SONG of the KAURI
Rating 8.5/10 Director: Mathurin Molgat 85 mins
Song of the Kauri has been over five years in the making. I have had 3 children and built a house over that time. The world has undergone myriad changes and the glaciers are melting. In just over 10 times that time frame a Kauri forest would be ready to harvest. Song of the Kauri has been an amazing journey full of friends and adventures, songs and challenges. Now it is on the big screen and set free finally to tell it’s story. I was entrusted to tell this story and am humbled by the challenge. The characters are here inside the film, forever embedded into the landscape that is motion pictures.
A documentary should enchant and entertain but it should also question and incite revolution. It should cry out for those who can’t hear, it should support the voices of those who can’t speak. SOTK has a quiet voice, a singsong voice, a voice from the past and a voice of the future. Aotearoa is calling.
The Music
I have been friends with Laurie Williams for many years and have had the pleasure of touring the world with one of his kauri guitars. One day we were chatting and he mentioned that a northland forester named Steve Lane has spoken to him about a kauri tree on a forest block called Waingarara owned by Karamea Davis. Karamea had a few felling permits but had long ago stopped taking any timber.
The Williams guitar that I owned came from a tree felled on Waingarara over 80 years ago and Steve wondered whether the kauri grown there had some special characteristics that made the guitars sound so good. My guitar was made from recycled house beam. Laurie and Steve went to visit Karamea to discuss the possibility of activating the permit to fell a kauri tree. Laurie had brought a few instruments and when Karamea saw them he said “I want my trees to sing”. He believed that if Laurie made instruments from his kauri that would travel the world, it would be the strongest environmental message he could hope for. We wondered, could this forest block produce the perfect guitar timber? What was the chance that 80 years later the kauri here could still possess that magic tone?
I knew this could be a very special film. An environmental film full of music, forestry, hand crafted instruments, New Zealand’s incredible natural beauty and friends. I grew up bathed in politics, my father was a politician and our breakfast table was a constant forum for social change. I am fascinated by lutherie and had an uncle who designed violin tooling machines after the war in France. I love forests and grew up roaming the backwoods and felled trees for a living in the late 70′s. I have been a professional guitarist for 20 years. I needed to tell this story and started the journey that day, I hope you enjoy it.
Mathurin Molgat Director
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.
Rating 8.5/10 Director: Mathurin Molgat 85 mins
Song of the Kauri has been over five years in the making. I have had 3 children and built a house over that time. The world has undergone myriad changes and the glaciers are melting. In just over 10 times that time frame a Kauri forest would be ready to harvest. Song of the Kauri has been an amazing journey full of friends and adventures, songs and challenges. Now it is on the big screen and set free finally to tell it’s story. I was entrusted to tell this story and am humbled by the challenge. The characters are here inside the film, forever embedded into the landscape that is motion pictures.
A documentary should enchant and entertain but it should also question and incite revolution. It should cry out for those who can’t hear, it should support the voices of those who can’t speak. SOTK has a quiet voice, a singsong voice, a voice from the past and a voice of the future. Aotearoa is calling.
The Music
I have been friends with Laurie Williams for many years and have had the pleasure of touring the world with one of his kauri guitars. One day we were chatting and he mentioned that a northland forester named Steve Lane has spoken to him about a kauri tree on a forest block called Waingarara owned by Karamea Davis. Karamea had a few felling permits but had long ago stopped taking any timber.
The Williams guitar that I owned came from a tree felled on Waingarara over 80 years ago and Steve wondered whether the kauri grown there had some special characteristics that made the guitars sound so good. My guitar was made from recycled house beam. Laurie and Steve went to visit Karamea to discuss the possibility of activating the permit to fell a kauri tree. Laurie had brought a few instruments and when Karamea saw them he said “I want my trees to sing”. He believed that if Laurie made instruments from his kauri that would travel the world, it would be the strongest environmental message he could hope for. We wondered, could this forest block produce the perfect guitar timber? What was the chance that 80 years later the kauri here could still possess that magic tone?
I knew this could be a very special film. An environmental film full of music, forestry, hand crafted instruments, New Zealand’s incredible natural beauty and friends. I grew up bathed in politics, my father was a politician and our breakfast table was a constant forum for social change. I am fascinated by lutherie and had an uncle who designed violin tooling machines after the war in France. I love forests and grew up roaming the backwoods and felled trees for a living in the late 70′s. I have been a professional guitarist for 20 years. I needed to tell this story and started the journey that day, I hope you enjoy it.
Mathurin Molgat Director
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.
This Way of Life
Rating: 9/10 Directors: Tom and Sumner Burstyn. 87 mins
Best Documentary Qantas Film & Television Awards. Winner Best Director Thomas Burstyn, Qantas Film & Television Awards
Synopsis
Shot over four years, This Way of Life is an intimate portrait of Peter Karena and his family. Masterful in the saddle and Hollywood handsome, Peter lives by an internal code of values and honour largely lost in modern times. Though European, Peter was adopted into a Maori family and is Maori in all but skin. He is a horse-whisperer, philosopher, hunter, and builder, a husband and father. Despite seemingly overwhelming challenges, Peter refuses to compromise. Especially troubling to Peter is his broken relationship with his adopted father – a malevolent man who refuses to leave him alone.
Peter’s wife Colleen Karena (Ngati Maniapoto) is the keeper of her family’s taonga tuku iho (heritage). A true matriarch, Colleen sees family as the centre of the universe and mothering as the world’s most important job. As the film progresses, we discover her quiet exterior conceals a profound and beautifully articulated approach to parenting resulting in the physical competence and emotional openness of her children.
The film portrays the intimate life of the Karena family. In their early 30’s, Peter and Colleen have six kids and 50 horses. We follow them up into the Ruahine ranges and down to their hidden beach camp. Against these isolated backdrops we explore family relationships, their connection to nature, their keen survival skills and their absolute intimacy with each other and their horses.
We watch as Peter and Colleen celebrate the birth of a child and cope with a late miscarriage. Their attempts to navigate the discord between Peter and his father culminate in the theft of his valuable herd of horses and the burning of their beloved family home. Now homeless, we watch as Peter steers his family toward a new way of living and being. Regardless of their hardships, the Karenas manage to never lose sight of the magic in the everyday.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Karena children. Untamed and unafraid, the idea of risk is alien to them. To watch seven-year-old Aurora expertly ride a massive stallion bareback with no more than a rope halter asks us to reexamine our ideas of what children are capable of.
In This Way of Life, the Karenas unite their philosophy with their circumstances, turning hardship into a meaningful and satisfying life.
Rating: 9/10 Directors: Tom and Sumner Burstyn. 87 mins
Best Documentary Qantas Film & Television Awards. Winner Best Director Thomas Burstyn, Qantas Film & Television Awards
Synopsis
Shot over four years, This Way of Life is an intimate portrait of Peter Karena and his family. Masterful in the saddle and Hollywood handsome, Peter lives by an internal code of values and honour largely lost in modern times. Though European, Peter was adopted into a Maori family and is Maori in all but skin. He is a horse-whisperer, philosopher, hunter, and builder, a husband and father. Despite seemingly overwhelming challenges, Peter refuses to compromise. Especially troubling to Peter is his broken relationship with his adopted father – a malevolent man who refuses to leave him alone.
Peter’s wife Colleen Karena (Ngati Maniapoto) is the keeper of her family’s taonga tuku iho (heritage). A true matriarch, Colleen sees family as the centre of the universe and mothering as the world’s most important job. As the film progresses, we discover her quiet exterior conceals a profound and beautifully articulated approach to parenting resulting in the physical competence and emotional openness of her children.
The film portrays the intimate life of the Karena family. In their early 30’s, Peter and Colleen have six kids and 50 horses. We follow them up into the Ruahine ranges and down to their hidden beach camp. Against these isolated backdrops we explore family relationships, their connection to nature, their keen survival skills and their absolute intimacy with each other and their horses.
We watch as Peter and Colleen celebrate the birth of a child and cope with a late miscarriage. Their attempts to navigate the discord between Peter and his father culminate in the theft of his valuable herd of horses and the burning of their beloved family home. Now homeless, we watch as Peter steers his family toward a new way of living and being. Regardless of their hardships, the Karenas manage to never lose sight of the magic in the everyday.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Karena children. Untamed and unafraid, the idea of risk is alien to them. To watch seven-year-old Aurora expertly ride a massive stallion bareback with no more than a rope halter asks us to reexamine our ideas of what children are capable of.
In This Way of Life, the Karenas unite their philosophy with their circumstances, turning hardship into a meaningful and satisfying life.