tahiti, the Mahu, who brought their gifts to Hawai’i.
In pre-colonial times, the Mahu were notable priests and healers of the third gender, similar to Samoa’s fa’afafine and fakaleiti of Tonga.
“If you walk down Waikiki Beach,” there are some stones there that were dedicated to the Mahu that came in ancient times and brought these gifts and learnings of healing, and, you know, real traditions that were embraced by the Hawaiian people for centuries,” said Mr Koziol.
“There are some stones there that were dedicated to the Mahu that came in ancient times and brought these gifts and learnings of healing, and, you know, real traditions that were embraced by the Hawaiian people for centuries.”
Kapaemahu is by contemporary Hawaiian Mahu, Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu.