Remembering Merata Mita

Swimming against the tide becomes an exhilarating experience.

It makes you strong. I am completely without fear now.

— Merata Mita — Passed away 31 May 2010

Despite many years of working with Maori film companies, I did not know Merata well — I only met her a couple of times in crowd situations. But her impact on this Pakeha was still huge — and mostly because of one film. So please forgive me if I focus here on what was just one event in a series of significant contributions to the film industry in Aotearoa.

In 1981, I was merely one of thousands of Kiwis who were forced into confrontation with the NZ Police’s Red Squad during the protests against South African ‘apartheid’ in the form of the “whites only” Springbok rugby tour of New Zealand. But I can say without equivocation that the 20 minutes or so in Palmerston North when I was unable to move, pressed up against the single line of protest marshals separating us from the Red Squad by a crowd of 5,000 still trying to march down a street the Red Squad had shut off to us (in contravention of the prior agreement made between the police and the protest organisers) was the scariest moment in my life.

I can still see the squad members in their riot gear rhythmically stamping their feet and thrusting their long batons forward endlessly the whole hour or more it took for the marching group to take the forced turn-off; and I can still hear the megaphone chant of the squad leader repeating endlessly in an inhuman monotone: “When it happens it will be sudden and fast. Keep moving, you lot, keep moving…” (Not “If” but “When.”)

But my experience was minor, of course, almost trivial when compared to what happened in Wellington’s Molesworth Street one evening a few days later, when the police did baton a woman aged over 70, amongst others. My female friend who was beside that elderly woman had nightmares about that night right up until she died… And as for the clowns that were attacked by police near Eden Park a few weeks later…

So I find it hard to imagine the unbelievable courage that Merata and her colleagues (camera and sound people, and others) showed in filming these events. What we found out later about the lengths that the police went to in order to try to prevent the film being made, both during the tour and after — the footage was apparently smuggled overseas for processing and editing when the police were trying to seize it — only makes the achievement even more remarkable.

Over the years since 1983, when Merata Mita’s extraordinary documentary of those months of infamy was released, I’ve often wondered whether the impact of that film on me was so great simply because I had been involved in a couple of the events depicted…

So I was gratified to hear Graeme Tuckett say this on Radio NZ’s Wednesday morning film review:

“…the collaboration between Merata Mita and (editor) Annie Collins that produced Patu! *to this day I’d regard as the greatest documentary that New Zealand has ever produced, and one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen in my life.

She really did get in amongst it with a succession of camera people and sound recordists, and she brought back a record of the front lines that has seldom been equalled by documentary makers anywhere in the world.

If* Patu! was Merata’s only legacy, it would be a great one. The fact that she went on to reinvent herself as a producer, to continue to direct, and to be an incredible mentor to many, many New Zealanders within the film industry — she’s just gone far, far too soon.”

Last week I was tutoring a bunch of students at Unitec in Auckland. I cannot recall exactly how we got on to discussing the tour and Merata’s film, but I do remember realising with a jolt that not one of the people I was working with was even born when that film was being made! I implored them, as I do all of you, to watch — if you’ve never done so before — that film. To understand New Zealand and New Zealanders, and the 1980s in particular, I cannot imagine 2 hours better spent.

NZ On Screen has an extremely good biography of Merata, full of concise but plentiful detail.

www.nzonscreen.com/person/merata-mita/biography

NZ On Screen also has the full film of Patu! available to watch at home — for free!

www.nzonscreen.com/watch/all/documentary/12

— Tony Forster