Ruahine Stories in her Skin
Kiriata Screening
Ruahine Stories in her Skin
Tuesday 6 February (Waitangi Day)
1.30 pm Ruahine Stories in her Skin, Len Lye Centre Cinema, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Buy Tickets
The KIRIATA MĀORI Showcase is a partnership between the Wairoa Māori Film Festival and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in Ngāmotu New Plymouth. Māori, Pasifika and Indigenous moving image art works will be screened over Waitangi weekend 2024 during the Te Hau Whakatonu exhibition.
Curator’s Statement: Wairoa Māori Film Festival thanks Hiona Henare for allowing us to screen Ruahine Stories in her Skin and Native in Nuhaka at KIRIATA MĀORI Showcase 2024. Hiona Henare has a long and enduring artistic relationship with the Wairoa Māori Film Festival as a former programmer, festival director and documentarian of our festival. Our relationship with Hiona Henare extends to her whānau and hapū; her niece Faith Oriwia Henare-Stewart (and the Kurahaupō Film Collective) participated in the 2022 Wairoa Māori Film Festival through the Tuakana-Teina programme of the New Zealand Film Commission. Hiona Henare has been a champion for Māori film and 4th cinema all her life, no better expressed in her own mana wahine film works such as Ruahine Stories in her Skin. Kia Kaha, Wahine Toa! - Leo Koziol (Ngāti Rakaipaaka, Ngāti Kahungunu)
Hiona Henare (Muaūpoko, Ngai Tara, Ngati Huia, Ngati Kuia), Ruahine Stories in her Skin (2019)
Ruahine Stories In Her Skin
Writer | Director | Producer - Hiona Henare
2019 | 00:40:04 | Short film | English | New Zealand | English / Māori
A beautifully lyrical and intimate documentary following the ceremony of two women receiving their traditional moko kauae (chin tattoo).
For Māori women receiving their traditional moko kauae, they are visually asserting their birthright and identity while celebrating the mana (spiritual power) of their whakapapa (ancestry). In Māori tradition, the head is considered the most tapu (sacred) part of the human body making the practice of moko kauae highly prestigious and exclusive to Māori women. Director Hiona Henare brings us into an uninhibited and unobstructed experience filled with traditional songs and story.
Director Biography:
Hiona Henare is an Alumni of the Berlinale film Talents, her films carry a host of awards including a FIFO Prix Spécial Du Jury for Ruahine: Stories In Her Skin and Best International Documentary for Spirit Women from the Wāiroa Māori film festival. Other achievements include the NZFC Huia Publishers Pikihuia Highly Commended Script award for her short film script I Am Paradise, and the Australian Solid Screen award for her contribution to the screen arts. Based in the mighty Horowhenua, Hiona is of Muaūpoko, Ngai Tara, Ngati Huia and Ngati Kuia descent.
Festivals:
2019 Asinabka Film, Media and Arts Festival
2020 FIFO Tahiti (winner of the FIFO Prix Spécial Du Jury)
2020 Māoriland
2020 Doc Edge Festival
2020 Pasifika Film Festival
Awards:
FIFO Tahiti 2020 Prix Spécial Du Jury
ALSO SCREENING:
Native In Nūhaka
Hiona Henare (2018, Aotearoa NZ, 15 min.)
A documentary profiling Maori and indigenous filmmaking and the place of the Wairoa Māori Film Festival over the past decade in promoting this kaupapa. In the year this documentary was made, the Wairoa Māori Film Festival was held in Kahungunu Marae, Nuhaka. NZIFF 2018.
“Beautiful and undeniably real, Native in Nuhaka encourages more natives to use film as their statement of choice.” — Craig Fasi, Pollywood Film Festival
Hiona Henare (Muaūpoko, Ngai Tara, Ngati Huia, Ngati Kuia), Native in Nuhaka (2018)