E oho! Live cinema: The Te Kooti trail

1920s film screening

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision is delighted to co-present this screening with the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata in support of the exhibition He Riri Awatea: Filming the New Zealand Wars and the National Library’s E oho! Waitangi 2022 event series.

New Zealand’s ‘greatest production’

Inspired by New Zealand’s ‘rough-hewn story’, filmmaker Rudall Hayward used events from New Zealand history in his big-screen adaptations. Hayward adapted his screenplay for The Te Kooti Trail from an account in James Cowan’s history The New Zealand Wars (1922).

At Te Poronu, near Whakatāne, Te Kooti’s forces besiege a mill, killing miller Jean Guerrin and taking his wife, Erihapeti and her sister, Monika captive. Monika defies Te Kooti, refusing to reveal where Jean has buried his ammunition. A diverse cast included many with iwi connections to — and even personal experience of — the historical events. Billed as New Zealand’s ‘greatest production’, The Te Kooti Trail had its world premiere at the Strand Theatre, Auckland on 17 November 1927.

Includes live piano and taonga pūoro

Along with piano accompaniment by Deakin Palmer, this performance is accompanied and interpreted by the prominent taonga pūoro artist Jerome Kavanagh Poutama, which will bring a new dimension to this important early New Zealand film.

Come early to secure the best seat!

About the speakers

Jerome Kavanagh Poutama (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Kahungunu me te rohe o Mōkai Pātea) is a Grammy award-winning solo taonga pūoro practitioner and the current composer-in-residence at the New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington. He began his musical journey as a 14-year-old learning from his kuia and whānau. He developed his own unique kōauau playing style by spending time in the Ruahine Ranges listening and mimicking native bird calls with his voice.

Annabel Cooper is co-curator for the New Zealand Portrait Gallery exhibition He Riri Awatea: Filming the New Zealand Wars (2022) and author of Filming the Colonial Past: The New Zealand Wars on Screen (Otago University Press, 2018).

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