AUCKLAND (Asia Pacific Report/Pacific Media Watch): Banabans of Rabi – A Story of Survival, a short documentary by Blessen Tom and Hele Ikimotu of Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre, has been selected for the Māoriland Film Festival 2019 next month.
The film will be screened as part as part of Ngā Pūtake Shorts.
This is the third official international film festival selection for Banabans of Rabi. The short documentary travelled to Salt Lake city, Utah, earlier this month and was screened at the Pasifika Film Festival.
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The film had its Pacific premiere at the 2018 Nuku’alofa International Film Festival last year.
The film was produced out of the three-year-old Bearing Witness climate change project, a collaboration between PMC and its documentary partner Te Ara Motuhenga at Auckland University of Technology and the Pacific Centre for Environment-Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) and Regional Journalism Programme at the University of South Pacific.
Māoriland Film Festival is Aotearoa’s largest indigenous film festival and is in its sixth year. The festival brings more than 138 films and 62 events from 94 indigenous nations to Aotearoa.
“Indigenous stories help us make sense of our world, of our connections and our shared humanity. Our sixth festival includes stories from the polar regions, from the deserts, from the mountains of Iran and Nepal, and from nations who dwell upon and beside the planet’s vast oceans including the Pacific,” says festival director Libby Hakaraia.
The 2019 MFF features a strong lineup of films from Te Moananui a Kiwa (the Pacific), including the southern hemisphere premiere of Vai.
Vai is a portmanteau feature film directed by eight female Pacific Island filmmakers and filmed in seven Pacific countries: Fiji, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Kuki Aīrani (Cook Islands), Samoa, Niue and Aotearoa (New Zealand).
The festival will also bring seven Pacific features and 41 short films from Aotearoa, Hawai’i, Papua New Guinea, Rapanui, Guam, Haida Gwaii, Vanuatu and more. Also, indigenous films from the United States, Canada, Northern Europe and Iran will also be screened at this five day film festival at Otaki.
The Māoriland Film Festival is at Ōtaki on March 20-24.
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