Writer-director Taratoa Stappard is an artist who tells stories of his lineage, and his latest film, “Mārama,” is a tribute to the ancestral women who risked it all to do the same during a much more oppressive time.
In the Victorian-era horror-revenge film, now available on VOD via Dark Sky Films and Watermelon Pictures, Mārama (Ariāna Osborne) is a young Māori woman compelled to travel from New Zealand to England with the promise of information about her heritage. Mārama, who was separated early from her parents, jumps at the opportunity, but is soon given a strange offer by a British Māori enthusiast (Toby Stephens), who says the letter writer has died, but she might as well stay and be the governess for his daughter. Dark visions and secrets quickly come to light, as Mārama grapples with her heritage in the shadow of colonizers.
Stappard, born in New Zealand to a Māori mother and a British father, smiles warmly while telling stories about his great-grandmother and her identical twin sister, who were also born of an English father and a Māori mother. They were expelled from several schools by 1896 at just 16 years old, and followed their hearts to do traditional performances at a time when celebrating their people was frowned upon in society.
“It’d be fair to say it was a defiant cultural gesture, a rebellious act,” Stappard says.
After getting traditional tā moko facial tattoos and acting as tour guides, the young women formed a music act called Princess Rangiriri and her 9 Maori Maids with other performers, and went on a world tour around New Zealand, Australia, America and the U.K.
“As my mum told me these stories, I thought, ‘What must it have been like for a woman like my great-grandmother with a tā moko on her face? To go around the world and sing and dance and entertain those people who had been and were still colonizing her people within her life?'” he says. “What was that like?”
The curiosity and drive to understand her lineage fuel Mārama in the film. Given that Stappard was hoping to learn more about his own bloodline, he was able to build ideas from the experts he surrounded himself with.
“I was taking any little scrap like that that I could from the Māori experts that I worked with,” he says. “If someone’s got a gem, I’ll have it. If they’re offering something, I’ll take it. There’s probably an embarrassing number of gems that were not my idea, because I didn’t even know it was a thing. I wrote the script, I was walking backwards into it, finding out more and more and more as I could, and just magpieing ideas along the way, or taking any offerings I could get and including them. It’s a privilege. I got paid a little bit to learn about a culture that I didn’t really know that much about because I hadn’t had any lived experience of Māori time, the Māori culture. It was a real pleasure.”
One of the film’s key sequences — in which Mārama performs a ferocious Māori dance called the haka — was Stappard’s idea, but grew much more impactful with the help of a traditional choreographer.
“When I shot that, it was a nervous moment for me, because all I’d done was write a line in the script: ‘Mārama performs a furious haka of defiance, insulting the audience that she’s disgusted with,’ something like that,” he says. “But we had to compose a haka, because you can’t just appropriate any old haka from the tribe. It was, for me, the most challenging part of the shoot, because we had the extras, costumes, and production was anxious that we would get it all because we couldn’t go over because we’ve got too many people. It was a one-shot number, no movement, nothing. But I had never seen [Osborne] do it, because it wasn’t in my wheelhouse to inform her about how to do the haka. She’d worked on it with Māori consultant Ngahuia Koppa: Her language, her pronunciation, her accent, and how she might hold herself, but especially the choreography and the movement of the haka. When it happened, it was the first time I’d seen it. The first take, I was literally weeping. I said, ‘I have no notes. It was beautiful.'”
Despite the beauty of the dance, the pair asked for a second take, which was even more of a powerhouse performance. Stappard was stunned when he learned of the subtle but critical change that took place.
“It was even better the second time, and we wrapped,” he says. “I had to ask, of course, ‘What the fuck did you tell Ariāna? What was your note?’ She said, ‘Oh, nothing major. I just reminded her to weaponize her dress.'”
“Mārama” ended up both a critical darling and festival hit, with its Toronto International Film Festival world premiere in September leading to enthusiastic screenings around the world, from New Orleans’ horror-focused Overlook Film Festival to the Zurich Film Festival.
Yet Stappard’s journey with his characters and the culture is just beginning, as he says “Mārama” is the first of a trilogy. Up next is “Anahira,” followed by “Taumanu,” based on a short film he made in 2022 that was funded by TV New Zealand. His guiding light on the trio of films is Māori terms that speak to the tonal direction.
“Any filmmaker who says they don’t look at their Letterboxd reviews is bullshit. I do, right? I look at all the things,” he says. “The ones that I love are the ones that go, ‘This film’s too short. I wanna know more! What happened?’ Funny you should mention, because it’s the beginning of a trilogy. There are three concepts, or three Māori words, that I lean into: Whakapapa is lineage, whānau is family, and utu is vengeance.”
