It is a tradition of the FIFO to organise a special evening on the eve of the opening of the festival. This year, the Maori film Cousins was screened in the Grand Theatre of the Maison de la Culture. Adapted from the novel of the same name, this film tells the story of three Maori cousins. A story written, directed and performed by Maori women.
Three women, three paths, three points of view… The film Cousins tells the story of three Maori cousins with different destinies. They are related by blood but separated by circumstances. Mata is taken away from her family and lives a lonely childhood in fear. Makareta runs away from an arranged marriage to study law. Missy, on the other hand, takes on the role of guardian of the land. The two women have made a promise to each other: to bring Mata, their stolen cousin, home… Adapted from Patricia Grace’s 1992 novel of the same name, Cousins highlights the Maori women’s view of their lives and the impact of British colonisation. The novel was written by a Maori woman and the film was also made by two Maori women. « It was time we heard and saw stories about Maori women because there was a great lack in this area. That’s why I wanted to tell this story, but also to inspire Maori women to get behind the camera, » said co-director Briar Grace-Smith during a Zoom meeting a few minutes before the film’s screening at the Grand Theatre on Monday night. It took years for this novel to be adapted for the big screen. It was only after time had passed and the times had changed that Maori women emerged behind the camera and on the big screen.
Telling the story
Bria Grace-Smith worked with another director, Ainsley Conder, to write the script. While the approach of co-directing may seem surprising for a fiction film, it makes sense in its construction. « We knew that we would have the same vision and we said to ourselves that we didn’t have to have only one director. It was even a pleasure because I don’t have all the responsibility, I had someone to support me. We had disagreements before the shoot but not on the set. We both decided which scenes inspired us and which we wanted to do. For the editing, we were together in the editing room, and we edited in four weeks during the lockdown by Zoom”. From page to screen, it took four years for the directors to find the right actresses to play the roles of the characters at their different ages: children, young adults and adults. This was a difficult casting task as they had to find Maori children and actresses. « We looked in the region where the protagonists of the book were from. We did a lot of auditions with children in many schools. We had to find children with talent but who also had to embody the spirit of the older actresses. It was a huge interconnecting puzzle », the director tells Franck Philippon, a distinguished screenwriter who hosts this meeting before the screening at the Grand Théâtre. A screening that visibly moved the Polynesian audience at the Maison de la Culture.
The link, that essential element
Heimiti is a student at ISEPP, she came with her classmates for this evening event. All of them felt emotional by the end of this special FIFO screening. « I cried … This film touched me a lot, we are all brothers, we are all linked« , confides the young student. Hererii, a fellow student, was touched by the strong bond between the family members of these three cousins. « It’s inspiring and also shows the importance of the bond and the attachment to the land of the ancestors”. Tevahitua, a master’s student at the University of French Polynesia, identified with the protagonists of the film. « I recognised myself as a Polynesian in this link to the family and the land, especially as we are currently experiencing a real estate fluctuation. The return and the notion of the land are important and not an economic issue but a question of belonging and identity« , explains the 23-year-old. The story of these three Maori cousins resonates throughout Oceania. This is also the strength of the FIFO.
Written by Sulianne Favennec
French