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New Zealand, 1991

Pacific Films
Writer/director: Barry Barclay
Producer: John O’Shea
Executive producer (Berlin): Renee Gundelach
Associate producer: Craig Walters
Director of photography: Rory O’Shea (Berlin), Warrick Attewell (New Zealand)
Editors: Simon Reece, Dell King
Music: Dalvanius
Sound editors: Kit Rollings, Mike Hopkins
Art directors: Ron Highfield, Thomas Schappert, Michael Tonke

With: Wi Kuki Kaa (Rewi Marangai), Peter Kaa (Peter Huaka), Matiu Mareikura (Taki Ruru), Nissie Herewini (Nanny Matai), Tilly Reedy (Mere Marangai), Gunter Meisner (Professor Biederstedt), Donna Akersten (Fiona Gilbert), Stuart Devenie (Hamish MacMillan), Maria Fitzi (Hanna Lehmann), Walter Kreye (Dr. Sattler), Anton Rattinger (Gunter Schever), Jurgen Thormann (Dierter Goetz), Vanessa Rare (Helen Marangai), Dalvanius (Dr Waru)

35mm, 94 minutes, PG

A hundred years after the theft from New Zealand of three irreplaceable tribal carvings, two members of the Maori tribe decide it’s time for ancient grievances to be put right. Both men are in Germany, where the carvings are stored in a great Berlin museum. Rewi Marangai (a successful lawyer) has been working on a patent case. Peter Huaka (a performance poet) is on a European tour. They first meet when Peter is detained in the museum, where he has been causing turmoil about the stolen carvings. They meet again in New Zealand, where Peter is recruiting helpers for his campaign to bring the carvings back home. Rewi at first refuses to participate, but changes his mind when an old woman of the tribe (Nanny Matai) orders him to lead the group to Germany. In Berlin, Peter’s plans go awry; when his group breaks into the museum, they are confronted by the museum authorities. Rewi persuades the others to let him put his own, more daring plan into action. Tensions build, and international media interest broadens when a sniper’s bullet hits Peter. At home, the people of the tribe gather to await news, and Nanny Matai begins a vigil for her tribe’s carvings. Her fate and the return of the carvings are in the balance…

“… At least as interesting as the story, however, is the way it is told. This picture actually marks quite a stylistic breakthrough for New Zealand film in that Barclay has managed to appropriate the technical apparatus of cinema into the Maori oral storytelling tradition. I have one lingering objection to Te Rua’s narrative content. I cannot accept on face value Barclay’s somewhat glib assumption that Western culture is so lacking in its own spirituality, that it envies that of other cultures. But granted, five centuries of colonialism have bred an insufferable arrogance, and a tendency to relegate other peoples’ sacred totems to the status of objects, to be collected and displayed with no thought to their rightful context. Ultimately, Te Rua debates the rights and wrongs of this situation with some power and conviction. It is an important film, another vital step in the evolution of a unique indigenous cinema.” — Costa Botes, The Dominion, 25/11/91