Myth-taken Identity: The Reel Life Struggles of Hei Tiki

Directed by American writer  Alexander Markey, the film aimed to create a cinematic epic celebrating Māori mythology, music, and dance.

It didn't.

Markey showed little to no interest in Māori tikanga or culture. Instead, the film employed the "star-crossed lovers" theme popular in Western film and literature. The two protagonists, love interests played by 16-year-old Ngawara Kereti (Te Arawa) and Ben Biddle, and themselves royalty from separate tribes in a pre-European Māori idyll, must find a way to be together.

Markey's directing style was characterized by a domineering, impatient, and disdainful attitude towards the cast and crew, many of whom were amateurs. Ben Biddle often acted as a negotiator for the entire cast and crew's benefit. He confronted Markey when wages were withheld or insults became intolerable. He would apply pressure as the leading man by disappearing for up to several days, retreating further up into the nearby mountains where he would hunt wild pigs or deer.

Markey borrowed numerous articles from local participants to use as props and costumes in the film, such as taiaha, tewhatewha, korowai (woven feather cloaks), taonga like the hei tiki pendant that Mara wears around her neck, mere, kete, and woven floor mats. He later absconded to the United States with these items, leaving behind many debts that the film's financial backers never recovered.

The film was released in Great Britain and America with the cringeworthy title, "Primitive Passions" in 1935. The New York Times called it "a disappointment, a sorry mélange of antique melodrama (and) spotty photography...a native legend... native to Hollywood, so many versions of it having been filmed there". 

New Zealand wouldn't see it until 1939.

The reel stills that make up part of Ams 227 are in excellent condition, particularly considering they are made from cellulose nitrate, a medium first used by George Eastman in 1889 and regularly thereafter in 35mm motion picture film until the 1950s before being replaced with more stable formats.

So, how did these become part of our archive at Tauranga City Libraries? The answer is Margaret Goulding née Wallis (1894-1988). Margaret Goulding, who spent two years with the production of Hei Tiki as a personal assistant to Ngawara Kereti and cook for the production, received a number of reel stills from one of the camera operators sometime in the 1980s. These were part of the Goulding papers, which make up Ams 227.

By Tauranga City Libraries Heritage and Research Team : Harley Couper

Sources: 

• Limbrick, Peter (2010) Making settler cinemas: film and colonial encounters in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand
• New York Times Review: https://www.nytimes.com/1935/02/02/archives/at-the-globe.html 
• Adventures in Māoriland - Alexander Markey and the Making of Hei Tiki: https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/adventures-in-maoriland-1985