Screened as part of NZIFF 2008

Rain of the Children 2008

Directed by Vincent Ward

Vincent Ward's deeply personal and incredibly moving film unravels and re-imagines the history-tossed life of Puhi, the elderly Tuhoe woman he first filmed as a young filmmaker in 1978.

Aotearoa New Zealand In English and Te reo Māori with English subtitles
102 minutes 35mm

Director, Screenplay

Producers

Vincent Ward
,
Marg Slater
,
Tainui Stephens

Iwi co-producer

Kero Nancy Tait

Co-producer

Catherine Fitzgerald

Photography

Leon Narbey
,
Adam Clark

Editor

Chris Plummer

Production designer

Shayne Radford

Music

John Gibson
,
Jack Body

With

Miriama Rangi
,
Rena Owen
,
Temuera Morrison
,
Taungaroa Emile
,
Waihoroi Shortland
,
Toby Morehu
,
Mahue Tawa
,
Mikaira Tawhara
,
Harmony Wihapi

Festivals

Sydney 2008

Elsewhere

"Vincent Ward's (River Queen, Map of the Human Heart) deeply personal and incredibly moving film unravels and re-imagines the story of Puhi, the Tuhoe woman he documented in 1978 for his early film In Spring One Plants Alone. Then she was 80 and caring for her schizophrenic adult son, and Ward was 21, a young art student capturing her way of life. While not the subject of his earlier film, Puhi believed herself to be cursed, and this unknowable curse is what preoccupies Ward now. Puhi, he discovers, was an extraordinary woman. Chosen by Tuhoe prophet Rua Kenana to marry his son, she survived the 1916 police raid on Rua's Maungapohatu community and went on to have 14 children. Cutting between early footage, his own to-camera narration, contemporary interviews with Tuhoe descendents, and magnificently recreated historical sequences (featuring Rena Owen as the older Puhi among a superb cast of Maori actors); Ward reveals both the heartrending background of Puhi's belief in the curse, and her lasting power over him." — Clare Stewart, Sydney Film Festival 2008