MAORI IN FILM. Maori have played a significant role in New Zealand film, at many different levels. Arriving in New Zealand in 1912, Gaston Méliès produced three films of Maori stories in 1913: Hinemoa, How Chief Te Ponga Won His Bride, and Loved by a Maori Chieftess. Later overseas filmmakers made films about the Maori to satisfy an overseas demand for depictions of “exotic” cultures, for example, Green Dolphin Street (1947), The Seekers (1954), Until They Sail (1957), and In Search of the Castaways (1962). Apart from those voyeuristic examples, many filmmakers have interrogated the juxtaposition of the tectonic plates of cultures, with the consequent grinding, crushing, and reforming. Rudall Hayward’s The Te Kooti Trail (1927) is based on a true story of the war of the warrior Te Kooti against spreading European settlements. Set in the same era, the 1860s, but released in 1940, Hayward’s Rewi’s Last Stand is a narrative of intercultural love where the ties of culture bound more tightly than those of love. Hayward was interested in the tensions of such love, but it is indicative of the sometimes begrudging respect between these cultures that such love was understood to be both real and not taboo. In other countries at this time, love of this nature might have been practiced, but with the threat of certain death for one or both of the participants. For example, the Australian film *Charles Chauvel’s *Jedda (1955) springs to mind, although here the death of both is a result of the impossibility of either culture accepting their love.
Hayward’s second wife, Ramai te Miha, codirected his last feature—which was also the first color feature made by a New Zealander in New Zealand—To Love a Maori (1972). This film focused on the problems of children—specifically, Maori teenagers—when they move from supportive, small, rural communities to larger, anonymous cities, where they establish new relationships, including those with pakeha. (Pakeha refers to New Zealanders of Caucasian descent. Maori sometimes use the term in a negative way, although not always, and there is nothing implicitly negative in the term.) The *coming-of-age essay articulates and explores the different rites of passage—and the justice of them—that young people were subjected to. The innocence and natural egalitarianism of younger children is the subject of a film contemporaneous with Hayward’s. Michael Forlong’s Rangi’s Catch (1973) is a children’s film set in an idyllic rural valley, far from the alienating, corrupt, and unnatural influences of the *city. In such a semiosphere, among similarly innocent children, there are no barriers. A young Temuera Morrison plays Rangi, a character who is the antithesis of Morrison’s later character, Jake Heke in Once Were Warriors (1994). Similar in some respects to Hayward’s To Love a Maori—in that its subject is the problems that some young people have—Mike Walker’s Kingpin (1985) is set in a child welfare training center established for young Maori and Polynesian miscreants. Although bullying and intimidation are rife, the presence of many in such a place is intimately connected to the reality of homes and lives destroyed by alcohol and violence. The film is quite didactic: society’s systems are not working.
For Pacific Films, John O’Shea and Roger Mirams made Broken Barriers (1952), mapping the differences between cultures and the love that can nevertheless develop. This time, the resolution was positive. Similarly, Arriving Tuesday (1986) is a light-hearted look at couples, where the harmony and warmth of a Maori couple is contrasted with the bickering and abrasiveness of the pakeha couple.
More recent films explore the violence and death resulting from the juxtaposition of cultures and the apparent impossibility of a peaceful resolution. Michael Black’s Pictures (1981) is set in the New Zealand Land Wars of the second half of the 19th century. Its slant is less positive. Things were never what they seemed in the Victorian era and the veneer of Victorian formality and colonial achievement, celebrated in the metropolitan center, was premised on a regime of violence and brutality in the distant colonies. In this case, the juxtaposition of cultures is marked by forced labor in building the signifier of colonial power and conquest, the railroad, and the summary execution of the powerless, who dared to object to the brutal regime. Geoff Murphy’s Utu (1983) is set in the same time, with a similar theme of violence and revenge, death and tragedy. Lee Tamahori’s Once Were Warriors interrogates the destruction of the nobility and integrity of the Maori warrior through the depiction of a dysfunctional Maori family in a dysfunctional Maori urban culture, and evolving responses to that.
Some other films are worthy of mention. Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993) presents a surprisingly stereotyped image of Maori, as people who were focused on sex and spoke in sexual innuendos, complementing their simple and naïve actions. Alexander Markey’s Hei Tiki (1935) is different in that it does not depict relationships between pakeha and Maori, but intertribal conflict in Maori. Paul Maunder’s Sons for the Return Home (1979) takes a slightly different look at the juxtaposition of cultures and the human tragedy that sometimes results. A Western Samoan family moves to New Zealand when the son is four. Later, when he attends university, he falls in love with a white girl, but the romance is marred by overtones of racism and fear in all groups. Finally, Merata Mita’s Mauri (1988) is a powerful film about identity and Maori birthright. Mauri is the first film made by a Maori woman and the first made from an entirely Maori perspective.
MUNE, IAN (1941– ). Born in Auckland, Mune’s successful career has included work as an actor, director, writer, crew member, second unit director, assistant director, producer, and art director. His debut as director was in television. He then moved to film beginning with Came a Hot Friday (1985), a *comedy of conmen, horse racing, gambling, fast cars, and loose women set in the 1940s, where Friday night excitement was a visit to the boozer for a pie and chips (going to a hotel/bar to drink and eat a meat pie and French fries). He wrote the screenplay from Ronald Morrieson’s novel, and the film was a Kiwi classic and was enthusiastically reviewed. Mune won best director and best screenplay prizes at the 1986 New Zealand Film and Television Awards for this film. With Bill Bauer, he wrote the script for and directed Bridge to Nowhere (1986), which capitalizes on the fantasies—or perhaps the reality—that children have about people who live alone. The Grasscutter (1990) was made in New Zealand for a United Kingdom company, and explored the life of a supergrass after he had left the Loyalist UVF in Belfast to live in New Zealand, where his past catches up to him.
For his next film—which he wrote with Bruce Mason—End of the Golden Weather (1991), Mune won best director and best film at the New Zealand Film and Television Awards in 1992. This *action/adventure film is set in the 1930s and tells of 11-year-old Geoff’s dreams and romantic adventures, and the understanding of those dreams that comes with his developing friendship with Firpo, who dreams of competing in the Olympic Games. Whole of the Moon (1997) tells the story of Kirk, a teenage boy diagnosed with bone cancer, and Marty, a street-wise kid suffering from low self-esteem. It is a film about the triumph of the human spirit, and Mune won the best screenplay prize in the 1996 New Zealand Film and Television Awards and a Golden Gryphon at the Giffoni Film Festival. He contributed to the writing of this screenplay. Mune followed this with What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? (1999), a sequel to Once Were Warriors (1994), which relates the subsequent life and redemption of Jake, the deeply flawed and violent husband in Warriors. The film won many prizes at the New Zealand Film and Television Awards in 1999, including best director, best screenplay, best actor, and best actress. In 2000, Mune won the Rudall Hayward Award for his contribution to the film industry in New Zealand. Most recently, Mune has worked as second unit director on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001).
Mune’s writing credits—sometimes with others—include Roger Donaldson’s Sleeping Dogs (1977) and Nutcase (1980), Goodbye Pork Pie (1980) with director Geoff Murphy, and the screenplay for The Silent One (1984). His abilities do not end there, and he often appears in small parts. Credits include Bullen in Sleeping Dogs, the U-boat commander in Nutcase, Barry Gordon in Shaker Run (1985), Hanna in Dangerous Orphans (1985), Backstage (1988), the Reverend in The Piano (1993), the Judge in Once Were Warriors, Topless Women Talk about Their Lives (1997), Nightmare Man (1999), Savage Honeymoon (2000), and Bounder in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). His contribution to the industry in New Zealand has been immense.
MURPHY, GEOFF (1946– ). Geoff Murphy was a teacher and published author before moving into the film industry. His first credit was in special effects for the political adventure Sleeping Dogs (1977), but then he worked on the scripts and directed both the New Zealand incarnation of the Australian *ocker film Wild Man (1977) and, with John Clarke, the *comedy Dagg Day Afternoon (1977). He followed this with Goodbye Pork Pie (1980), a film with rowdy and crude characters that audiences loved. Success here meant that his next task was the ambitious production of Utu (1982), the most expensive film made in New Zealand up to that time. It is a play about revenge (utu), first on the part of the Maori warrior whose village was pillaged, and then on the part of the settler whose wife is killed. His interest in Maori *history is evinced in his production of Merata Mita’s Patu! (1983), and consulting and acting in Mita’s psychodrama Mauri (1988). Murphy directed The Quiet Earth (1985), starring Bruno Lawrence, an intriguing science fiction/horror film, which won awards for best direction at the Fantafestival in 1986 and the best direction prize at the New Zealand Film and Television Awards in 1987. The story evolves from an experiment gone wrong, and all living creatures have disappeared from the Earth. Murphy wrote and directed Never Say Die (1988), a comedy/thriller about international business and political intrigue complete with explosions and car chases. Its production suffered from financing problems, and while trying to draw on many *genres, does not succeed in any.
Murphy then moved to *Hollywood, where he has directed solid genre fare without achieving the distinction he did in New Zealand. The reason might be that he was a director in Hollywood, whereas in New Zealand he could engage his vast ability in writing, producing, consulting, as well as directing. Directorial credits in Hollywood began with Young Guns II (1990), a sequel with a hackneyed storyline, and continued with Freejack (1990), a second-rate science fiction/thriller. The next was the sequel Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995), and the last was the science fiction/*action sequel Fortress 2 (1999).
Murphy returned to New Zealand to direct the *documentary Berta Revisited (2001), and then the international banking conspiracy thriller Spooked (2004). Meanwhile, he was the second unit director on all three films of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.