A message from Libby Hakaraia

E ngā mana o te ao, e ngā reo o te wā, tēnā koutou katoa.

In late 2013 I was fortunate to stand on a stage at the imagineNATIVE Festival in Toronto and invite the Indigenous film world to Ōtaki. In March 2014, they came: filmmakers from the northern hemisphere, from across te Moana Nui ā Kiwa and, from Aotearoa. We played BOY at our outdoor screening, and Taika hung out with our rangatahi. We had very little funding but it didn’t matter. We towed our small Māoriland caravan between venues as our ticket office, billboard and kapu tī space. We dressed up and walked our very own red carpet. It was a night to remember. Something new was born.

Our kaupapa was to create a festival where Indigenous filmmakers could share their stories with our community.

Many years of hard graft and passion for this kaupapa has been rewarded by seeing the growth of the MFF represented in excited filmmakers, happy audiences and a dedicated Māoriland team that grows stronger every year.

As the māngai, or public voice of Māoriland, I have related our origin story to audiences in many countries. I look forward to telling it in full, at the Keynote Address at Rangiātea on Wednesday 15th March.

At Māoriland 2023 we present our biggest programme yet. We look forward to welcoming more than 150 nations to Ōtaki, along with iwi from across Aotearoa.

This is my last year serving as the Festival Director.

It was always my intent to step aside after 10 years – and we built a succession plan to do so. To have my niece Maddy de Young step into the role is something we can all be very excited about. Maddy is one of the original Kāhui Kākano of Māoriland; the five of us who started things off. Alongside me and Maddy are Tainui Stephens, and Patrick and Tania Hakaraia. Maddy has spent the past 10 years building the MFF and extending the networks and relationships we have around the world.

Māoriland Productions has a slate of film works in development including feature films, short films, drama series, animation and documentary. I will be working full time on this slate as a producer and director alongside Tainui and others at Māoriland.

My recent trip to the European Film Market in Berlin with one of our projects, is part of our strategy to bring film production back to Ōtaki, creating employment and many other benefits.

It’s 100 years since Māoriland Films was established in Ōtaki. Although that company didn’t last more than 6 months, we’re proud to reclaim both the name and the vision it offered back then, to make Ōtaki the “Los Angeles of the South Pacific”.

For this reason our theme for MFF2023 is an Indigenous perspective of our purpose and reason for being. It sets our kaupapa.

Mā mua i kē anō ai mā muri. We look to the past so that the future may be different.

E rau rangatira mā, e te tī e te tā, e ngā hau e whā, nau mai, hoki mai ki Māoriland.

Nāku me ngā mihi manahau,
Libby Hakaraia MNZM