Action adventure The Dead Lands is in UK cinemas this weekend. Director Toa Fraser talks about its making and how James Cameron’s a fan...
A taut and intense action adventure, The Dead Lands is a superb showcase for director Toa Fraser. It provides an insight into a culture not often explored on screen - set in pre-colonial New Zealand, the film’s dialogue is entirely in the Maori language - while delivering the kind of pared-back revenge story you might expect from a western or a samurai film.
In other words, The Dead Lands is both unique to its country and universal; its historical setting and subtitles might suggest something for the arthouse crowd, but its bruising fight scenes will please the action crowd, too. What’s more, James Cameron is officially a fan.
As The Dead Lands makes its debut in UK cinemas, we caught up with Toa Fraser...
A taut and intense action adventure, The Dead Lands is a superb showcase for director Toa Fraser. It provides an insight into a culture not often explored on screen - set in pre-colonial New Zealand, the film’s dialogue is entirely in the Maori language - while delivering the kind of pared-back revenge story you might expect from a western or a samurai film.
In other words, The Dead Lands is both unique to its country and universal; its historical setting and subtitles might suggest something for the arthouse crowd, but its bruising fight scenes will please the action crowd, too. What’s more, James Cameron is officially a fan.
As The Dead Lands makes its debut in UK cinemas, we caught up with Toa Fraser...
- 5/28/2015
- by ryanlambie
- Den of Geek
Toa Fraser's Maori thriller The Dead Lands is a solid entry in the loose subgenre we might call the "ethnographic action film" — earlier examples of which include Mel Gibson's Apocalypto or Zacarias Kunuk's Atanarjuat; The Fast Runner or Kevin Reynolds's Rapa Nui. In these movies, which vary dramatically in tone and quality, basic action tropes are recycled, and in some cases revitalized, as we're immersed in remote, sometimes extinct, native cultures. Primal tales of vengeance or pursuit or loyalty gain mythic power through the sheer novelty of context. That's the idea, anyway. Sometimes, the setting is just a crutch. You won't necessarily learn all that much about Maori culture while watching The Dead Lands, which is set in a pre-colonial stretch of wilderness thick with forests, mountains, and caves — all beautifully shot by Leon Narbey. Fraser himself is a half-Fijian director who works out of New Zealand,...
- 4/17/2015
- by Bilge Ebiri
- Vulture
Venue: Sydney Film Festival
In the stunning docu-drama "Rain of the Children", New Zealand-born filmmaker Vincent Ward revisits the past to unravel a mystery that's niggled at him for three decades. Here meticulous research reveals the family secrets burdening the stooped old Maori woman who was, in fact, the subject of Ward's 1978 observational film "In Spring One Plants Alone". It's a masterful companion piece -- a kind of marathon director's cut -- but it also stands alone as a haunting historical epic. "Rain" is guaranteed a warm Art House reception.
Ward introduces us to his 21-year-old self with amusement. Back then he was an earnest art student, who lived with 80-year-old Puhi and her mentally ill adult son, Niki, in the remote ranges of New Zealand's north island. He recorded striking images of this old woman scratching out a lonely existence and fussing over her son. But he sensed a troubling undercurrent and, 30 years later, set out to discover what it was she was trying to chase away with her ceaseless praying.
Combining early photographs, personal narration, interviews with descendants of her tribe and gloriously shot re-enactments, Ward paints a portrait of a remarkable woman who believed she was cursed -- and for good reason.
After being chosen by the Maori prophet Rua Kenana to marry his son, she fell pregnant at the age of 14. Over the years, she had another 13 children, all but one of whom either died or was taken from her. Niki was her only surviving child.
It's a tragic tale, compelling in its personal detail and almost mythic in its sweep. As he showed in "Map of the Human Heart", Ward is a romantic, but here he undertakes an almost forensic exploration of both rational and mystical interpretations.
Is Puhi cursed, as much of her tribe believes, or the victim of bad luck? Was her son brain-damaged in an accident or truly visited by demons? Ward communicates through grand gestures and indelible images: The stark beauty of a White Horse standing watch over a suddenly orphaned Niki is not soon forgotten.
Production companies: Wayward Films, Forward Films and Vincent Ward Films. Cast: Puhi Tatu, Niki Takao, Temuera Morrison, Rena Owen, Miriama Rangi. Director: Vincent Ward. Screenwriters: Vincent Ward, Alison Carter and Louis Nowra. Producers: Margaret Slater, Tainui Stephens and Vincent Ward. Director of photography: Adam Clark, Leon Narbey. Production designer: Shayne Radford. Music: Jack Body and John Gibson. Costume designer: Pauline Bowkett, Gavin McLean. Editor: Chris Plummer. Sales agent: New Zealand Film Commission/Rialto.
No MPAA rating, 98 minutes.
In the stunning docu-drama "Rain of the Children", New Zealand-born filmmaker Vincent Ward revisits the past to unravel a mystery that's niggled at him for three decades. Here meticulous research reveals the family secrets burdening the stooped old Maori woman who was, in fact, the subject of Ward's 1978 observational film "In Spring One Plants Alone". It's a masterful companion piece -- a kind of marathon director's cut -- but it also stands alone as a haunting historical epic. "Rain" is guaranteed a warm Art House reception.
Ward introduces us to his 21-year-old self with amusement. Back then he was an earnest art student, who lived with 80-year-old Puhi and her mentally ill adult son, Niki, in the remote ranges of New Zealand's north island. He recorded striking images of this old woman scratching out a lonely existence and fussing over her son. But he sensed a troubling undercurrent and, 30 years later, set out to discover what it was she was trying to chase away with her ceaseless praying.
Combining early photographs, personal narration, interviews with descendants of her tribe and gloriously shot re-enactments, Ward paints a portrait of a remarkable woman who believed she was cursed -- and for good reason.
After being chosen by the Maori prophet Rua Kenana to marry his son, she fell pregnant at the age of 14. Over the years, she had another 13 children, all but one of whom either died or was taken from her. Niki was her only surviving child.
It's a tragic tale, compelling in its personal detail and almost mythic in its sweep. As he showed in "Map of the Human Heart", Ward is a romantic, but here he undertakes an almost forensic exploration of both rational and mystical interpretations.
Is Puhi cursed, as much of her tribe believes, or the victim of bad luck? Was her son brain-damaged in an accident or truly visited by demons? Ward communicates through grand gestures and indelible images: The stark beauty of a White Horse standing watch over a suddenly orphaned Niki is not soon forgotten.
Production companies: Wayward Films, Forward Films and Vincent Ward Films. Cast: Puhi Tatu, Niki Takao, Temuera Morrison, Rena Owen, Miriama Rangi. Director: Vincent Ward. Screenwriters: Vincent Ward, Alison Carter and Louis Nowra. Producers: Margaret Slater, Tainui Stephens and Vincent Ward. Director of photography: Adam Clark, Leon Narbey. Production designer: Shayne Radford. Music: Jack Body and John Gibson. Costume designer: Pauline Bowkett, Gavin McLean. Editor: Chris Plummer. Sales agent: New Zealand Film Commission/Rialto.
No MPAA rating, 98 minutes.
- 6/30/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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