NZ Film Archive Preserves Maori TV Programming

PUBLICITY RELEASE
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 12 2010

NZ Film Archive Preserves Maori Television Programming

The New Zealand Film Archive has embarked on one of its most significant new initiatives in the past five years – archiving Maori Television programmes.

Harvesting, preserving and making the programming accessible is at the heart of the relationship between the Film Archive and Te Mangai Paho, the Maori broadcasting funding agency. Since an archiving agreement between the two organisations was signed in 2008, more than 2,000 hours of Te Mangai Paho-funded Maori Television programmes have been captured and preserved.

“The arrival of Maori Television represents a sea change in television broadcasting in New Zealand – comparable to the establishment of the two-channel network in 1975 or the launch of TV3 in 1989,” says the chief executive of the Film Archive, Frank Stark. “It is absolutely vital for future generations that the work of Maori Television and its programme makers is preserved.”

Maori Television chief executive Jim Mather says the five years since the launch of the channel has been a period of intensive and rapid development. “The hard work and passion of many creative and innovative people has contributed to our organisation’s success and it is truly heartening to know that the fruits of these labours will be safeguarded and accessible to future generations.”

Te Mangai Paho chief executive John Bishara says the Film Archive has long been the preferred archiving option of the independent production community. “Te Mangai Paho is pleased that a legislative change and additional funding has enabled Te Mangai Paho to expand the partnership to include the Maori Television production output.”

NZ Film Archive kaikohikohi (collection co-ordinator) Adrian Wagner and kairangahau (te reo Maori cataloguer) Lawrence Wharerau are the key staff for the project. Both are fluent in te reo Maori and have had significant experience in a range of roles within the film and television industry.

As kaikohikohi, Wagner gathers a daily off-air harvest of Maori Television and te reo Maori transmissions every day. He then selects individual programmes from this to be digitally mastered and added as individual titles to the Maori Television Collection. He also preserves the whole harvested output on digital dat tapes for possible use by researchers in the future.

Wharerau catalogues all individual Maori Television titles in te reo Maori, producing separate entries for each on the Film Archive database. The programmes are then made available for viewing, either on DVD or as digital files on a server in the Film Archive media library.

Achievements to date include cataloguing the extended ANZAC Day broadcast for 2009 and the educational series LOST IN TRANSLATION. In addition, around 1,600 key programmes from the first four years of broadcasts by Maori Television are being digitised by the Film Archive on-site at their Newmarket studios. Along with the harvest of contemporary titles, these programmes will combine to create a comprehensive master archive of Maori Television.

The strong partnership between the Film Archive and Maori Television is about to be extended through the co-production of a major television documentary series for 2010, which is currently in development.

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