2012 World Cinema Showcase presents 'Te Hono ki Aotearoa'

Te Hono ki Aotearoa had its world premiere as part of the World Cinema Showcase 2012 programme, with over 36 features and documentaries from thirty countries.

This documentary by filmmaker Jan Bieringa was launched in Auckland and will be screening in Wellington on 22 April 2012.

Te Hono ki Aotearoa is an 84 min documentary on the commissioning, the making, the launch and the emotional handover of the waka to the Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden, 2010. The film follows the journey of the waka as it becomes the waka for Europe and has its inaugural journey on the river Thames… the journey has just begun.

Programme notes from the Director of the World Cinema Showcase 2012:

“Don’t crash it”, [said] Chappy Harrison as he hands over to Koos Wabeke the young Dutchman who will guide a beautiful new waka taua down Dutch canals. The waka, Te Hono ki Aotearoa, was commissioned for the Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden by Toi Maori Aotearoa, as was this lively film describing its creation – and the dedication of all involved to avoiding crashes of the inter-cultural kind. Dutch immersion in kaupapa waka begins propitiously in museum director Steven Engelsman’s desire to get it right and in the affinity he strikes with the master carver Hekenuimai Busby.

Given a front row seat from the earliest negotiations through to the handing over, filmmaker Jan Bieringa is alert to the different ways in which so many men on the project, young and old, Maori and Dutch, inhabit the rituals that invest meaning in the work. With all due tact and admiration her film marks the generation of something deeply stirring: a taonga destined never to return but to make Aotearoa manifest on European waters. Bill Gosden, Director NZ International Film Festival

www.netherlandsembassy.conz

Did you know Dutch – Kiwi ties date back to 1642 with the sighting of New Zealand by Abel Tasman?

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