Merata Mita
Director · 1942 – 2010 · Maketu, New Zealand
Merata Mita, CNZM was a New Zealand actress and filmmaker, as well as a key figure in the growth of the Māori screen industry. Mita was from the Māori tribes of Ngāti Pikiao and Ngāi Te Rangi.
Movies3
Movie6.7DocumentaryThis film is an intimate portrayal of pioneering filmmaker Merata Mita told through the eyes of her children. Using hours of archive footage, some never before seen, her youngest child and director Hepi Mita discovers the filmmaker he never knew and shares the mother he lost, with the world.
Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen
2019 · 7 votes
Movie7.0WarAdventureIn New Zealand in the 1860s the native Māori people fought the British colonials to keep the land guaranteed to them by treaty. The warrior Te Wheke fights for the British until betrayal leads him to seek utu (revenge). The settler Williamson in turn seeks revenge after Te Wheke attacks his homestead. Meanwhile Wiremu, an officer for the British, seems to think that resistance is futile.
Utu
1983 · 33 votes
MovieDocumentaryMaking of documentary on the set of New Zealand's first epic Utu (1983), working with little money and dealing respectfully with matters of cultural protocol. Merata Mita discusses complex issues of inter-cultural conflict.
Making Utu
1983