Aotearoa New Zealand’s history of Indigenous political activism inevitably informs its media landscape. Māori are tangata whenua (or the Indigenous peoples) of Aotearoa and Māori cultural practices therefore play a critical role in the country’s emerging trans media canon. Barry Barclay’s influence—as a scholar and practitioner of Fourth cinema—on local trans media production is particularly evident as queer, trans and takatāpui creatives enact Fourth Cinema principles in their own work.
An Indigenous filmmaker in his own right, Barclay’s scholarship advocates for cinema that privileges both the Indigenous gaze and Indigenous audiences, asking how Māori filmmakers like himself might “take this maverick yet fond friend of ours—the camera—into the Māori community and be confident it will act with dignity.” His commitment to foregrounding Indigenous subjectivities echoes trans scholarship’s shifting interest from representation to embodiment, but it also highlights how cinema enacts moments of cultural resistance.
Colonial legacies
Any discussion of Aotearoa cinema must acknowledge the violent colonial legacies that continue to shape the country’s political and cultural landscape. Aotearoa’s founding documents—Te Tiriti o Waitangi and its English translation—outline a partnership between the British crown and Māori that the British have, since 1840, used to justify the imperial project of colonisation in Aotearoa. Tensions between Māori and Pākehā have remained a central concern of the country’s national cinema since its inception in 1889. During the twentieth century, Aotearoa’s state-controlled media industries were mainly concerned with producing a coherent (and somewhat contrived) portrait of a thriving ‘bicultural’ nation-state. Biculturalism, in this instance, was the end goal of a process of assimilation that aimed to strip Māori of their cultural heritage in service of the colonial project.
Brendan Hokowhitu and Vijay Devadas point out that imperial ideologies that desire the subjugation of Indigenous peoples drive these kinds of representations. Through the process of translating and sanitizing Indigenous worldviews for the benefit of white audiences—and by encouraging Indigenous peoples to internalise these racist images—Hokowhitu and Devadas argue that state-funded media outlets in Aotearoa have used (and in some cases, continue to use) derogatory representations of Indigenous peoples and culture to undermine Indigenous claims to sovereignty.
The relevance of these arguments for trans people is striking. Trans communities are also subject to problematic media representation produced by the cultural majority. Hokowhitu and Devadas’ work clarifies how the process of sanitizing images for majority audiences impacts representations of marginalised communities. Trans cinema produced by cis filmmakers for cis audiences seems inevitably bound by the same normalizing principles as Pākehā-produced images of Māori subjects, building into a transnormative style that has sparked demands for more trans-authored media content.
Decolonising the screen
Partly in response to Aotearoa’s misrepresentation of Indigenous peoples and cultures, a Māori cultural renaissance emerged in the 1970s that brought together political and cultural activism on the cinema screen. Māori filmmakers like Barclay and Merata Mita led these cultural changes. Barclay and Mita spoke explicitly about how Pākehā wielded the film camera as a tool of colonisation, arguing that for Māori to challenge Pākehā’s cultural hegemony they needed Māori people working as technicians, directors, producers, and writers throughout the national film industry. In order to decolonize the screen, Barclay and Mita argued, Māori filmmakers would need to take control of their own images.
Barclay developed his concept of Fourth Cinema following years as a seasoned filmmaker working in both national film and television industries. What distinguished his practice was the careful attention he paid to the production context, intended audience, and distribution of his films. At its core, Barclay’s Fourth Cinema is a communally made film that foregrounds community sovereignty at every level of the text. This means not only working closely with the communities represented in the films—and working towards a creative work that honours that community—but also using the production as an opportunity to upskill and train community members and to return those images to the community at the project’s conclusion. It’s not enough, then, to simply have an Indigenous director; a more holistic understanding of the filmmaking process is critical.
Barclay’s work is eminently valuable to creatives and scholars of trans screen media, particularly as the field grapples with debates about authenticity and authorship. Who decides, for example, what counts as an authentic trans story? Is it enough to hire a trans performer or consultant to qualify a text as trans-authored? And what kind of actionable power do trans creatives maintain while working on mainstream media productions?
Rūrangi
While these debates continue to play out, trans cinema in Aotearoa seems uniquely positioned—because of Barclay’s legacy—to develop media practices that genuinely serve trans and takatāpui communities. Max Currie’s critically acclaimed web series-turned-feature-film Rūrangi encapsulates Barclay’s influence on trans media making. Part of what makes the show exceptional is the production’s investment in trans and Indigenous creatives behind-the-scenes. The filmmakers worked explicitly to create an inclusive set, modelling Barclay’s approach by using the film as an opportunity to upskill trans and takatāpui workers.
Driven by the Māori principle of wananga (or learning through discussion), the diverse writing team worked as a collective to shape the stories and characters that would later make it onto the screen. The result is a dynamic film that strives to represent Te Ao Māori (or a Māori worldview) as inclusive of trans and takatāpui identities.
To demonstrate its commitment to these communities, the production team listed on the film’s website—in detail—the “concrete strategies the team actioned in pursuit of inclusive, sustainable and revolutionary goals – strategies like providing paid professional development opportunities in key creative roles for six gender diverse interns; connecting rainbow youth in Aotearoa with available support services; and pioneering an exceptional approach to trans consultation.” Like Barclay, cisgender director Max Currie worked alongside the vulnerable communities he sought to represent and, in doing so, produced a film that serves those same communities. His film is therefore a striking example of Barclay’s ongoing influence on Aotearoa trans screen media and demonstrates opportunities for creative innovation and community building made available through Fourth Cinema practices.
Contributor details:
Dr Paige Macintosh (they/them) is a Pākehā trans media scholar. They recognise Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa, as mana whenua and tino rangatiratanga of the land where they work and live.
