The camera remains hidden

Tu Tangata, Issue 25, 1 August 1985, Page 41

The camera remains hidden

He’s been in the film industry for nearly 20 years, and yet the name Barry Barclay, can hardly be called a household name. But this man has directed more than ten movies in New Zealand. Among these is the Tangata Whenua series. For those who missed the 1974-75 screenings, this series was primarily about Maori life, for Maori people.

Barry: “The Tangata Whenua series was a major milestone for me, both personally and professionally. It took me back to one part of my roots. It also disciplined us to search for ways to make the technology of film making subordinate to what people had an urgency to say.”

Barry has just returned from shooting his latest documentary overseas.

Returning to New Zealand has been both a joy and a sadness. Sadness? More an occasion for anger perhaps, and much of that anger stems from events that followed the making of the Tangata Whenua series.

“Tangata Whenua opened me to one part of my heritage, to my Maori side. It brought me into a world which, while part of my bones, had been distant, I came to feel comfortable there, more comfortable than in that world which is also part of my bones, the paheka one, much of which I still cherish despite its many tunnel-visioned absurdities.

After Tangata Whenua I decided not to make any more films on Maori matters, at least not in the near future, believing that if I kept doing such films, the resources would be channelled my way and no new growth would come through from others. My hope was that other Maoris might find ways to articulate Maori consciousness on the large film formats to which I had had access. That has not happened.

The very singular exception is the work of Merata Mita whom I regard as one of the best film-makers the country has so far produced. But Merata has needed a rare determination, having to make her films hand-to-mouth. Part of the sadness in returning is seeing artists of such talent treated in an off-hand manner; nevertheless, I find it significant that whatever support Merata has had has come from both Maori and pakeha. But do Merata’s films signal a structural change? Not in my view.

Many Maoris say to me now, “Isn’t it good that we have so many Maoris in the media!” Yes, I think, that’s certainly better than it was, but where are they? Some are in major positions; perhaps they have come to look at the potential of Maori artists through tele-

vision eyes. And who can blame them? They have had to ride a tough system just to hold meagre screen-time together. And in the meantime, has a situation been created wherein our young Maori talent has been “magazinised”... turned from potential visionaries into item-makers? When a Maori film-maker stands up and says he wants to make a film, where is a Maori lighting man, where are the Maori sound technicians?

There have been changes. When we were making Tangata Whenua we had a hard enough battle getting Maori expressed on screen in any form. Now television runs items in Maori without voice-over translation or sub-titles. Yet since Tangata Whenua no Maori (Merata Mita excepted) has been given an opportunity to make a fifty-minute film. The chisels may again be in the hands of the carvers. Maoris are using brush and canvass. But the camera remains hidden.

That’s an international; phenomenon. Almost 10 percent of the Dutch population is black. Under the Dutch television system, any section of the community can band together and demand a percentage access to air time and funds to make programmes for its

“slot”. Rather than grant access to one section on a “racial” basis, the Netherlands Government bulit a superb pro-gramme-making facility for “minorities” called Studio 3-M, which I visited several times. There were a good number of white Dutch technicians making television programmes on “minority issues at Studio 3-M yet in the whole complex there was not a single black face. OK, the Board was made up of European Dutch and black Dutch citizens (a 50/50 split), but the programmemakers were white. Predictably enough, when questioned about this anomaly, those running the studio said there weren’t sufficient trained black technicians available. I wonder why?

It is my view we must get Maoris making major programmes which are crewed by Maoris. The tools of communication are too important to be entrusted to one section of our community, even if that section happens to be the “majority” section. Ironically, it is

not necessarily the pakeha that is opposed to that thought. A plan to stage a Maori film school for Maoris under Maori terms is being mooted. Without exception any pakeha film-maker I have mentioned this plan to has said, “I would like to come and help”. But many Maoris are tentative. That scepticism reminds me of the way we rolled our eyes when we heard that a certain filmmaker in Auckland was proposing to make what then seemed an expensive and lunitic venture... a feature film. Roger Donaldson did make his feature and it became a landmark in that it gave the film world here confidence that features could be made in New Zealand. The Maori community is awaiting its first SLEEPING DOGS.

Would film-making on Maori matters, entirely in the hands of Maoris, provide a different kind of film? I think so, and it might sound glib, but it is a path that has not been entirely unexplored by Maoris. I recall Molephe Pheto, a black Botswana musicologist, novelist and musician exiled from South Africa for using his art to encourage freedom for his people. Molephe is also a well established poet, but he gets cross if you call him a poet. “Poet” is an Oxford word to Molephe. He prefers to remind you that when the rains come in Botswana the community dances in the street to songs composed on the spot in praise of the rain. He calls his work, not poetry but “praise song”, and it has a very different beat to what I was taught to believe was “poetry”.

There will be a Maori equivalent to “praise song”, one that has come down the path of many centuries. That song will have the anger certainly; it will also have the humour, charity and dignity that have shone through performers like Te Ohu Whakaari, Merupa Maori and the Patea Maori Club... who have riveted audiences made up of both Maori and pakeha.

Molephe joined our crew in Belgium as a cameraman. We brought in a camera with which he was not familiar. He worked for hours to make sure he had the threading exactly right. Then he slept with the camera, to be close to it, to get familiar with it. Next day we filmed.

The sadness I have on returning is that the camera is still unfamiliar to almost all Maoris. But we will sleep with it and wake with it. I believe the results will be a matter of pride to all in Aotearoa.