Filming the Colonial Past

"The New Zealand Wars were defining events in the nation's history. Filming the Colonial Past, an engaging new book from Annabel Cooper, tells a story of filmmakers' fascination with these conflicts over the past 90 years. From silent screen to smartphone, and from Pākehā adventurers to young Māori songwriters, filmmakers have made and remade the stories of this most troubling past. When Rudall Hayward went to Rotorua, Whakatāne and Te Awamutu to make his two versions of Rewi's Last Stand (1925, 1940) and The Te Kooti Trail (1927), he quickly found that the tangata whenua he relied on for making his films would help to shape the stories. By the time of the renewed interest in the New Zealand Wars in the 1970s and early 80s, thinking about race, nation and empire was undergoing a sea-change. The makers of television drama (including The Governor) and independent film (Geoff Murphy's Utu) set out actively to engage with Māori advisers and performers. In the late 1980s and 90s, screen industry deregulation brought a new set of challenges. Filming the Colonial Past shows how documentaries notably the New Zealand Wars series of 1998 and feature films Vincent Ward's River Queen and Rain