Decolonising Screen Production: The Practice of the Māori Film Producer
Date
Authors
Milligan, Christina
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
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Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Sage
Abstract
The film production ecology of Aotearoa New Zealand is an industrial and creative space controlled almost solely by Pākehā (European New Zealanders). However, since the turn of the century, Māori (Indigenous) filmmakers have risen to increasing prominence. They are becoming owners of the means of production and of the intellectual property generated when a film is made. Story sovereignty, or Māori control over Māori stories, is the heart of the enterprise for Māori filmmakers and implicit in this is how the story is made, that is, the process of filmmaking. This article examines the practice of Māori film producers and discusses how they bring te ao Māori (the Māori way of being or world view) into the day-to-day management of a film production. With non-Indigenous financiers and audiences to please, these producers walk simultaneously in two worlds, bringing their understanding of mainstream expectations together with their Indigenous world view, to realise film stories told from the Indigenous heart. Concepts such as tikanga (protocol), manaakitanga (respect for others), whanaungatanga (kinship) and mana (spiritual power) are elements of the daily practice of these producers, as they adapt the Western-originated filmmaking process to their own ends. Analysing such complexities requires a theoretical framework which accommodates not just the work of the individual, but also the relevant social and cultural context within which they operate. In recent years, a variety of researchers in the fields of cultural and media production have found common ground in applying systems thinking to analysing various forms of creative production. In particular, the exploration of the phenomenon of creativity within the production of culture has shifted since the late twentieth century towards an approach which recognises that the value of creative acts depends not just on what the individual brings to the act, nor just on the artefact created, but also on social and historical perspectives and positions. Prominent among the models being applied is the systems approach initially developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Csikszentmihalyi maintains that creativity arises when three essential features interact: the domain, or existing body of knowledge; the individual who produces variation within that body (that is, creates something new); and the field, or network of experts who recognize value in the new and facilitate its absorption into the domain. Through critical exploration of the practice of the Māori film producer, this researcher has developed a revised version of Csikszentmihalyi’s model and presents it from an Indigenous perspective: the revision incorporates and extends the original by connecting the elements of the model through the holistic framework of te ao Māori or the Māori world view, to enable analysis of the practice of the screen producer within its specific Indigenous context.Description
Keywords
Indigenous film, Film producing, Māori filmmaking, Māori cinema, systems model of creativity
Source
Emerging Media. Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2025, Pages 82-100. ISSN: 2752-3543 (Print), Sage, (Special Issue: Decolonising Media Futures).
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Open Access. CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial). Content may be copied, adapted, displayed, distributed, republished or otherwise reused provided the purpose of these activities is not for commercial use. Commercial use means use of the content by a commercial organisation or individual for direct (including through sale, loan or license) or indirect (including through marketing campaigns, promotional materials or presentations) commercial gain or remuneration.