Posted Monday 05 Aug 2013
The Natural Environment - Ko te Taiao explores the relationship between children and the natural environment. Featuring documentaries, television footage, home movies, feature films and rarely seen films from the early 1900s. Magical Playgrounds is a series of moving image exhibitions curated by Tina Makereti for the Film Archive, on the social history of childhood in Aotearoa / New Zealand.
The exhibition will be accompanied by two film screenings onsite at the Film Archive Auckland.
A Saturday matinee screening of Rangi's Catch (1973)
1pm, Saturday 17th August at the Film Archive Auckland. Free admission, limited to 30 seats.
In the classic caper Rangi's Catch, two escaped convicts (Michael Woolf and Ian Mune) attract attention after stealing clothes from a remote Marlborough Sounds sheep farm. It takes two kids and a family adventure to catch them after tracking the crooks through Picton, Wellington, Waitomo, the Wanganui River and Rotorua. Filmed amidst scenic splendour, Rangi's Catch is a captivating story for all-ages, and boasts a young Temuera Morrison in his first on-screen role.
An evening screening of the ground-breaking NZ documentary series Tangata Whenua.
T?rangawaewae. A Place to Stand. (Barry Barclay, Michael King, 1974)
6pm, 21 August at the Film Archive Auckland. Free admission, limited to 30 seats.
This documentary, from Pacific Films' groundbreaking 1974 "Tangata Whenua" TV series, continues the exploration of the M?ori relationship with the land. Prior to the establishment of an urban marae in Porirua, M?ori people recollect the past reality of life in the rural communities of Tokomaru Bay and Waima Valley. The concept of marae as traditionally understood is discussed by young M?ori from groups like Ng? Tamatoa in terms of the new and emergent urban present. Parents consider their own childhoods and the cultural values they learnt from a close relationship with their natural environment and community. This is contrasted with their children's urban upbringing, and the importance of returning to customary cultural values to inform a strong identity is emphasised.