Award winning Māori filmmaker Renae Maihi (Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāpuhi) has three films screening on the Global International Film Festival Circuit and two out of the three has te reo Māori content.
The three films that will be showcased at the festival are Mannahatta, Ka Puta, Ko Au and Waru.
Maihi filmed Mannahatta whilst she was on a Professional Development in New York, which was awarded to her by the NZ Film Commission and the Ngāti Whakaue Education Endowment Trust. The short narrative black and white film is an acknowledgement to the indigenous people who resided in New York thousands of years ago.
Ka Puta, Ko Au, is a short action film entirely in te reo Māori. It was created in 72 hours by Maihi and two other Māori filmmakers to be a part of this year’s Māoriland Film Festival and is set to have its international premiere at the ImagineNATIVE film festival in Canada this month.
Waru is the last of the three that will be screened at the festival. It is a feature film made up of eight short films and one of those short films is Maihi’s very own Ranui.
Watch trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zwXTSAgf2w
Maihi has a longstanding relationship with the film festival that tracks back to 2010 when a film she co-wrote with Katie Wolfe and Tim Balme won best film. She will be travelling to Toronto this month to accompany her films that will be screened at the ImagineNATIVE festival.
Maihi has worked hard to enhance her filmmaker skills and is now focused on a career as a global feature filmmaker. She’s excited to put her practice into action in her current project and is looking forward to working with world-class filmmakers.