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CROOKED EARTH
Pandora presents a Communicado production, in association with the New Zealand Film Commission and New Zealand On Air
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Prod: Robin Scholes; Exec prod: Peter Beilby, Henri Dorlet, Ernst Goldschmidt; Dir: Sam Pillsbury; Scr: Greg McGee, Waihoroi Shortland; Ph: David Gribble; Prod des: Kai Hawkins; Cost des: Gavin McLean; Ed: Chris Plummer; Mus: James Hall.
With Temuera Morrison (Will Bastion), Lawrence Makoare (Kahu Bastion), Jaime Passier-Armstrong (Ripeka Bastion), Quinton Hita (Api), Nancy Brunning (Marama), Sydney Jackson (Pettigrew), George Henare (Tipene), Stan Wolfgramm (Timo).
International distribution: Pandora.
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Scholes agrees, but points out that the horse-back scenes are a lot more than just pictorially powerful. “It had always been my intention to make a western, but it was important to make sense of it in a contemporary way,” she says. “If you go to some of the more rural areas like Kawhia (where many of our riders came from) or Rotorua, there are still pockets in those districts where breaking in, riding and living with horses is a way of life. So it was a case of using something that exists in little pockets of contemporary New Zealand and making that much more substantial.”
For his part, Pillsbury was able to fulfil a decades-long ambition to make another feature in the country where he grew up. Born in Connecticut, he moved to New Zealand as a teenager and began his film-making career there, but has spent most of the past 15 years in North America, where he directed such films as Zandalee
and Free Willy 3.
“I’ve waited for years to come back to New Zealand for something like this,” says the director. “It’s about the land and the people - an intense, passionate drama. And I have a top crew, a fantastic cast and a powerful screenplay.
Once Were Warriors star Temuera Morrison is Will Bastion, a Maori who returns to his people after 18 years as a
professional soldier and immediately comes into conflict with his brother, Kahu (Lawrence Makoare)
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“It was not totally unfamiliar territory for me, either,” he adds. “I made a documentary on Ralph Hotere [a Maori painter] in 1974 and a film about urban Maraes [Maori meeting houses] for the National Film Unit, so I’m not a stranger to the culture, although I don’t speak the language. I had no problems at all directing what is essentially a Maori story, but I was always very aware that I could have. I told Robin at the outset that I needed someone I could call on if there was ever an issue problem.”
| “It had always been my intention to make a western, but it was important to make sense of it in
a contemporary way” |
Scholes asked Waihoroi Shortland, who had made the first major adjustments to McGee’s screenplay, to help Pillsbury out, much as he had done with Jane Campion on The Piano. “I could not and would not have done this picture without Wasi,” declares Pillsbury. “He was my cultural and spiritual light. And if he ever said ‘You don’t understand’, I’d say ‘OK, well explain it to me then: I can’t be a Maori.’
Kahu (Lawrence Makoare)
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“But,” he adds, “I also didn’t want to be too politically correct, because that can be so boring. You’ve got to be brave enough to thumb your nose at some of that. Crooked Earth is an adventure, but it also appealed to me on quite a deep level, because it’s about something fundamentally important.”
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