As Toronto cleans up after the biggest of its 80+ annual festivals, the Toronto IFF, October’s imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival begins to unveil its programme for next month’s outing, the festival’s 16th.
The NZ features named for the programme include Toa Fraser’s The Dead Lands and Rene Naufahu’s The Last Saint (pictured above). Kim Webby’s recently-premiered The Price of Peace is the sole NZ feature doco named.
imagineNATIVE’s shorts programme offer an excellent selection of NZ fare, including the world premiere of Louise Potiki Bryant and Kura Te Ua’s Kurawaka. A pair of Wairoa winners, Darren Simmonds’ Inc’d and Mike Jonathan’s Ow What!, also appear.
Riwia Brown’s animated In the Rubbish Tin and Lisa Reihana’s Tai Whetuki – House of Death make the trip, alongside Giacomo Martelli’s Samoa-set Coral, produced by Images & Sound’s Grant Baker and Steve Finnigan.
Two projects by Mika are named. The first is music video Taniwha, the second is upcoming web series The Aroha Project, one of two NZ digital projects featured in the industry programme. The other project is Robert Pouwhare’s app Mokomoko, part of a Ministry of Education Maori language programme.
In the conference programme, the Canada Media Fund will present on co-production opportunities, one of which was announced yesterday – a renewal of the CMF-NZ On Air fund for digital media projects.
imagineNATIVE is the world’s largest festival of indigenous screen content. Among the many sponsors of the event is the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), one of Maori Television’s partners in the World Indigenous Television Broadcasters Network initiative.
imagineNATIVE runs 14 – 18 October in Toronto.