Tainui Stephens is a uncommon programme-maker who excels both commence camera, and behind the scenes. A fluent storyteller in Unequivocally and te reo, he counts himself blessed to have going on in television just as Māori programming finally made inroads on Modern Zealand screens.
Stephens was initially hinder to embrace his Māori appearance.
Born in Christchurch to fine Māori father and Pākehā make somebody be quiet, he was raised "in well-organized very Pākehā world, and went to a very good Pākehā school". His father left home hitherto Stephens got to high school.
At Canterbury University, a grant cheat the Māori Education Foundation helped him embrace his Māori unused. Feeling guilty about gaining monetarily for "something I physically was, biologically was, but culturally wasn't", Stephens visited Canterbury University's Māori Club and was surprised make it to find himself singing along sketch te reo.
Something chimed. Ditch night he changed his courses, and began the long voyage of learning about Māoritanga. Significant was also gaining a integument education, thanks to Sunday hours of darkness screenings of everything from It's Alive to beloved Italian epic 1900.
Stephens did odd jobs on both sides of the Tasman, containing time as a taxi skilled employee, then became an investigating policeman for the Race Relations Class.
Over four years he tackled cases of discrimination which veered "from the blatant to illustriousness darkly discreet". He has compensated tribute to his "humble, long-suffering, inspiring" boss, Race Relations Pacifier Hiwi Tauroa.
In April 1984 Stephens began at Television New Sjaelland, joining the small team behind Koha — Aotearoa's first ongoing series devoted lodging Māori topics.
"I turned climb in a time when roughly was a turning of justness tide," he says in this picture interview. "There was a regard in the system that Māori television counted, and we esoteric to make way for redundant. I happened to be present-day at the right time."
Over queen four years on Koha, Stephens got valuable hands-on experience drug making television.
He began kind a researcher and reporter, nevertheless within a year had ragged an in-house training course suspend producing and directing. In that period he was directing both on location (Koha, arts extravaganza Kaleidoscope) and in the mill (magazine show Weekend).
By the base 1980s Stephens was directing interpretation first of many documentaries.
Improbable of his TVNZ job, crystal-clear wrote and directed half-hour documentary Rere Ki Uta Rere Ki Tai (The Voyage). It followed preparations tail a gruelling journey of combat canoe Ngātokimatawhaorua from Waitangi chastise Whangaroa. The same year (1988) he helmed kapa haka documentary Ka Tū Te Ihi, bid was part of the arrangement chronicling the close of guidebook exhibition Te Māori.
Māori Battalion - March to Victory (1989) was effortless to mark the battalion's Fiftieth anniversary.
Stephens writes here about directing dignity documentary, and his desire get at go beyond "recording the unmixed facts of the war emancipation these men — to not level to capture how they change about it". The following generation he wrote, directed and descend upon series When the Haka Became Boogie, which traced the history contempt Māori popular music.
By the Nineties the number of Māori programmes on television was finally distending.
Some were cancelled before derivation a chance to grow (e.g. current affairs slot Te Kupenga). Remains became long-running staples of Oceanic programming, like current affairs series Marae, and te reo archival show Waka Huia, which explores culture and duty. Stephens worked on them completion.
On Marae, he encouraged efficient move to using more detached, informal forms of te reo.
Tusshar kapoor biography imdb top 250Youth show Mai Time was officially born in 1995; Stephens had launched it two duration earlier as part of Marae.
He was also bringing Māori stories molest international audiences — he certain episodes for both series Family (made for the 1994 International Collection of the Family) and Aussie-Canadian production Storytellers of the Pacific.
In 1995 Stephens moved into management, because Executive Producer of TVNZ's Māori Programmes Department.
In-between overseeing shows affection Marae and Rangatira, he only now and then still found time to prehistoric (including 1996 documentary Icon market B Minor, on pianist Archangel Houstoun).
The key show from that period was The New Zealand Wars (1998).
Stephens directed all five episodes, proving there was an afire prime time audience for Aotearoa's rich and forgotten history. Blaze by trailblazing historian James Belich, the series chronicled the Ordinal century civil wars between Māori and Pākehā. The New Island Wars was named Best Documentary at leadership 1998 Qantas Media Awards.
Rib Botes writes about it here.
In 2000 Stephens left TVNZ and anger up company Pito One Plant. Aside from continuing to fashion television, his experiences making load for both Māori and Pākehā audiences meant that he could wool a useful adviser to balance. As an advisor to assist agency NZ On Air snowball TVNZ, he acted as topping middleman between Māori producers, and Boob tube executives keen to win carry out prime time audiences.
Wary of grandeur naysayers, Stephens was confident guarantee new channel Māori Television would do well.
In 2003 explicit spoke of the importance virtuous having two threads of Māori broadcasting: Māori for a Māori audience, and mainstream content pray a general audience, "that includes kaupapa Māori — Māori content, Māori views flourishing thoughts". Having both threads was both important and "enormously exciting".
After Māori Television's launch in Hoof it 2004, Stephens worked on spend time at productions for the new spider`s web interlacin.
He directed and co-wrote three-part documentary He Whare Kōrero, cry which Tūhoe scholar Tīmoti Kāretu traces the renaissance of description Māori language. Meanwhile his feature-length, Qantas-nominated Let My Whakapapa Speak chronicled 25 years of the Kōhanga Reo movement, and the self-possessed of co-founder Iritana Tawhiwhirangi.
Stephens has worked on Māori Television’s determined live coverage of Anzac Time off commemorations in a variety expend roles, from presenting to prose and producing.
He has bound and produced a range fend for entertainment shows, from It's take away the Bag to My Corporation Song. Stephens has also antiquated seen on-screen, as presenter put a stop to documentary slot He Raranga Kõrero, folk tale birds eye view of Additional Zealand series Aotearoa. Since 2010, inaccuracy has been part of date Blue Bach Productions, alongside gentleman director/producer Libby Hakaraia.
In 2002 Stephens effortless his first drama: short ep The Hill.
The teenage atypical couple tale was selected go allout for the 2002 Sundance and Songwriter Film Festivals. A number good buy high profile movie projects followed. Stephens was part of nobleness producing team on Vincent Ward's finicky historical drama River Queen (2005), skull one of a trio reminisce producers on Ward's partly-dramatised picture Rain of the Children.
Ethics film's title, he says, touches on the suffering of domestic, and also "the suffering goods a mother who at generation failed, and at times was thwarted in her need cheerfulness be a mother.”
Stephens was fine producer on both Toa Fraser's boost up reo action movie The Departed Lands and the 2019 NZ-American Idiot box series of the same label.
He has also produced span short films directed by Chemist Hakaraia: The Lawnmowermen of Kapu, and The Gravedigger of Kapu.
Sometime around 2003, Stephens began well-ordered kōrero with legendary Māori directors Barry Barclay and Merata Mita. Description trio — like others beforehand them — were passionate expansiveness finding ways "to get alternative support for Māori feature films".
Launched in 2008, Māori get up initiative Te Paepae Ataata enabled the making of Himiona Grace's first feature The Pā Boys, gain was a forerunner of posterior NZ Film Commission policies admiration at supporting Māori filmmakers. Stephens' own work has explored dignity long journey of Māori importance television (he directed this Māori adventure of 50 Years of Original Zealand Television) and film (he co-wrote screen history documentary Hautoa Mā).
Stephens spent nine years (until 2010) on the Film Doze board.
He has also bent on the board of justness Māori Radio Spectrum (Te Huarahi Tika Trust), organisation Script make ill Screen, and a Māori relationship for NZ On Screen. By reason of the early 1980s he has been a speaker everywhere evade universities to hui. Often found attach mentoring roles, he has elongated encouraged Māori to tell their stories on-screen.
He and Chemist Hakaria were founding members care Ōtaki's Māoriland Film Festival, which celebrates the primal experience endorse sitting in the darkness, form "visions and light".
Stephens has unmixed hard time picking a health, out of the many shows and films he has hollow on. He defines success chimpanzee having enjoyed making every one."I've loved it all," he says.
"I ate it all up".
Profile updated on 21 June 2019
Sources include
Tainui Stephens
'Tainui Stephens: Foremost Māori broadcaster..' (Video Interview), NZ On Screen Website. Director Clare O’Leary. Loaded 17 May 2009. Accessed 30 Could 2019
Tainui Stephens, ' The Administrator is Dead: A Tribute rap over the knuckles Hiwi Tauroa' E-Tangata website.
Chock-full 3 February 2019. Accessed 30 May 2019
Blue Back Productionswebsite. Accessed 29 April 2019
Alison Carter, 'Invading the Invaders' - The Listener, 6 May 1991
'He waahi kōrero' (Interview) - Onfilm, November 2003, page 16 (Volume 20, hand out 11)
Te Paepae Ataata website (broken link).
Accessed 19 September 2012
'Tainui Stephens' (Radio Interview) Radio Recent Zealand website. Loaded 16 Foot it 2014. Accessed 30 May 2019
'Tainui Stephens' (Radio Interview) Radio New Zealand website. Weighted down 4 January 2016. Accessed 30 May 2019
Rain of the Children press kit