The Maori Film Festival is going on the road for the first time, visiting Wellington, Auckland and Taumarunui after the main event in Wairoa.
For its third running, the main festival in Wairoa will be held during Queen's Birthday weekend in June, tying in with the Matariki festival, which celebrates the Maori New Year and harvest.
Selections from the main festival will then be toured to the other centres, and overseas film-makers will be invited to those screenings.
"The theme of this year's festival is 'Te Karanga O Papatuanuku, Te Waiata O Te Whenua - The Land Sings, The Earth Cries Out'," festival director Leo Koziol said yesterday.
"As we face a world imperilled by ecological decline and the uncertain impacts of climate change, we find it is our indigenous voices that are emerging as beacons of hope for the future of our planet."
Films on this theme include Barry Barclay's documentary The Neglected Miracle, about plant genetics; Herdswoman, set among the native people of Lapland; and Blowin' in the Wind, about the effects of atomic testing on Australian Aborigines.
The festival will also honour the contributions of Maori film pioneers Witarina Harris, Don Selwyn and Barclay, who died in February.
It will open with the classic New Zealand comedy Came a Hot Friday, starring Selwyn and Billy T James. A Mexican-Maori themed celebration will accompany this screening.
In Taumarunui, a special showcase of Selwyn's films will be presented to local audiences to celebrate the life of their hometown film-maker, who died last year
The Dominion Post | Thursday, 27 March 2008
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