16 Oct 2018

The Grave Digger of Kapu: a Kiwi short film about 'spiritual heavy lifting'

From Afternoons, 1:35 pm on 16 October 2018
Jim Moriarty and Tānira Cooper in the new film, The Gravedigger of Kapu

 Jim Moriarty and Tānira Cooper in The Grave Digger of Kapu Photo: Supplied

Veteran thespian Jim Moriarty had some advice for the keen hunter and first-time actor Tānira Cooper before they shot the short film The Grave Digger of Kapu, says director Libby Hakaraia.

"Tānira said to Jim 'So how do I do this acting thing?' Jim just said to him 'it's like hunting, you know, you chase down the first line and you get that, and you chase down the next line and you get that."

Libby Hakaraia

Libby Hakaraia Photo: Blue Bach Productions

The Grave Digger of Kapu premieres at the imagineNATIVE Film Festival in Toronto next week.

The 16-minute film is a companion piece to Hakaraia's award-winning 2012 film The Lawnmower Men of Kapu.

After she made that film, the gravediggers at Te Pou o Tainui Marae – "a group of very quiet men" – put in a request, she says.

"They came and saw me and said 'where's our film?'

"So I'm a little bit nervous the ringa wera, the cooks, are going to ask for a film. Is it ever going to stop? (Laughs)"

Gravediggers do some "spiritual heavy lifting" that can go unacknowledged, the Ōtaki filmmaker says.

"At the end of the screening there was this very long pause and then one of the gravediggers stood up and he kind of said ["they were thrilled to be acknowledged"]. I think the family were just shocked cause it is the mahi, the job, that we kind of all ignore when you're at a tangi."

Hakaraia hopes The Grave Digger of Kapu will have its world premiere at the 2019 Māoriland Film Festival (of which she is the director) next March.