Loading Docs 2021 - Wind Song and Rain

Hone Tuwhare was a beloved Māori writer, best known for his poem Rain. He died in 2008, before his great-granddaughter, poet Manaia Tuwhare-Hoani, got to know him. In this short documentary, Tuwhare-Hoani travels to Tuwhare's old Kaka Point crib in South Otago, where he spent happy years living and writing. She describes in te reo Māori how strange it feels to lose someone that "the world knew...before me". She reads a poem she wrote for her koro, celebrating how his poetry connects her to the natural world. Wind, Song and Rain is directed by fellow poet Matariki Bennett (Beyond the Veil).

His temperament, as expressed through his poetry, was as mercurial as the New Zealand weather, running a gamut of emotions. He was shaman-like too, in the way he sought in verse imagery to parallel gurgling streams, to invoke the bass chuckle of mighty rivers. He was a coast watcher, responsive to the sea in its many moods, and in one poem imagines ‘holding hands with the sea’. And he wrote about rain in indelible lines. He conjured with rain, made spells and charms from its presence, rendered it visible and memorably metaphoric, as in his poem “Rain’.

– XXXX Excerpt from a profile of poet Hone Tuwhare, Poetry Archive website

Key Cast & Crew

Fred Renata

Cinematographer

Zane Neki

Editor

Rachel Fawcett

Producer

Tihema Bennett

Composer

Matariki Bennett

Director

Juliette Veber

Producer