Madeleine Hakaraia De Young, director of the Māoriland film festival, held every year in Ōtaki.
It’s not surprising that one of Aotearoa’s most unique and remarkable film festivals had its beginnings in a unique and remarkable way.
In 2011, filmmaker Libby Hakaraia (Ngāti Kapu) made a short called The Lawnmower Men of Kapu. The film told the story of a boy bearing witness to the power and wisdom of his three aunties, played by relatives of Hakaraia. In the wake of the film’s success, Hakaraia and her partner, producer Tainui Stephens, felt that the experience of a film festival should be more widely accessible – not just for residents of the big cities where most festivals are held.
With true can-do Kiwi spirit, they set about making their own festival in Ōtaki, a rural town halfway between Wellington and Palmerston North, with a population of around 3500 people. It was then that Hakaraia’s niece, Madeleine Hakaraia De Young (Ngāti Kapu), at the time just finishing up her studies at the University of Auckland, got a phone call from her auntie.
“They said ‘we’re doing a film festival down here. Get your ass down here and help’,” De Young says.
It was new territory for the whole whānau.
“We all work in the arts but we’d never done anything like this before. And we just put it together to see what happened,” De Young says.
The result was a sensation, transforming the tiny town into a hub of indigenous cinema, inspired by the model of the mountain-set Sundance Festival in the United States.
Eleven years later, Māoriland Film Festival is Aotearoa’s leading indigenous film festival, and De Young is its director, making her one of the youngest festival directors in the world - and a nominee for Young New Zealander of the Year in 2021.
“I don’t know that I’ve met another festival director younger than me!” she laughs.
Rather than be daunted by the responsibility, though, it felt to De Young like a natural progression.
“It’s something I’d been training towards for 10 years. So saying yes initially wasn’t super scary. There’s a lot that I don’t know I don’t know yet, but I have huge support behind me. A great team. We just continue on.”
Those years of preparation are a natural offshoot of a whānau and community-focused festival, one whose humility and rurality are intrinsic to its success.
Māoriland is unlike any other festival in the world. Indigenous filmmakers from the world over gather in this little seaside location for a weekend of film, discussion and, most importantly, cultural exchange.
“Everyone knows each other, there’s a real familiarity and generosity in Ōtaki because manaakitanga binds everything,” De Young explains. “We’re at the end of the film festival circuit - filmmakers might start at Cannes or Sundance or Berlin, but by the time we come around, the big push of finishing a film in the major centres is over. They come to a small community where everyone is really excited to see them.
“It’s at the beach. And people watch the film together and ask questions and there’s a relaxedness about it.”
It’s all part of an effort to democratise this most democratic of art forms, to remove the stigma that great movies are only for the bougie crowd.
“We’ve worked really hard to keep out the hierarchy and noise of our industry that separates people from connecting with each other. We never want films and filmmaking to feel elite, because it’s about sharing our stories with each other.”
The concept of manaakitanga is reflected all the way down the programme this year, with indigenous cultures from an exceptionally varied set of locales featured - from the Tayal, a mountainous community in Taiwan, to Finland’s Sami nation, to the Limbo tribe of the Sierra Leone.
The opening night event is the world premiere screening of the second season of The Reciprocity Project, a selection of documentary shorts from indigenous cultures all around the world, examining the way indigenous community practices provide a key to solving the climate crisis.
“It’s what I think we need as a community, as a planet,” De Young explains, “Those films talk about how we act in reciprocity toward each other and dismantle stereotypes. They place indigeneity in a modern context. They’re not just National Geographic subjects any more.”
Elsewhere, a free whānau community screening will present local hit Red, White and Brass to what is sure to be a massive crowd, while Warwick Thornton’s Cate Blanchett-starring The New Boy and beloved Kiwi icon Rachel House’s debut film The Mountain will also be screening. Closing night film Fry Bread Face and Me, from Navajo, Hopi and Laguna Pueblo filmmaker Billy Luther will feature the filmmaker himself in attendance.
“It’s a film with a lot of familiarity, but which ends on such a joyous note that people leave with their hearts full,” De Young says.
Even more attention-worthy, and what sets Māoriland apart, are its community initiatives to boost cinema literacy in indigenous communities, both Māori and international.
At the centre of Māoriland is the guiding principles of Whakatupuranga Rua Mano, an iwi-led initiative led by Whataranga Winiata that aimed to revitalise te reo in Ōtaki at a time - the late 20th century - when very few young Māori in the area spoke the language.
This led to the creation of Te Wānanga O Raukawa in Ōtaki, the first Māori university, and guides the many different approaches to boosting indigenous cinema and making it accessible to this now-flourishing international community of creatives. MATCH, the Māoriland tech creative hub, aims to educate indigenous creatives in using new technologies to tell their stories.
“The idea is getting more Māori into the tech sector,” says De Young. “Our dream is no young person should have to aspire to leave their hometown just to get a job. You can travel and build relationships abroad but you can make a living at home.”
Elsewhere, Māoriland teams up with E Tu Whanau, going into Māori and other under-resourced communities to teach filmmaking in two-day workshops.
“After two days you’ll have made a film and be a filmmaker now, and part of our community.”
Perhaps the most ambitious is the Through Our Lens programme, that sends Māori filmmakers to indigenous communities in the Pacific and in other corners of the world to share their filmmaking experience and to receive a cultural exchange of wisdom.
“In the Pacific, Māori are the younger siblings. On other people’s land we know nothing. So we went to Samoa, Tahiti, Rarotonga and Hawai’i and brought 16 young Māori filmmakers with us. It was amazing because through that process of connecting with others like us but with other cultural identities our own filmmaking grew immensely too.”
The idea comes from the concept of tuakana teina - the relationship and knowledge exchange between older (tuakana) and younger (teina) siblings.
“We can be both tuakana and teina as our expertise shifts depending on the topic, but as we work together, we all grow together,” says De Young.
In a landscape that, at least in New Zealand, has felt pretty bleak in recent times, from the proposed cuts at Newshub and TVNZ, to the resignation of major programmers at the New Zealand International Film Festival and the loss of a huge portion of the New Zealand Film Commission’s workforce, Māoriland seems to stand alone as a real bright spot, reflecting an indigenous film scene that is ever-expanding and forcing others to take notice. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard work.
“In Ōtaki we’re away from a lot of the noise of the industry,” says De Young. “Nothing has ever been guaranteed and it’s a very lean festival budget-wise - but because of that we have a different way of doing things. We’re not losing any of the comfort because it’s never been comfortable.”
It’s a sign that things are changing, but not always for the worse.
“Part of me thinks, well, a lot of the media has never worked for us. We’re working towards creating better things out of what we find ourselves in now. We can’t rely on the companies that have no interest in what we do beyond what returns they get from it. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
While De Young acknowledges the darkness of this particular moment, she sees brighter days ahead.
“When I look at our audience, and the fact that this year we had more films to select from than ever, we had more indigenous filmmakers than ever, people are making more, the genres are expanding, the creative treatments, it makes me think good things can come out of pressure.”
Maoriland film festival takes place in Ōtaki March 20-24. maorilandfilm.co.nz/event/maoriland-film-festival-2024
River Haven features a cafe, vineyard, wellness space and The Bugger Inn pub.