Governing Visions of the Other The Politics of Envisioning Māori and Māoritanga through Post-World War II New Zealand National Film Unit Documentary Film

Abstract

This paper discusses how Māori and Māoritanga were projected in documentary film produced by the New Zealand National Film Unit after World War II. A close look at some of the films as well as the governmentality of (filmic) vision reveals the changing strategies of power that came to shape efforts of modelling Māori and Māoritanga into dominant society. It is argued that NFU films produced an ambivalent field of vision in which Māori were at once projected as successfully integrating into the dominant political economy and provided with a sense of dignity and pride. At the same time, however, they were ‘othered’ with reference to discourses of exoticism that were important for tourism promotion as well as signified as deviant in areas where improvement of their condition was regarded as exigent. These modes of projection need to be understood with reference to the governmentality of documentary film and state publicity that developed around the time.