The 2017 Loading Docs Film I Love the Most

This year’s Loading Docs has dished out ten New Zealand-made 3min films about diversity and they’re all worth your time. (Show Me Shorts reckons you should start with these three.)

The one I love the most is He Kākano Ahau – From The Spaces In Between, a film that follows a takatāpui (Māori LGBTQI) activist during Gay Pride celebrations.

It’s very directly in tune with the theme of diversity, giving the mic to an under-heard group of people that sit in between two already marginalised groups: LGBTQI and Māori.

Confident, commanding, and insightful, Kassie makes for the perfect subject in this doco. The film succinctly breaks down the ‘imported’ feeling of Gay Pride celebrations that awkwardly wedges in Māori culture, a celebration Kassie convincingly argues should be built from the ground up.

Three minutes can only tap the surface of a huge issue, but He Kākano Ahau feels more like an almighty crack that breaks open the need for a larger conversation. In its final moments, the film elegantly reframes Māori folklore in a way that connects history and ancestry back to the theme of diversity. It’s brilliant.