NZ cinema pioneer Barclay dies

Family of pioneering Ngati Apa film-maker and Wairarapa son Barry Barclay, who died on Monday night of a stroke, are planning to return his body home.
At the time of his death Barclay, 63, was living at Omapere in the Far North's Hokianga district after shifting from a home at Castlepoint in 2006.
According to his son, Matt Barclay, speaking from Hokianga last night, the family is to hold a tangi at a marae in Bulls before the burial of his father, possibly in Masterton.
Barclay was made a Member of the Order of New Zealand in the 2007 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to film after his appointment as an Artist Laureate in 2004 in recognition of his contributions to New Zealand cinema spanning four decades.
Barclay was born in Wairarapa and claimed the region as his first home.
He is an old-boy of both Kuranui and St Joseph's colleges and after working at several farms in the region he left for Australia to train as a Catholic priest.
He returned to Masterton after six years abroad and enjoyed a brief stint in radio before first working in celluloid for Masterton-based rural film company Visicom, after which he again shifted overseas for film projects in Sri Lanka, London, Paris and Amsterdam from the late 1970s.
About the same time he worked alongside renowned New Zealand
historian the late Michael King on the watershed television documentary series aired in 1974, Tangata Whenua, about Maori life and culture.
In the early 1980s he wrote and directed The Neglected Miracle, a feature-length political documentary on the ownership of plant genetic resources, shot over two years in eight countries.
In 1987 Barclay was the first Maori to direct an award-winning feature film, Ngati. His latest films are The Feathers of Peace, a feature drama-documentary based on the Moriori people of Rekohu the Chatham Islands and The Kaipara Affair, a feature documentary on the diverse cultural community of Tinopai on the Kaipara Harbour and their united struggle against industry over-fishing in the area.
Barclay also wrote Mana Tuturu, a book published last year examining Maori intellectual copyright and taonga (treasures) and for the past decade was a national and international advocate for the Fourth Cinema being the correct description for Indigenous Film.
Barclay had been writing a novel while living at Castlepoint, with a working title of The Lithographer, and at the same time became the driving force behind Rangiwhakaoma or Speeding Clouds arguably the world's first digital archive of still and moving images captured and kept by Wairarapa hapu.
Film Commission chief executive Ruth Harley said it was with great sadness the organisation had learned of Barclay's death.
"(Ngati) opened up a new pathway for New Zealand cinema with a focus on indigenous voices and stories that had previously been unheard," she said.
"Barry was very clear about his goals for Maori cinema and his challenges to the system were important in provoking movements which benefited indigenous voices as well as adding to the taonga of New Zealand cinema in general."
Barclay is survived by three children and five grandchildren.