Waru (2017)

The New Zealand anthology film Waru (Briar Grace-Smith, Casey Kaa, Ainsley Gardiner, Katie Wolfe, Chelsea Cohen, Renae Maihi, Paula Jones, Awanui Simich-Pene, New Zealand, 2017) displays the ripple effects of a community trauma caused by the disquieting death of a young boy, the eponymous Waru (eight in Māori). Waru is an unusual film in terms of its narrative organisation and features eight 10-minute single shot sequences shot in a single day. Each segment starts at the same time of the day at 9:59am. Each fragment tells the experience of a different Māori women on the particular morning of the tangi (funeral) of Waru, but in different places. The characters encountered are Waru’s family and relatives, friends and classmates, and the public figures in the Māori society — all struggling with the harshness of grief of Waru’s death. The film is directed by eight different Māori women linked to Waru’s death, involving each person’s awareness of, and responsibility for, their own actions (So Mayer, 2016). The society is faced with guilt, culpability and defeat, and is looking for a way forward in their community. The film explores the sense of responsibility revolving around Waru’s unspoken death, the accusations of guilt and neglect within the insular Māori community. What we see in the film suggests Waru’s cause of death as parental neglect and possible abuse. The themes of culture, custom and shame are impacted when revealing the social, economic and cultural forces.

This essay seeks to discuss the ways in which Waru may be seen as a clear example of “Fourth Cinema’, as defined by Barry Barclay, while also considering whether it fits within any of the three other categories of cinema (first, second and/or third cinema). While the Indigenous lens of storytelling and narrative structure of Waru serves as an example of Fourth Cinema, the film also touches upon the social problems and collective actions as Third Cinema.

Indigenous Media and Fourth Cinema

Indigenous media is classified as “a form of media expression conceptualised, produced, and/or created by Indigenous people across the globe.” (Wilson and Stewart, 2018). In the early 2000s, pioneering Maori filmmaker Barry Barclay advocated the term Fourth Cinema, otherwise known as “Indigenous Cinema” as a late addition to the First-Second-Third Cinema framework to distinguish Indigenous cinema from the established. The term Indigenous is used to define the communities that struggle against geographical displacement and oppression. (Martens, 2012) Barclay attempts to classify all Indigenous cinema under the term “Fourth Cinema”. He describes Fourth Cinema as ‘another cinema. … I am not in First Cinema. The cinema of America. The cinema of the international mass market. I am not in Second Cinema either; in the art house cinema for the cinema buffs of the modern nation state. … And … I am not in Third Cinema also. I am not living in a Third World nation state.’ His purpose in coining Fourth Cinema was “doing justice” to Māori. Waru honours Indigenous voices by rejecting the traditional ways of having a hegemonic point-of-view to display Māori values, instead portrays the subordination of women. The pivotal stories are told in an Indigenous way and is primarily authored by Indigenous women. Instead of the entertainment purpose of First Cinema, Barclay suggests that Fourth Cinema is meant for the purpose of education and to shares the impact and presence of Māori culture. Waru explores the impacts of colonisation, dispossession, and inter-generational trauma as a phenomenon in New Zealand.

Conventional Narrative Storytelling of First Cinema and the Auteurism of Second Cinema

The film Waru challenges the model of conventional narrative storytelling of First Cinema and the auteurism of Second Cinema. The idea of “classic Hollywood narration” deriving from The Classical Hollywood Cinema (1985) by David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, focuses on an individual or small group of individuals who early on encounter discrete and specific goals that are either clearly attained or clearly unattained by the film's end (Luhr, 1990). However, Waru contrasts to the classical narrative mode and is against the principle of cause-effect relationships of events (Turner, 1993). As in Second Cinema, these effects are looser, more tenuous in Waru. It comprises eight powerful vignettes that tells separate, yet relevant stories to show multiple viewpoints. Some stories have little or no link to the narrative and argue to the widespread impact of child abuse in the community. Rather than a series of events that effect one another, Waru is a combination of eight sequences of situations that revolve around a single tragic event. As a result, the film focuses on exploring the characters, the sense of responsibility and grief rather than on a plot that moves from point A to point B.(Urquhart, 2022). The films’ shooting style is serious calibre of filmmaking (Johnson, 2017) that helps to keep the film down-to-earth and naturalistic. The directors are given specific guidelines: a one-shot film with a female Maori lead and a plot centred on Waru's death. The different viewpoints provide a sense of coherence that keeps the plot engaging, even hypnotic. Williamson further adds the notion of collectivity as an important element in the film’s distinctive approach: “Waru’s emphasis on the collective sets it apart and in doing so renders it potentially radical and transformative.” Furthermore, according to Compare Graeme Turner, the conventional expectation from First Cinema encounters a plot centred around a main character played by a star. Waru, on the other hand, features eight protagonists and an ensemble casting that includes first-time actors (Morley, 2018). As a result, Waru’s anthological storytelling opposes to the traditional narrative storytelling of First Cinema.

Second Cinema is centred on the individual expression of the auteur director which shapes every aspect of the film. An auteur is defined “as a filmmaker whose individual style and complete control over all elements of production give a film its personal and unique stamp” (Renée, 2015). These films have a single director who has complete authority over all parts of the production. However, the film Waru has an omnibus genre and a collaborative framework that defies with the traditional (and traditionally male) auteur cinema model (Williamson, 2020).

Waru offers a number of visual continuity procedures including dialogue, mise-en-scéne — props, lighting, camera movement — and sound. The mise-en-scéne of Waru shows realness and authenticity. The film has a single cinematographer (Drew Sturge) that shoots handheld and single-takes throughout the film. These shorts are objective, look unplanned and unmanipulated. In the article “Where Are You?”, the writer and activist So Mayer emphasises this flow and distinguishes Waru from canonical films. According to Mayer, the shift between subjectivities, places and moods between sequences draws the viewer into the scene and asks, ‘Where are you? Where do you stand?’ A natural composition is used by each director to attain this honest visual approach. The camera is mainly at eye level, and the shot is a tracking shot that creates an emotional connection with the audience. Cool temperature and bright natural light gives Waru a fitting for such raw emotive. There is a subtle overexposure that gives the film a dreamlike appearance, which depicts trauma-related dissociation, which is defined as "mental escape," which the protagonists struggle with because physical escape isn’t possible. In the process of developing visual continuity, other contextual parallels become apparent. The film opens with Waru’s simple but devastating voiceover narration, “When I died, I saw the whole world” over a black screen that fills the silence. His narration repeats in the last shot, tying the journeys of the eight shots into one. The timestamp is presented in the same font and on-screen location in non-diegetic titles (9:59 am - 10:00 am) to suggest a new shot. To maintain visual coherence, the film uses contextual similarities in various sequences, such as the same press photo of Waru and actors reappearing in other segments. (Waru’s mother being on-screen in Shots 1 and 5). Furthermore, the film’s score enhances tonal similarities between frames.

Radical militance of third cinema in Waru

Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino’s notion of militant cinema as an internal category of Third Cinema refers to a cinema for the Third World. Third Cinema is defined as the political film movement that is a form of a revolutionary struggle. The notion was developed in opposition to Hollywood cinema (First Cinema) and aimed to overcome the limits assigned to so-called "auteur cinema" (Second Cinema). In a sense, Third Cinema is the ‘most related predecessor of Fourth Cinema’ (Williams, 2008) and is the preservation of popular Indigenous cultures and their expression in opposition to the ruling classes' dominating colonial and imperialist principles (Hayward, 2006). Waru decolonizing political act of decolonisation, and intends to communicate an analogous sociopolitical goal concerning women's social status and the Indigenous female experience. Third Cinema’s aspiration aims to show socially accurate depictions of life. It emphasises social problems and collective actions, confronting issues such as social justice, racial and gender equality, and the distribution of money and power. In Waru, the economic deterioration is shown through the characters struggle in their economically depressed community and its widespread effects upon families. Shot 3 - “Mihi”, directed by Ainsley Gardiner focuses on the frustration and helplessness of the poor. Mihi portrays a single mom that can’t afford to feed her children, fill up her car, or to pay her adolescent daughters fees for a Museum trip. Her two hungry girls ask for "something to eat" as she rummages through the kitchen drawers. Mihi gives them each a plain slice of white bread, but they're not satisfied, so she hands them a can of corn. Waru also examines the patriarchy in Māori, along with the inequality and gender-based violence. Paula Jones’s shot 3 - “Mere”, presents the anguish of the Māori women. Mere, the young adolescent protagonist, and other younger girls are victims of the uncle's sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. Mere's persona exudes vulnerability, boldness, and courage. Mere facing the abuser empowers Māori women to confront the assault. The teen asks "You all know what's going on..When is it going to stop? How many of us have to die before we say …enough!”. The voice of Māori women and girls is an act of defiance and rebellion against this patriarchal oppressed community in these powerful phrases.

To conclude, Waru is not only an example of Fourth Cinema affirming the pre-eminence of the voice of the Indigenous, but also a possible site of polemic as the Third Cinema addresses New Zealand's child abuse rates. Furthermore, the film is an empowering, innovative and feminist filmmaking that gives voice to the hardships of being a female Māori in modern New Zealand, where they are invariably being stigmatised, belittled and marginalised. The Indigenous gaze would be negated if Waru was framed in Hollywood-trained worldwide expectations. The result is a profound film that overcomes the limitations attributed to the so‐called ‘auteur cinema’ and challenges the model of conventional narrative storytelling of First Cinema to place itself outside the surround-ing framework of hegemony.

Melis Şamdancı

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