Filmed on location deep in the heart of the rain soaked Urewera ranges, Vincent Ward’s 2008 biopic Rain of the Children is an evocative unearthing of personal and national memory. As a 21 year old art school graduate Ward made his film, In Spring One Plants Alone (1981), a documentary exploring traditional M_ori life through the lens of Puhi, an elderly Tuhoe woman, and her mentally ill son Niki. Ward spent two years living in the home of his subjects in their isolated rural community sharing in their way of life and in their story. Thirty years on Puhi and her son have passed away and Ward revisits their story to answer questions he has held throughout these intervening decades, to find closure to the mystery surrounding Puhi’s life.
The filmmaker’s search uncovers extraordinary details from Puhi’s long life; principally that she was at the heart of the community set up by Tuhoe Prophet/leader/activist Rua Kenana in the early 20th century on Maungapohatu, Tuhoe’s sacred mountain. She was married to Rua’s eldest son Whatu but very soon things turned sour. After a large number of her children died from disease she was deemed, and firmly believed herself, to be under a curse. It was a harsh life laboured under the fear of this curse that turned her into the continually praying sad and solitary figure that Ward came to know as a young man. Read the rest of this entry »
