Kahungunu Marae community hall with festival guests © Wairoa Māori Film Festival 2017
The premises of the annual Wairoa Māori Film Festival, held in June, were flooded by Cyclone Gabrielle. Both the festival center, a traditional community house (marae), the festival office, and the festival archives were affected.
Wairoa Māori Film Festival center in 2023 © maorimovies.com.
The Kahungunu Marae community hall in Nuhaka, richly decorated with traditional wood carvings – originally a memorial to Maori casualties in the Land Wars and World Wars, was flooded but has already been cleaned. The building of the festival office, a Maori language school was devastated and the archive with films from 18 festival years was under water. The cleaning and clearing up work is still in progress.
The Wairoa Maori Film Festival promotes entries – mostly short films – by Maori, Pasifika and indigenous filmmakers from around the world. The program focuses on Maori films, that is, works about Maori people in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The festival was scheduled for June 1-5. Whether it can take place on this date has not been determined at this time.
URL Festival: http://maorimovies.com
URL Kahungunu Marae: www.kahungunumarae.com