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Sites of exuberance: Barry Barclay and Fourth Cinema, ten years on

Article in International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics · September 2015

DOI: 10.1386/macp.11.3.347_1

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 MCP 11 (3) pp. 347–359 Intellect Limited 2015

International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics

Volume 11 Number 3
© 2015 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/macp.11.3.347_1

Christina Milligan
Auckland University of Technology

Sites of exuberance: Barry

Barclay and Fourth Cinema,
ten years on

Abstract Keywords
The Ma-ori film-maker Barry Barclay used the term ‘Fourth Cinema’ to describe indigenous cinema
indigenous cinema, a philosophy based on his own practice as a director. He sought Fourth Cinema
to privilege the indigenous gaze and the indigenous audience by centralizing te ao Ma-ori film
Ma-ori or the Ma-ori world-view in principle and in practice. However, much has New Zealand cinema
changed in the world of film-making since Barclay developed his theory. The range indigenous media
of storytelling by Ma-ori on large and small screens has increased exponentially, and indigenous narrative
Ma-ori films such as Boy (Waititi, 2010) and Mt Zion (Kahi, 2013) have reached
the top of the domestic box office, implying a wide Ma-ori and non- Ma-ori audience
within the settler-centric culture of New Zealand. This article reviews and contextu-
alizes Barclay’s philosophy. It then uses his central concepts to examine the feature
Mt Zion, exploring aspects of the film’s text, production and distribution, to establish
what conclusions can be drawn regarding the relevance of Barclay’s thinking to the
practice of a new generation of Ma-ori film-makers.

I don’t much want to hear about Sites of Resistance any more. Let’s talk
about Sites of Exuberance.
(Barclay 2003b)

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Christina Milligan

Introduction
Barry Barclay (1944–2008) was a Ma-ori director and writer working within
the mainstream New Zealand film industry at a time when indigenous
film-makers worldwide were extremely rare. An activist and a theorist as well
as a film-maker, he enunciated a set of principles he termed ‘Fourth Cinema’,
principles that he saw as foundational for the control by First Nations of both
their own image and their own image-making. He sought to privilege the
indigenous gaze and the indigenous audience by applying Ma-ori core values
to film-making in a very specific way. However, much has changed in the
world of New Zealand cinema since Barclay first developed his theory and the
continuing relevance of his thinking can be questioned, particularly given the
growth in Ma-ori screen production in the last ten years.
The modern New Zealand film industry dates from a remarkable period of
development in the 1970s, from which a number of internationally regarded
film-makers including Jane Campion and Sir Peter Jackson emerged. Feature
film-making by Ma-ori, though, made fitful progress in this time. Barclay was
the first Ma-ori to direct a feature (Nga- ti, Barclay, 1987), closely followed by
fellow pioneer Merata Mita (Mauri, Mita, 1988), and in 1994 Lee Tamahori
directed probably the best-known Ma-ori feature to date, Once Were Warriors
(Tamahori, 1994). Nevertheless, in a flourishing period for New Zealand
cinema, Ma-ori features remained a rarity. Recently however, the pace of feature
film-making by Ma-ori has increased noticeably and one film, Taika Waititi’s
Boy (Waititi, 2010), holds the current record for highest domestic box office
earnings (New Zealand Film Commission 2013). Additionally in this period,
the establishment in 2004 of the publicly funded television channel, Ma-ori
Television, has acculturated both Ma-ori and non-Ma-ori to an abundance of
Ma-ori storytelling on-screen that could not have been envisaged a decade ago
(Dunleavy and Joyce 2011). Further, largely as a result of the early activism of
Barclay, Mita and others, the key public funding body in local feature film-
making, the New Zealand Film Commission, in 2007 established Te Paepae
Ataata, a charitable trust designed to assist in developing ‘culturally specific
tangata whenua (Ma-ori) cinema’ (Te Paepae Ataata 2013). In light of the result-
ing increase in opportunities for Ma-ori screen practitioners, it is timely to
assess Barclay’s concept of Fourth Cinema to consider the weight of his legacy,
an assessment that will be explored in this article through a case-study of a
recent Ma-ori feature film Mt Zion (Kahi, 2013). This study will evaluate aspects
of the film’s text, production, and distribution to consider the continuing rele-
vance of Barclay’s Fourth Cinema concepts to the practice of a new generation
of Ma-ori film-makers.

The philosophy of ‘Fourth Cinema’

Barclay enjoyed being a provocateur and even if his films are now not widely
known beyond indigenous and film festival audiences, nevertheless his will-
ingness to withstand sometimes severe criticism in his pursuit of the right of
Ma-ori, and by extension all indigenous people, to take control of their own
image, can be seen as enabling those who came after him to tread an easier
path. His use of the term ‘Fourth Cinema’ reflects his intention to differentiate
indigenous cinema from what he saw as its antecedents:

I am not in First Cinema. The cinema of America. The cinema of the

international mass market. I am not in Second Cinema either; the art

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house cinema for the cinema buffs of the modern nation state. And I am
not in Third Cinema also. I am not living in a Third World national state.
(2003b: 8)

While the nomination of Fourth Cinema would not emerge until some years
later, the origins of Barclay’s philosophy can be traced back to his book Our
Own Image published in 1990, in which he uses examples from the produc-
tion of his own work to explore the shortcomings of conventional First World
filming processes and attitudes in creating an accurate representation of the
Ma-ori community. Searching for answers as to how to give legitimacy to the
indigenous gaze, Barclay asks: ‘How can we take this maverick yet fond friend
of ours – the camera – into the Ma-ori community and be confident it will act
with dignity?’ (1990: 9). Dignity is central to Barclay’s thinking and for him,
the answers to his question are to be found within the Ma-ori community, by
observing the protocols which govern that community and its behaviour, proto-
cols that include, for example, respect for children and elders, the privileging
of listening over speaking, and the ceremony surrounding birth and death.
Our Own Image ranges widely from specific aspects of film-making to the poli-
tics of engaging with funding organizations and broadcasters, but perhaps
its most enduring contribution is Barclay’s situating of the marae (communal
meeting place) and its protocols as a central concept for film-making itself.
He calls this concept the ‘communications marae’, delineating it as ‘an invis-
ible (place), looking inward but open to all’ (1990: 76). On the ‘communica-
tions marae’, Ma-ori stories can be told in a Ma-ori way for a Ma-ori audience;
others are welcome to contribute, but must work within Ma-ori protocol. This
is a concept that preserves cultural integrity for the indigenous film-maker
and privileges the indigenous audience, and this is the fundamental tenet of
Barclay’s theorizing.
Aside from Our Own Image, Barclay published a number of articles and
papers (1988, 1991, 1992, 2006) and in 2005 the University of Auckland
published what may be seen as his enduring written legacy, Mana Tu-turu
(2005), a considered exploration of the difficulties that arise when indigenous
cultures enter the commercial world. The common thread woven through
all his writings is the matter of indigenous ownership, the driver as noted
of his thinking on the matter of Fourth Cinema. However, Barclay did not
write specifically on Fourth Cinema, and his key commentary on the subject is
contained in the texts of two speeches he gave, a year apart, in the early 2000s.
The first was delivered at the University of Auckland in 2002, a paper later
published in Illusions magazine (2003a). In a metaphorical discussion of his
own experience of reading a sequence of headstones from ancient Greece, he
draws attention to how a lack of knowledge beyond one’s own culture inhib-
its the accurate reading of stories from another culture. He maps this directly
onto the position of the indigenous film-maker, whose work he sees as being
misunderstood and misread by the majority settler cultures within which
indigenous film-makers operate. His illuminating metaphor of the camera on
the ship (that of the arriving colonizer) and the camera on the shore (that
of the indigenous people) crystallizes his perception of the gulf between the
cinemas of the modern nation state and that of indigenous people. Key to
this is Barclay’s belief that indigenous cinema, the cinema of First Nations,
differs fundamentally from what has gone before. This is the heart of his argu-
ment: the indigenous camera will see differently, frame differently, provide a
different context and serve a different philosophy.

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Christina Milligan

Within the context of Ma-ori film-making, this necessarily acknowledges

the centrality of te ao Ma- ori or the Ma-ori world-view, and in his paper, Barclay
points to the importance of ‘interiority’ (2003a: 7), referencing a then unpub-
lished article by Rangihı-roa Pa-noho. In this article titled ‘Kei Hea Te Ngakau
Ma-ori? Locating the Heart’ (2003), Pa-noho draws a contrast in present-day
Ma-ori art between that which focuses on ‘exteriority’ or surface, and the more
fundamental importance of ‘interiority’ or heart. His exploration of the work
of artist Shona Rapira-Davies can be read as a parallel discussion of Barclay’s
principles of Fourth Cinema, exploring as it does the artist’s work as a site
of struggle, where a purely surface reading reveals none of the hidden heart.
Citing Barclay, Pa-noho describes the concept of the ‘communications marae’ as
a ‘layered interface with legacy’ and this accentuates a key motivation of the
film-maker: the desire to rework the principles of te ao Ma- ori ‘to give vital-
ity and richness to the way we conceive, develop, manufacture and present
our films’ (2003a: 11). This is a more nuanced exploration of the ‘commu-
nications marae’ as Barclay himself noted in his second speech given a year
later in Hawai’i, where he discussed how archival images accrete meaning
for Ma-ori with the passing years. Extrapolating from this how indigenous
cinema is freighted differently from First Cinema, he noted that the phrase te
ao Ma- ori evokes ‘a whole cosmology, a world of physical and spiritual things,
a world of spirits and gods’ (2003b: 14). In this and other ways, this second
speech of Barclay’s digs deeper into the spiritual, and refines his differentia-
tion between Fourth Cinema and its antecedents. Speaking of the rituals of
the marae, Barclay suggested that ‘… some of the fundamental principles by
which we construct our moving image sequences may hearken back to age-
old processes which we bring into our projects (while) hardly being aware
of it’ (2003a: 11).
From his earliest theorizing, Barclay was clear that Fourth Cinema is not
just about content and modes of production, but also about reception. He saw
that control of one’s own image extended necessarily to control of distribution
and given the high cost of screen production, he did not arrive at a defini-
tive answer as to how films might recoup their cost when the audience for
indigenous films could not match that of mainstream features. He remained
passionate, however that if ‘… Indigenous storytellers become hell-bent on
satisfying the mass audiences and the commercial barons of First Cinema,
we may cease to be storytellers for our own people, and our image meeting
houses will remain uncarved’ (2003b: 15).

Situating ‘Fourth Cinema’ in a wider context

Writing on Barclay’s work remains limited, the most detailed analysis being
Stuart Murray’s book Images of Dignity: Barry Barclay and Fourth Cinema (2008),
with its rare consideration of Barclay’s complete oeuvre. In a perceptive critique
of Barclay’s first feature Nga- ti, Murray sees it as ‘operating a process of ventril-
oquism by which certain radical ideas about iwi and community are contained
within a narrative that appears to suggest more conformist opinions’ (2008: 8).
This reveals an understanding of how sophisticated Barclay’s film-making was
even at this relatively early stage in his feature film career, and it is relevant to
the case study of Mt Zion below. Murray draws attention to the complexities
of the debates surrounding the rethinking or revisionism that has taken place
in viewing the post-contact history of New Zealand and how Barclay positions
himself, in his films and his writing, right at the centre of these complexities:

350
 Sites of exuberance

it is this political fearlessness, as much as his cinematic achievements, which

justify Murray’s situating of Barclay as an important figure in the development
of both the theory and practice of indigenous cinema.
Fourth Cinema, as a cinema that seeks to establish the pre-eminence of
the voice of the indigenous, places itself by definition outside the surround-
ing framework of hegemony; this is a position which by implication situates
it, like Third Cinema, as a potential site of polemic. It is a term that carries
inbuilt complications, necessarily implying cinema of the Fourth World, and
Columpar traces the complex path that the term Fourth World has taken as
it has broadened beyond encompassing the aboriginal peoples of lands colo-
nized by European settlers, to include minority peoples such as the Basque in
Spain. As she notes however, the term has remained ‘most readily associated
with an international movement on behalf of Aboriginal rights’ (2010: 12).
Echoing this, Murray points out that Fourth Cinema ‘carries the opportunities
and challenges of thinking through a global indigenous presence’ (2008: 11),
which can be seen as enhanced by the ease with which cinema transcends
political and linguistic borders.
This enhanced international circulation of cultural processes led Appadurai
to comment on the ‘central feature of global culture today (which) is the politics
of the mutual effort of sameness and difference to cannibalize one another and
thereby proclaim their successful hijacking of the twin Enlightenment ideas of
the triumphantly universal and the resiliently particular’ (1990: 307). An indig-
enous person might argue that notions of triumphant universality and resilient
particularity are not necessarily properties solely of Enlightenment thinking,
but Appadurai’s comment underlines how implicated western thinking is in
any consideration of Fourth Cinema, as indigenous film-makers daily engage
with technology and creative concepts that have their roots elsewhere. Ma-ori
scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith has written in detail on the effect of coloniza-
tion on indigenous knowledge and the complications inherent in the present-
day role of ‘intellectuals, teachers, artists and writers in relation to indigenous
communities’ (2006: 103). Here she is referring to the complex demands
placed on those, including indigenous film-makers, who walk between two
worlds because of their acquisition of western education and the marriage of
this knowledge with the knowledge of their own people. The ongoing calibra-
tions required by artists in this position are detailed with precision by Merata
Mita in her article aptly titled ‘The Soul and the Image’ (1996). This discus-
sion by Mita of her own work on the documentary Mana Waka (Mita, 1990)
can be read as a counterpoint to Barclay’s commentary ‘A pistol on the table’
(2006) on the making of his documentary The Kaipara Affair (Barclay, 2005), as
Mita echoes Barclay’s transition from working solely within a First World film
industry to working in a way that enabled the application of the principles of
te ao Ma-ori to the process as well as the content of his work.
Discussion of the particular and the universal points us again to the
continuing evolution of the definition of indigenous film-making. Houston
Wood resolves the question by placing all indigenous films along a contin-
uum. However for many Ma-ori scholars (Hokowhitu 2007; Ka’ai 2005; Pihama
2012), the matter is much more definitive: an indigenous film, in this case
Ma-ori, is a film where the control of the image is in the hands of indigenous
or Ma-ori practitioners. Usually this means in the hands of a Ma-ori director
but the ongoing argument over the feature Whale Rider (Caro, 2003) illus-
trates the complexities of this argument. Written, directed and produced
by Pa- keha- (white New Zealanders), this film was a box office success both

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domestically and internationally. Its origins in a book by the Ma-ori writer Witi
Ihimaera, and the support of its production by the tribal group Nga-ti Konohi,
in whose traditions the story originates, obviated for many concern over the
lack of Ma-ori ownership of the film and its making (Conrich and Murray 2008;
Dunleavy and Joyce 2011). Some held strong objections however, including
Barry Barclay. Fundamental to his concern was what he saw as the hegemonic
strength of First Cinema in the thinking of film funders and producers in New
Zealand (2003c). He saw the ease with which a Ma-ori story could be framed as
a ‘universal’ story, playing to the ingrained, Hollywood-trained expectations of
an international (including the domestic) audience. Such a framing negates the
indigenous gaze, situating the power of the storytelling firmly in First World
hands. Ka-’ai examines the traditions and protocols of the people of the East
Coast, where the film is set, in accusing the film-makers of corrupting cultural
practices. Hokowhitu reflects Barclay’s concern with the ‘universal’ appeal of
the film, which he sees as an ethnographic approach designed to present
the people of Nga-ti Konohi as ‘spectacle’ for the international gaze. Sharing
Hokowhitu’s view of the film-makers’ gaze, Bennett notes ‘… the film-makers
have taken … carvings, wharenui [carved meeting houses], waka [canoes] –
the ethnographic trappings of the social … and pieced them together to create
a representation of Ma-ori as an outside majority audience might want to see
it’ (2006: 21). The concerns presented by these and other writers regarding this
appropriation of aspects of te ao Ma- ori, picked, sorted and sieved through a
renarrativization of the local world for international consumption, illustrate
Appadurai’s observations on the disruptive effect of cross-culture communica-
tion on tradition.
A decade on from Barclay’s original exploration of the implications of priv-
ileging the indigenous gaze and the indigenous audience, the political and
economic landscape within which Ma-ori film-makers operate has changed
dramatically, to the point where film scholar Russell Campbell can state
that the very concept Barclay enunciated is ‘working off a slightly outdated
model. That’s a model from the 1970s. There’s too much diversity in world
film production (now) to be able to classify things in that way’ (Gnanalingam
2009). Campbell’s implication that Barclay’s thinking has passed its time attests
to the complications inherent in assessing Barclay’s influence on present-day
Ma-ori film-makers, and a review of the 2013 feature film Mt Zion will seek to
unpack some of these complications to assess Barclay’s legacy.

‘Mt Zion’: A case study exploring the next generation

of Maori film-making
Ma-ori director Tearepa Kahi enjoyed considerable success with his short films
The Speaker (Kahi, 2005) and Taua (Kahi, 2006), both of which were selected for
major international festivals including Clermont-Ferrand and Berlin, before his
first feature Mt Zion was released by Sony Pictures in February 2013, reaching
the top of the New Zealand box office on its first weekend. A coming-of-age
film set in 1979, Mt Zion tells the story of Turei, a young potato-picker from the
rural community of Pukekohe who dreams of being a singer. Feeling trapped
in a life of hard work and commitment to his family and their community, Turei
channels his musical talent into playing with his band in the local pub. His
world changes when he discovers Bob Marley is coming to town and the local
promoter is running a competition to find the band to open Marley’s concert.
Turei’s desperation to win the competition sets him against the traditions of

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his upbringing, especially against his father, a man of the land who has placed
duty above personal ambition in his own life. Turei begins to alienate all around
him as his drive to win the opening spot for Marley causes him to betray the
whole community. Caught in an act of theft, Turei is abandoned by everyone
including the rest of the band members. Seeking redemption, he appears in
front of the community, who expect an apology and reparation. The apology
never comes as Turei instead challenges the community to take control of their
own lives, to stop ‘working for the mister’ (the Pa- keha- boss) and become their
own masters. His cheek wins the people over. He will pay reparations, but in
a surprise ending that shows just how well his people understand and love
him, he is chosen to perform the wero (welcoming challenge) for an esteemed
visitor arriving on the marae, who turns out to be Bob Marley. Turei meets his
idol, and is able now to turn his dream to the good of the community. He does
not get to open Marley’s concert, but instead is last seen playing, together with
his father, at a fundraiser he has inspired which is the first step on the road to
independence for the whole community.
It is perhaps fundamental that a marker in any Ma-ori film is the level of
engagement with or dislocation from the community that a character feels
or expresses. The world of Once Were Warriors for example is one of extreme
dislocation, while Nga- ti is centred on a coherent, functioning family group. In
Mt Zion, Tearepa Kahi uses the shifting locus of Turei’s disengagement from
his community to chart his protagonist’s course. The film opens firmly focused
on Turei the individual, and as it progresses, the story is driven by his personal
ambition with all the other characters functioning in concert with or opposi-
tion to him at any one time. From this it can be argued that the film follows the
path of a hero’s journey. The concept of the hero’s journey originated in Joseph
Campbell’s writings on mythology, particularly in The Hero With a Thousand
Faces ([1949] 1968), and became the conventional tool for Hollywood script
structure and analysis in the late twentieth century. In essence, the hero’s jour-
ney charts the path of an individual from the beginning of a story where he
experiences a call to adventure, through a progression of obstacles each more
difficult than the last, all of which force the hero to reach for deeper reserves
of courage, till at last a final obstacle is reached and overcome in the climax,
leaving the hero in a changed state and ready to move on (Dancyger 2001;
Vogler 2007). It is not difficult to map this analysis onto Mt Zion.
However, the film can equally, and in terms of its origins more validly, be
read as a story of community. Turei is part of a tight-knit community, which
holds to its traditional values at the same time as it struggles with the dislo-
cation of working for a Pa- keha- boss. Barclay speaks of ‘core values which
govern life in the Ma-ori world, values such as whanaungatanga [kinship], mana
[spiritual power/authority], manaakitanga [hospitality], aroha [love/empathy] …’
(2003a: 11). Each one of these values is woven through Mt Zion, locating the
heart of the film firmly in te ao Ma-ori, not just in terms of story but in terms of
the critical choices made by the director. For example, manaakitanga, the obli-
gation of hospitality or generosity, is illustrated more than once on the marae,
most notably in a montage sequence as the people prepare for a hui/meeting
with local politicians to discuss matters of land. Where a western directorial
approach might foreground the politics of the matter, or the emotions around
the forthcoming confrontation, in Mt Zion it is the humble tasks that take
focus: cleaning the house, preparing the food, digging the hangi/earth oven.
These tasks are lingered on visually, giving the work of all in the community
due weight.

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Christina Milligan

Barclay’s reference to the core values of Ma-ori life points to the interiority
that he sees as intrinsic to Fourth Cinema, and the climax of Mt Zion is an
example of how this interiority plays through the film as a whole. In the
scene immediately preceding the climax, Turei bathes in a water-tower in
the potato-fields in an action which, in this particular scene, combines both
the physical act of cleansing and the act of lifting tapu (spiritual cleansing).
As he leaves the water-tower he sees a new gang of workers arriving to
start the day’s potato-picking, an indication of how dispensable the family
workers are to the Pa- keha- boss. The film cuts sharply to the interior of the
wharenui/meeting house, where a community gathering is witnessing Turei’s
father apologize and express shame for his son’s actions. As Turei enters he is
immediately confronted by the community’s anger, as one asks: ‘Kei whea to-
mana?’/‘Where is your honour?’ and another demands: ‘Kei whea to- aroha ki
to- wha-nau?’/‘Where is your respect for your family?’. As he tries to make his
case, an elder tells him: ‘There’s an easy road, and there’s a hard road … No
matter how tough it gets, we’ll do this together. Tatau, tatau. [All together]’.
Here the film echoes Barclay himself: ‘There is a phrase in Ma-ori … “We do
this tatau tatau”. It’s empowering to see, within the grandeur of the big screen,
sayings like these …’ (2003b: 12).
As the scene continues, with the community venting their anger and
disappointment, only one person speaks up for Turei, his cousin Manawa, a
black sheep who has recently returned home. Here the protagonist is shielded
by quiet words from an unlikely defender. It is a moment in which the least
likely holds the power to reverse the flow of emotion in the wharenui, and it
opens the way for Turei to argue back. He exhorts the community to stand on
its own feet: ‘Maybe it’s time we got off this dirt road … Why don’t we get
our own truck? … Why can’t we be our own misters? Be our own missuses?’
As visitors start arriving and Turei is challenged to run away as he usually
does when asked to do anything for the community, he makes his stand: ‘Ko
taku ao tenei’/‘This is my world’. This brings him back into the fold of the
family, completing a sequence in which both theme and story are driven by
and responding to the hidden heart of the people. It also illustrates the film-
maker’s original intention as expressed early in the writing of the script, when
he summed the film up with the saying: ‘Ko taku toa, he toa takitini’/‘Mine is
the strength of many’ (Kahi 2010).
Stuart Murray writes of the marketing strategy of the film Whale Rider
using ‘Ma-ori culture as a series of reference points that inform the personal
conflict’ (2008: 5). In Mt Zion, on the other hand, cultural markers play an
intrinsic part of the world of the film. They are not ‘performed’ for the viewer;
they are necessary vehicles to carry the narrative forward, for Kahi is seeing
with an indigenous eye, positioning the community as the source of Turei’s
physical, emotional and spiritual health. As long as Turei is disengaged from
the community in any of these areas, he will remain unable to achieve what
he wants. Thus, for example, for much of the film, physically, he refuses to pull
his weight in the potato fields, emotionally, he refuses to play his assigned role
on the marae, and spiritually, his hunger for fame warps his sense of right and
wrong. It is not until all these are brought back into alignment with what the
community asks of him, that he can move forward. In this way, the story of the
film refracts its thematic exploration of the power of community.
It is also, however, a story that resonates universally, reflecting the film-
maker’s intentions as noted in an interview earlier in his career: ‘Heritage can
be an intrinsic instrument which allows a storyteller to tell their story with

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cultural distinction without sacrificing universal understanding’ (Digital Media

Trust 2008). It is important to understand that the ‘universal’ to which Kahi is
referring here is not the same ‘universalising of narrative elements’ to which
Wilson is referring in her critique of Once Were Warriors and Whale Rider
(2011: 206). As she notes, in Whale Rider specific tribal stories and protocol are
conflated into a history of one amorphous people, the Ma-ori, with a concom-
itant loss of cultural specificity. Kahi is talking about the opposite: the use
of cultural specificity in a way which speaks first to the tangata whenua, but
which can be understood universally. Mt Zion can thus be read as a profound
example of Barclay’s ‘communications marae’ ‘looking inward but open to all’
(1990: 76), in its combination of accessibility to the outside viewer but fidelity
to the world of its director.
That accessibility is greatly enhanced by the casting of an extremely popu-
lar and well-known singer, Stan Walker, as Turei. It is cemented by the decision
to place the story in the world of popular music, and particularly in the world
of reggae. Bob Marley was and is so idolized in New Zealand that he inspired
a sub-genre of reggae, developed by Ma-ori bands such as Herbs but popular
well beyond the world of Ma-ori. By wrapping his story around such music,
Kahi guaranteed the film a wide audience. It is a clever approach which can
be seen to operate another version of the ventriloquism that Murray discusses
when dissecting Barclay’s Nga- ti. In the case of Nga- ti, Murray sees that Barclay
wrapped politically radical iron in the velvet glove of an apparently conform-
ist narrative (2008: 8). In his variation, Kahi wraps the assertion of te ao Ma- ori
as the wellspring of true being within a narrative that appears to offer no
strongly political stance. From an indigenous film-maker working within a
strongly hegemonic settler-centric culture, such a confident assertion of the
mana (power) of his people is not only political it is also utterly exuberant.
Importantly, from the point of view of Barclay’s conception of Fourth
Cinema, the making of the film also reflected these qualities. Filming took place
in the director’s hometown, Pukekohe, with his grandparents’ house serving
as the location for Turei’s family home. Many local people played extra roles,
reliving their days as potato-pickers and training the professional actors in this
role. Kahi’s father served as dialogue coach to ensure accuracy of the working-
class, Pukekohe 1970s dialect and his family photos were the basis for the
costume design. With few exceptions, all crewmembers were Ma-ori and the
production company, Kura Productions, is controlled by Ma-ori. Speaking of
the filming process, actress Miriama Smith said: ‘It’s a wha- nau (family) feeling’
(May 2013: 12).
There is another element important to note when considering such
community-based film origination. Barry Barclay spoke of it in his 2003 speech
and it is again the principle of manaakitanga or generosity, which he turned to
when considering the matter of film distribution. He asks, ‘… if our projects are
really made within te ao Ma-ori, aren’t we selling the Ma-ori world out somehow
if all we are doing by taking the work – the treasure – into other communi-
ties, especially Indigenous communities, is to make a return for the investor?’
(2003b: 21). His intention here was that Ma-ori film-makers should distribute
their films to the community ‘as an exercise in aroha and healing and exuber-
ance without thought of extravagant returns’ (2003b: 21). This is an ideal that
can be seen as coming closer to reality in recent years, as the rise in low-budget
film-making and the difficulty of securing commercial release for local films in
New Zealand combine to push film-makers into self-distribution. However,
for a film-maker who seeks to work within a higher-budget environment (in

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this case still very modest by international standards), it is not yet possible to
raise the necessary investment on a promise of return that is other than finan-
cial. In the case of Mt Zion, basing production in Pukekohe meant that much
of the production budget was spent within the family home base and this is
a form of manaakitanga. Again, a review of the premiere of the film reveals an
event that sought to place the focus on te ao Ma- ori as far as possible within
such a commercial environment. While it was held in a commercial cinema
complex in Auckland city in February 2013, the speeches preceding the film
were conducted within a symbolic ceremonial setting, with tribute paid to
the attending Ma-ori king Tuheitia and the people of the tribe of Tainui, within
whose area the filming and the story took place. Sony Pictures then commer-
cially released the film. If this is a long way from Barclay’s unrealized dream
of distribution as manaakitanga, it nevertheless can be seen as taking Fourth
Cinema to the people in a different version of his dream.
In a commentary on Taika Waititi’s Boy, Ma-ori academic Leonie Pihama
views it as following a line of Ma-ori films, from Once Were Warriors on, that
have ‘contributed to the construction of Ma-ori images globally that have little
relationship to our lives’ (1996: 192). Mt Zion, on the other hand, can be seen as
a film which counteracts such a construction, and, in this, its closest compari-
son is Barclay’s Nga- ti. Both are stories relocated into a nostalgic past by their
authors, and it can be argued that this alone offers them space to explore a
social fabric less challenged, less fraught than a present-day setting. Against
this, it is notable that in both films economic deprivation is highlighted as
the principal source of pressure on the community: in Nga- ti with the threat-
ened closure of the local freezing works (slaughterhouse); in Mt Zion with the
threatened loss of the potato-picking contract. However, where the films most
resonate with each other is in their telling of a story that illustrates the opera-
tion of good and goodwill among people and what underlies this similarity is
the same construction of community as the locus of strength and integrity, a
construction which in fact underlies everything that Barclay was thinking of
when he first spoke of his concept of Fourth Cinema.

The future for Barclay’s original dream

A little more than ten years on from Barclay’s original formulation of Fourth
Cinema, the outlook for further feature films written, directed and/or produced
by Ma-ori can be viewed positively. Te Paepae Ataata, the Ma-ori film develop-
ment trust, has produced its first feature, Himiona Grace’s Pa- Boys (Grace,
2014). The New Zealand Film Commission has in 2014 established a further
pathway for Ma-ori and Pasifika (Pacific Island) film-makers with the aim of
enabling ‘ … story models based on a traditional Ma-ori and/or Pasifika knowl-
edge base’ (New Zealand Film Commission 2014); and other Ma-ori writers
and directors are building feature film careers, including Taika Waititi (Eagle
vs Shark, Waititi, 2007; Boy 2010; What We Do In The Shadows, Waititi, 2014),
Michael Bennett (Matariki, Bennett, 2010) and Briar Grace-Smith (The Strength
of Water, Ballantyne, 2009). Additionally, Ma-ori feature directors such as Peter
Burger (The Tattooist, Burger, 2007) have directed a considerable number of
the telefeatures commissioned by commercial television broadcasters in the
last several years (New Zealand On Air 2012). The large number of short films
written and directed by Ma-ori in the last decade also supports the perception
of continuing growth, given that short films are the primary route to feature
film-making in New Zealand, particularly for directors. Making features, in

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New Zealand as in many other countries, is a small part of an industry in which

practitioners rely on television, advertising and servicing foreign production
for their principal incomes, and this holds true for Ma-ori practitioners. It is no
coincidence therefore that the growth of Ma-ori film-making is progressing in
tandem with the growth of indigenous production in other areas, most partic-
ularly Ma-ori Television. These are developments that can be seen as reflecting
the progress of indigenous media practitioners in many other countries, for as
Wilson and Stewart argue, ‘Indigenous media now occupy a significant place
not only in local cultures and communities but also in national and global
media discourses, policies, industries, and funding structures’ (2008: 2).
As more young and developing Ma-ori film-makers move into feature
production, the varieties of story and experience that will be explored on-screen
are likely to continue to stretch beyond the bounds of Barry Barclay’s ambi-
tions for Ma-ori film as expressed in his philosophy discussed in this article.
The careers of film-makers like Taika Waititi attest to this already and Barclay
himself would be the first to approve. It was in 1990 that he wrote ‘I have a
dream. I want to make a kung fu movie … How good would it be if kids could
go down to the video parlour and get out a film called The Taiaha Kid instead
of a kung fu film from Hong Kong’ (1990: 21). Waititi’s Boy is the most obvi-
ous example so far of a film that could be said to fulfil that particular dream of
Barclay’s. However, if the range of opportunities and subsequent achievement
by Ma-ori film-makers continues on the trajectory established over the last few
years, it may become possible to say that Barclay’s legacy lives on in ways
different to, but reflective of, his original dream.

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Suggested citation
Milligan, C. (2015), ‘Sites of exuberance: Barry Barclay and Fourth Cinema, ten
years on’, International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, 11: 3, pp. 347–359,
doi: 10.1386/macp.11.3.347_1

Contributor details
Christina Milligan (tribal affiliation: Nga-ti Porou) is a lecturer in screenwriting
and screen production at Auckland University of Technology. She is the execu-
tive producer of Tearepa Kahi’s recent feature Mt Zion.
Contact: School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of
Technology (AUT), Private Bag 92006, Auckland 1142, New Zealand.
E-mail: christina.milligan@aut.ac.nz

Christina Milligan has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that
was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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