Ward focuses on Wairarapa

Film-maker Vincent Ward is today tracking the globe for work but remains focused on his latest movie screening at home in Wairarapa this week.
Ward, speaking from Los Angeles, said he has just returned from Dubai where work was canned because of the world credit crunch on an eight-minute Bollywood- style musical for an Arab sheikh.
His lens is now pointing toward Canada and Australia, he said, for work on other possible film projects in the near future.
"I can't comment on the project in Canada until things move along a bit and I may move back to Australia for work yet.
"Although I am very keen to get home, you often have to go outside of New Zealand to earn money."
Ward said he is hoping to return to Wairarapa at Christmas to visit with family but still has his eye firmly set on his home region for the mainstream opening of his latest film, Rain of the Children.
Ward further explores in the critically acclaimed docu-drama the subject of his earlier film, In Spring One Plants Alone, which he shot as a young film student on location in the Ureweras, documenting the lives of an elderly Maori woman, Puhi, and her schizophrenic son, Niki.
Rain of the Children looks back over the life of Puhi, who had witnessed the 1916 police raids that devastated the Maungapohatu community and was a daughter-in-law of Tuhoe leader and prophet Rua Kenana, and mother of 14 children almost all of whom died or were taken from her.
The film stars Rena Owen, who accepted the role of Puhi in return for a painting Ward had completed for an earlier movie, What Dreams May Come, and also stars Temuera Morrison and Taungaroa Emile as well as a role in front of the cameras for the director himself.
Rain of The Children was filmed on location in Tuhoe country in the Urewera ranges in New Zealand and has so far won the Grand Prix at Era New Horizons Film Festival a major International Film Festival in Poland along with a nomination for best director and naming for best composer at the Qantas Film and TV Awards in New Zealand.
Ward was also nominated for best director at the Australian Directors Guild Awards for the film and the work has also won a nomination for Best Film at the Asia Pacific Awards running this month. Rain of the Children has also been selected for competition at the Chicago Film Festival and in Hawaii, where it holds position as the tent pole film of the festival and screens.
Puhi, the central character in the film, believed herself to be cursed, and it is that unknowable curse that figures large throughout the story.
The film cuts between early footage from In Spring One Plants Alone, Ward's own to-camera narration, contemporary interviews with Tuhoe descendents, and recreated historical sequences that combine to paint the background of Puhi's belief in the curse and mate-mate-a-one "or the power of love beyond death", Ward said.
"Maori seem to accept it as one of their stories and pakeha are feeling privileged to be allowed in to what is a dramatic and ultimately uplifting tale that speaks of the commonality of our experience.
"It's one of our stories and going on audience feedback it's a complete eye-opener for people even Maori," he said.
"And there are still parts of the story I would love to do about the son Niki."
n Rain of the Children opens on Thursday at Regent 3 Cinemas in Masterton and at Featherston Cinema in Featherston.