Ray Waru: Māori broadcasting pioneer...

Ray Waru has had a long and distinguished career as a producer and director in both television and radio. He began his TV career working on factual series such as Country Calendar, Fair Go, People Like Us and Tomorrow’s World. In 1980 he established the Māori television production unit at TVNZ, and launched the first regular Māori primetime show Koha. Waru went on to work on major documentary series Our People Our Century and Frontier of Dreams. 

In this ScreenTalk, Waru talks about:

• Discovering an infamous wine while directing Country Calendar
• Having the freedom to be creative on People Like Us
• Introducing Sharon Crosbie to the world on Tomorrow’s World
• The ideological problems of the first regular Māori primetime programme Koha
• Making New Zealand history popular on Our People Our Century
• How Frontier of Dreams tried to make history fun and exciting
• Making deals to get the international footage for the series

This video was first uploaded on 29 April 2013, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Interview, Camera and Editing – Andrew Whiteside