Hidden gods-Religion, spirituality and recent New Zealand cinema

• Published in: Studies in Australasian cinema Vol. 6; no. 1; pp. 11 - 27
• Main Author: Hardy, Ann
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 01.01.2012
• Subjects: Christianity; Māori directors; New Zealand cinema; religion; spirituality
• ISSN: 1750-3175; 1750-3183
• DOI: 10.1386/sac.6.1.11_1

The shift in English-language film towards representing spirituality rather than religion is enriched in Aotearoa New Zealand by the popularity of films made by Māori writers and/or directors which draw on a broad set of characteristics popularly known as 'Māori spirituality'. The paradigmatic film of this type is Whale Rider (Caro, 2003) but this article considers three more recent movies, Boy (Waititi 2009), The Strength of Water (Ballantyne, 2010) and Matariki (Bennett, 2010) which are also shaped by indigenous understandings of correct behaviour in relation to the spiritual energies diffused through human life and the natural world. While each of these films exhibits complexity in terms of the identities of its creators and their relationships to the hybrid cultural sources on which they draw, there are sufficient similarities between them to posit the existence of a loose template for an effective 'spiritual' film, one that links the pantheistic beliefs of traditional Māori lifeworlds with the expressive spirituality popular in contemporary secular cultures. The aesthetic and ideological negotiations around content, style and audience necessary for such film-making to suceed are highlighted by contrast with the failed film version of The Vintner's Luck (Caro, 2009), based on a much-loved novel by Kiwi author Elizabeth Knox, which takes the riskier path of challenging and revising Christian mythology.