Join Other Cinemas for their next film screening event on Monday 17th of June at 6:30pm which will showcase the incredible documentary Patu! (1983) by Māori filmmaker Merata Mita and Fixed star (2021) by Anna Rankin and Alaa’ Breighith. This event has been curated in collaboration with the wonderful Hana Pera Aoake and is part of the new ‘In Solidarities’ film programme.

Patu! is a powerful documentary which follows the growing anti-Apartheid protests that took place in New Zealand during the 1981 South African rugby tour. When Television New Zealand, then Mita’s employer, declined to support her proposal for the film she made it independently with the voluntary support of the marchers and a large team of film industry professionals. After completion, mainstream cinemas refused to screen the film but today, it’s recognised as a landmark in Aotearoa's film history.

Fixed Star is an intertextual work that utilises film and writing to explore conceptions of time and space, living memory, the political moment of the time and the myriad means by which we might mediate our experiences with the absolute, knowing we do so with our subjective experience within a shared objective reality accessed by varying worlds, histories, cultural frameworks, means, understandings, languages, beliefs and practices. Made from shaky and hand held footage, Fixed Star is an intimate conversation between Rankin in LA and Breighith in Hebron where they together contemplate words, land, surveillance, occupation and freedom.

Together, we hope these films will help us begin to explore the interconnected nature of our struggles and how we can build a practice of solidarity that meets the political challenges of our time.

Hana Pera Aoake (Ngaati Hinerangi, Ngaati Mahuta, Ngaati Waewae, Tainui/Waikato, Kai Tahu) is an artist, writer, teacher and mum based in Aotearoa. Hana mostly co-organises Kei te pai press with Morgan Godfery, and is currently undertaking a curatorial residency at the Delfina Foundation in London. In 2020 Hana published their first book A bathful of Kawakawa and hot water with Compound press and their second collection of writing will be published by No more poetry in 2024.

Merata Mita (1942–2010) [Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāi Te Rangi] was a Māori Director, Writer, and Producer. Mita was also a teacher, actor and a mother of seven children. The first Indigenous woman and the first woman to direct a feature film Mauri (1988), Mita aimed to make films that explored Indigenisation and that represented Māori people and their culture specifically for a Māori audience. Mita is responsible for the landmark documentary films such as Patu! (1983), Bastion Point: Day 507 (1980) and Hotere (2001). In 2016, the Merata Mita Fellowship was created by the Sundance Institute for native or Indigenous filmmakers globally at any stage of their career or production. Te Taki A Merata Mita – How Mum Decolonised The Screen, a film about her life was directed by her son Heperi Mita and shown at the Sundance Film Festival in their 2019 programme.

Anna Rankin is a writer, journalist, and filmmaker who lives between Aotearoa and the United States. Alaa' Breighith is an architect, the daughter of the great Palestine from the town of Beit Amr, the immortal emblem “exist is to resist”.

Ka whawhai matou tonu: Imagining solidarities is a film screening of works by Anna Rankin and Alaa’ Breighith and Merata Mita. Pairing these films together is a way of thinking about what solidarity looks like, how to hold space for learning and how entwined but distinct histories of struggle and revolution are.

NB: This screening is free, but we ask that those who are able offer a koha (donation, gift) in solidarity with young people in Palestine, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sudan. This koha will be given to MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians), United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and Islamic Relief.

Other Cinemas is a project focused on the transformational power of film; whether that is showcasing the work of Black and non-white filmmakers; creating networks for Black and non-white creatives to work, learn and collaborate; or using film to document the stories of Black and non-white communities. Other Cinemas regularly hosts free film screenings in ways and spaces that serve our communities and also runs an informal film school collective of young Black and non-white filmmakers which seeks to create a real space for conversation and collaboration. Other Cinemas was set up by Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah, two filmmakers who saw the need for better ways to make and share films.