Wairoa Film Festival to be Postponed
Press Statement: Wairoa Māori Film Festival 2023 to be Postponed
May 1, 2023
The Wairoa community has been adversely affected by Cyclone Gabrielle, and organisers of the annual Wairoa Māori Film Festival have therefore decided that this year’s event will be postponed from June to October 2023.
In February of this year the community of Wairoa, like many other communities across New Zealand, was adversely affected by the impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle. Over a hundred homes were flooded in the Wairoa suburb of North Clyde, along with businesses and community facilities. The land and waterways were devastated far and wide. The town was cut off from the rest of the country, and remains so to the south towards Napier.
Wairoa is a strong and resilient community and has risen up to strive to recover from Cyclone Gabrielle. An annual part of the Wairoa calendar that always brightens the year is our Wairoa Māori Film Festival. For 18 years, the annual Wairoa Māori Film Festival has celebrated the best of Māori movie making right here in our town and at the local Kahungunu Marae in Nūhaka, with movie makers and movie stars travelling in to Wairoa to join the celebration.
Last year's festival was a great success, with the presentation of the WIFT Mana Wahine Award to Desray Armstrong, four days of movies at our Gaiety Cinema, an environment themed programme with timely films about protecting our precious Taiao and a celebratory High Tea event for both filmmakers and the local community.
Our usual date for the Wairoa Māori Film Festival is Queen’s Birthday weekend (now called King’s Birthday weekend) which this year is June 2 to 5. Until now, festival organisers have been planning to proceed to this date. After much discussion and hui, it has been decided that the Wairoa Māori Film Festival will be postponed in 2023 to the weekend of October 6 to 8.
An October date will give our community time to recover from the impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle. By then our roads north and south should be fully reopened, reconnecting to our many whanau and friends down in Hawke’s Bay. Wairoa and Nūhaka will be more able to host guests by this time, and a springtime festival will bring new hope as our festival looks to the future.
“Wairoa Māori Film Festival was one of the few film festivals in the world with movies in cinemas during the Covid-19 lockdowns,” says Festival Director Leo Koziol. “We got through the Covid-19 pandemic together, and we will get through the impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle together.”
Until October, the Wairoa Māori Film Festival (WMFF) will continue its work in the community to support media and film making. Recently, Te Paea Whakatope and Leo Koziol of WMFF have started a weekly free film screening at the town’s Gaiety Theatre. In Nūhaka, WMFF is working with Kahungunu Marae who are hosting the development of a digital hub with a new digitisation machine kindly donated by Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision.
“Wairoa is resilient and the Māori film festival will continue,” says Festival Director Leo Koziol. “In our 18th year, we are looking towards celebrating our 20th birthday in 2025. In Nūhaka, our host marae Kahungunu is celebrating its 75th year in 2024. Wairoa Film Festival is the longest running Māori film festival in the country, and we are determined to continue.”
The dates for this year’s festival have been changed on the FilmFreeway film entries page. Filmmakers are encouraged to continue entering their works, using the publicly available late entry waiver code: manawairoa23
Here is the website link: https://filmfreeway.com/wairoa
The Wairoa Māori Film Festival team looks forward to seeing you all here in October for our 18th annual celebration of the best in Māori and global indigenous filmmaking.
Over Matariki, the Wairoa Māori Film Festival will still have a presence with moving image art installations curated for Circuit in Wellington and the Arts House in Auckland and Kia Ora Shorts at the Corban Estate Arts Centre in Auckland. Festival Director Leo Koziol will also be the co-curator of the Ngā Whanaunga Māori Pasifika film programme at the prestigious New Zealand International Film Festival.
ENDS
Website: www.Maorimovies.com