The blog of New Zealand’s Audiovisual Archive
Merata Mita is remembered as an influential director and producer, and a pioneer of Māori filmmaking. Her son Hepi Mita has worked at Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision for the past 6 years. His film Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen premieres at the 2018 New Zealand International Film Festival.
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Access project developer Emma Richardson takes a look into the history of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision’s Wellington building, Te Anakura, and its place within Te Aro.
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Wellington may have enjoyed an unusually-splendid summer this year, but three Victoria University Māori Studies students have not seen a lot of the sun. They spent their break from late November until late February in the Taranaki Street offices of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision. With headphones fixed to their heads they passed the summer listening to the voices of tūpuna, recorded many decades before they were born.
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Thanks to tinted film stock silent movies weren’t always black and white! Diane McAllen writes about a recent project to preserve Rudall Haywards ‘community comedy’ A Daughter of Christchurch in the vivid blues, pinks and oranges that would’ve been seen by audiences in the 1920s.
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Waitangi Day has often been a time for powerful oratory. Here’s an example from New Zealand’s 150th Anniversary celebrations in 1990, made on Waitangi Day by Bishop Whakahuihui Vercoe, with a little scene-setting commentary by Hēnare Te Ua.
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