I had planned on writing this first
Herstory post about a different incredible woman who has made film
history but instead I would like to begin this series paying tribute to
one of New Zealand's indigenous women filmmakers. Merata Mita (Ngati Pikiao, Ngai Te Rangi) died yesterday suddenly and of yet unknown cause.
Mita was one of New Zealand's leading filmmakers and the first woman in New Zealand to direct a feature length documentary, Patu!, recording the clashes between protesters and police during the 1981 Springbok tour. Mita was also the first woman in New Zealand to write and direct, and only the second Maori woman to direct a feature film, Mauri (1988), which won the prize for best film at the Rimini Film Festival. Her latest achievement was the co-production of Boy,
a smash hit at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals, and at the New
Zealand box office alike. Merata received a New Zealand Order of Merit
in the New Years Honours list earlier this year.
As a woman, Merata told stories
through the eyes of women. As a Maori woman, she told stories from a
Maori perspective and in a Maori way. As a woman story teller Merata
faced the same prejudices about the merit and value of her stories as
other women the world over. As a Maori woman she also faced a
cross-cultural dilemma. Her stories, in particular Mauri,
employed concepts of life and the world non-existent in Pakeha (white
NZ) culture or at least very different from that culture. Her
storytelling was different from the mainstream not only because she was a
woman writer and director but because she consciously rejected Pākehā
traditions of storytelling, focusing on the oral traditions of layered
storytelling so inherent to Maori cultures. She once said that "These
are differences that Pākehā critics don't even take into account when
they're analyzing the film." Similarly, women storytellers in general
are faced with analyses of their films by mainly male critics. Mita has
argued that Pakeha are 'not qualified to assess' her films. Perhaps men
aren't best suited to assess, analyse, critique women's films and
stories either? Men will continue failing to understand and see the
inherent value and the economic potential of women's stories* until they
learn to empathise with women, to look at the world from women's
perspectives.
Meryl Streep in her recent commencement speech
at Barnard College, Columbia University, made an interesting
observation. One of the first characters Streep played, Linda in The Deer Hunter,
'a lovely, quiet, hapless girl' was often mentioned to her by men her
own age as their favourite of all the women she had played. Streep went
on to say,
'Now,
as a measure of how the world has changed, the character most men
mention as their favourite is Miranda Priestly, the beleaguered
totalitarian at the head of Runway Magazine in The Devil Wears Prada...
They relate to Miranda... They can relate to her issues... This is a
huge deal because as people in the movie business know the absolute
hardest thing in the whole world is to persuade a straight male
audience to identify with a woman protagonist to feel themselves
embodied by her. This more than any other factor explains why we get
the movies we get and the paucity of the roles where women drive the
film. It's much easier for the female audience because we were all ...
brought up identifying with male characters... There has always been a
resistance to imaginatively assume a persona, if that persona is a
she. But things are changing now... Men are adapting... for the better
of the whole group. They are changing their deepest prejudices to
regard as normal the things that their fathers would have found very
very difficult and their grandfathers would have abhorred and the door
to this emotional shift is empathy.'
Merata Mita asked of her
audience not that they liked her films and her stories, but challenged
people to view her films with an open mind. She knew that to really
understand a film, it isn't so much important to view it with your
intellect but to view it with empathy.
Rest in peace Merata.
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*Oh the cries of surprise at the huge economic success of Sex and the City: The Movie and MamaMia!?, two films predicted to bomb at the box office because they were targeting a mainly female audience.
See here what Wellywood Woman has to say about Merata.
See here what Wellywood Woman has to say about Merata.
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