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Mauri

Film (Excerpts) – 1988

PG
Parental Guidance
We had people working on the film who objected to the locations I had chosen, who tried to shorten the script and cut out all the marae scenes because they didn't understand them.
– Writer/director Merata Mita on the challenges of making the film she wanted, in The Auckland Star, 23 June 1987, page B1
This film Mauri is about birth and death, and all that takes place between. It deals with the essence of life, the essence of attraction, joy, sorrow, grief. It goes through a whole spectrum of life that Māori live...
– Writer/director Merata Mita describes the film, in 1987 documentary Koha - Mauri
The difficulties and conflict during the shooting of Merata Mita's film, Mauri, arose more from pervasive inexperience on and off the set than from the prejudice and racism Miss Mita would have us believe.
– Camera crew Graeme Cowley and Paul Leach respond to Merata Mita's comments on racist (unnamed) crew working on the film, The Auckland Star, 30 June 1987
[Filming was] littered with people who were obstructive, racist, arrogant and of little or no use to the production. In fact, when we booted the whole lot out things went a lot better. We saved so much money.
– Merata Mita describes the making of Mauri in The Auckland Star, 23 June 1987, page B1
She says Pākehā technicians were brought in to satisfy the demands of the Film Commission and investors who wanted assurance the film's technical quality would be up to scratch. She adds with satisfaction a full 33 of the 53 strong crew were Māori in spite of the demands of the film's backers.
– Writer Phil Twyford in an Auckland Star interview with Merata Mita, 23 June 1987, page B1
There's a raw, edgy power at work in Mauri which overrides its technical deficiencies . . . Mauri is an emotionally charged piece of cinema. Mita successfully infuses the notion of spirituality that comes from both the people of the land and the land itself, without slipping into vague mumbo- jumbo. The term Mauri translates roughly to 'life force'. Mauri has a mauri of its own.
– The Auckland Star, 28 September 1989
The Māori reponse to the film was more positive than the Pākehā one, but that was the way it was from the beginning; from the scripting to the final cut. It was a quietly satisfying moment to enter the theatre on the opening night of Mauri and feel the pride of so many brown faces. I am very proud to have made something for us, so relentless and uncompromising, for me it was another brief fulfilled.
– Writer/director Merata Mita, in 1992 book Film in Aotearoa New Zealand, page 49
...the Fourth Cinema movement spearheaded by Māori filmmaker Barry Barclay can legitimately be claimed by NZ, and there are few better examples of Fourth Cinema than Merata Mita’s Mauri. Mauri, the first feature written, produced and directed by a Māori woman, is a sinuous tale of guilt, tradition and family, threaded with an examination of Māori/Pākehā societal politics and more than a dash of the supernatural.
– Website Cinema Aotearoa
You stay away from here . . . you might own everything else around here, but not this place.
– Rewi (Anzac Wallace) to Steve (James Heyward)
It was a collection of experiences over about 40 years in which there seemed to be this conflict situation in Māori society which was increasing rather than diminishing. And that there seems to be no resolution to it within the confines of society as it is today. And that given that set of circumstances there had to be some kind of opening there, some kind of resolution so that the conflict situation could be resolved without violence and that's what I was looking at in the film, trying to find that pathway that would lead to resolution without violence.
– Writer/director Merata Mita on the inspiration behind the film, Monitor, October 1989
It's you she's got the hots for.
– Kara (Eva Rickard) to Rewi (Anzac Wallace)
...a woman like her in real life was the woman that the character was meant to represent.
– Writer/director Merata Mita on getting land rights activist Eva Rickard to act in the film, in 1992 book Film in Aotearoa New Zealand, page 49
...the story is really a parable about the schizophrenic existence of so many Māori in Pākehā society. Our psychological prisons are sometimes worse than jail, and only by breaking free of colonial repression and asserting our true Māori identity can we ever gain real freedom.
– Writer/director Merata Mita on Mauri, in 1992 book Film in Aotearoa New Zealand, page 49