ART BITE
BELOW
Director Jeremy Leatinu’u
TE WHAKAWHITINGA (2022)
Rolleston Avenue. /Botanic Gardens. Christchurch
Otakaro/Avon Walkway eels. 19.
References
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Te Whakawhitinga by Jeremy Leatinu'u | Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o WaiwhetūTE WHAKAWHITINGA (2022)
11 mins. Original Black & White 16mm film. Cinemascope.1.6:1 Aspect ratio.Or Anamorphic widescreen (Landscape format 5 x 3)Single Channel digital video.Director Jeremy Leatinu’u
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We must delight in Leatinu’u’s individual energies. His recent immersion in Te Reo language classes in 2020, gave him a significant desire to make a Te Reo language film. The film was a curatorial commission and now has gained some security by formally entering into the custodianship of Te puna o Waiwhetu.
There are two kai korero (narrators) Poata Alvie McKree ( Maori artist, poet and playwright) and Hunaara Kaa (Ngati Porou from Tokomaru Bay. Poata is cast in the role of the father’s daughter. Poata comes from Northland and uses her Northland accent. We hear her voice at the introduction of the artwork and at the completion. Hunaara Kaa is cast as the father who narrates the male character. Hunaara said in the korero when this film premiered in 2021, that he once acted in a Thornton Wilder Play, “ Happy Journey” at Te Aute as an adolescent. It prepared him to be a character for Jeremy’s film decades later. What he had learned was that he knew that he must deliver what Jeremy wanted. It is important to know this. A Director works at the film apex. This film voice track along with its soundscore and visuals, has an effusiveness. Jeremy Leatinu’u, a Tagata Moana with Samoan and German ancestry. Leatinu'u has Ngāti Maniapoto whakapapa.
In TE WHAKAWHITINGA , a mere is held up. It pauses. Suspends. It plunges to a cut to a garden digging instrument, a timo, loosening the earth. Before Colonialism, before Industrial Society, Tangata Whenua male responsibilities were demarcated seasonally by mere or Kō.When the moon sees the sun, was the first of his digital projects at Te Puna o Waiwhetu (the Christchurch Art Gallery. It was made in 2019. He honours his grandfather through the visual poetics of one’s relationship with the land. The moon shines through the dusk sky across the ocean. We see the earth being turned ready for planting. Jeremy appropriates the same thump to earth with the timo from this film and puts it into his next one in 2022. This is how personally connected he is with his films. Progressing on to another, in TE WHAKAWHITINGA he has decided to work with themes of life as apparent. The experience was a crossing into a perception of the structure of existence. Psychologically this takes the form of “ crossing ” in its own way. He was given the challenge of the word“crossing” as a prompt for how he commenced his concept. And this got him over Cook Strait. I met Jeremy briefly in Auckland at the screening of Truth or Consequences. 1. Which was his first narrative work, Mai i te kei o te waka ki te ihu o te waka, 2018. 8 mins long. Translated this says, “ from the back of the canoe to the front of the canoe,” After that screening the film went on to the 69th Berlin Berlinale, a substantial International Film event. After the screening I saw in Auckland in 2018, I stood beside Jeremy for a few words. Four members of his whanau stood nearby and looked at him until we finished our conversation. Their faces glowing in the low light, the moment felt special. The whanau showed real regard and gratitude, let alone some awe for him. I want to tell you about that film as I quickly realised that the artist is exploring quite prolifically. The 2018 Film is inspired by narratives he heard and read about of the journey of the Tainui waka. Stories from oral tradition have entered written history in translation in several forms. The first part of this eight minutes is the artist speaking te reo with English subtitles; the second the reverse. Jeremy read aloud each version for this. All the footage is from the point of view off shore or from on the periphery of foliage on the first edge of the land. His offshore point of reference is from Manukau Harbour, telephone poles protruding and single story houses in the distance included. Photographs from that project are cited on page 101 of the Te Puna o Waiwhetu published text, Maori Moving Image. 2022.2It is translation, then, that is a large feature of Leatinu’u’s work. It was fascinating to see him having worked to provide image film length in each cut in the 2018 video - there to aim to fit the balance of text superimpositions with voice over. Also, to take in the low angle pov, as in the implication of the thinking being from the point of view of a waka. The result was a 50% split of Maori to English and English to Maori. That 2018 project Indulged the vast vibration of a mind at work considering arrival eight hundred years ago.
This film, TE WHAKAWHITINGA, is a continued draw on amazement for language. His keenness to korero seems to be pushing him to explore idea tropes with an unaffected, almost earnest sense of a seeking for purity. We don't know, yet, whether he stays poetic or wants to actually explore narrative more, or develops comedy, or leaves Art. We don't know.
TE WHAKAWHITINGA is crafted technically to convey Mātauranga - (ma tow ranga ) place-based values and practices shown in the project that are distinctive to a Māori worldview. The shots that include people show discretion. People in visuals are shown as unidentified for they stand as representative figures; either the man representing the father in the South Island or the men on a break on the line duties for the Electricity Department; or the daughter as photograph holder. The daughter is also represented in the back view standing on a deck above the west sea as the film opens. The male faces are faces kept in the shadows.
We can respectfully value that the partnership between director and DOP/ cinematographer, was also a partnership in post-production. This is a major eleven- minute work filled with many decision- making processes. Leatinu’u and Powell, Ian Powell, clearly committed themselves to horizons and hours together, shaping ways to not be ego driven. Script implication by Leatinu’u on the matter of ancestral war pasts come through with a quite delightful reticence. There is one pivotal shot on the scene that references Tangi tradition. It is the mid shot of the Wahine singing the maimai aroha. Only the wahine arms and hands in front of the torso are in view. The shot applies the theory of Mātauranga . From an essay on Maori Performance, I quote: “During the wailing for the dead, a person might call out "Hapainga te maimai. “ Maimai aroha, posture dance, the women indulged in the swaying motions of the body and arms known as aroarowhaki. This is a sentence from Elsdon Best, a mid history Ethnographer ( 1856 - 1931) It will be interesting to get feedback on his observations.3
The male character senses the health of acts of ritual that bind him within custom and tradition. By the way, vis a vis health, or at least fitness, did you know that in 2015, Leatinu’u was out at Avondale Racecourse, the original site called Waiatarua for training soldiers for World War I. He was running his Military Training camp. There were time recorded fitness tests going on.There is video of it. Portfolio number 463.4
The question will be… well, several questions will be going on….like, what imagery and what sounds originally carried ideas. There were wooden power poles for people in employment in electricity, circa 1924 to 2004. Transpower New Zealand is now a company over 100 years old.
Where to have more visions? I will end on sound score.
Composer Tim Prebble. Prebble?, a ‘modular synth noodler’, is one label of Tim Prebble’s style. We have heard his scores in the films, Boy ( 2010) , The Orator - O Le Tulafale ( 2011) , and many films and TV shows . He was Spartacus R back in 2009. A Wellington-based psychedelic-progressive-rock six-piece,5 Or, in 2013 he created The Birdsong Preludes in the Waitakeres.6 Here is his IMdB file.7You may take from this scrutiny that Jeremy Leatinu’u has worked very hard from 2008 - 2022. Since his immersion in a year of Te Reo in 2020, we sense that he is doubling his mana through language as his tool .
Back to the title, WHAKAWHITINGA. In legalisation it is defined as conveyance. WHAKAWHITINGA is conveyance.8 We reap what we sow with the conveyance of any action. It is not only the exposure of knowledge we have about the facts of existence, of biodiversity as a requirement. When we see, feel and measure sustainability as essential, it is our cultures that translate the stories of existence. It is crossing this truth that gives us insight as to why each generation requires to know their whakapapa.
Thank you.
Readings.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mmRPfQOJ5o&ab_channel=BlackCreativesAotearoa.https://www.artistsjourney.com/blog/constraint-in-art.https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-BesGame-t1-body-d4-d1-d7.html 3. 3. .https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/discover-collections/read-watch-play/maori/maori-gardening-toolsReferences1.https://www.circuit.org.nz/work/truth-or-consequences-trailer2. https://www.nationwidebooks.co.nz/product/maori-moving-image-97818773757363. Best. E. (1856- 1931) p 96 4..https://jeremyleatinuu.com/portfolio/463/5. https://www.last.fm/music/Spartacus+R/+wiki6. Tim Prebble. 2013. “ two months embedded in the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park as an Artist in Residence”. https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK1312/S00317/the-music-of-sound-the-magic-of-place.htm7. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0695670/8. ://www.legalmaori.net/dictionary?omni=whakawhitinga
Berlinhttps://www.berlinale.de/en/archive/jahresarchive/2019/01_jahresblatt_2019/01_jahresblatt_2019.html
websiteJEREMY LEATINU'U
Te Whakawhitinga | Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū