Deborah WALKER-MORRISON

He uri tenei ō Ngāti Kahungunu ki Te Wairoa, ki te taha ō tōku Papa. Kō aku tino hapū ko Raakai Paaka, Ngāi Te Ipu, Ngāti Pahauwera. He uri hoki ō Ngai Tamanuhiri ō Maraetaha, Turanganui-a-Kiwa. While primarily working as a film academic, teaching and researching into French, NZ and Māori Cinema, I have written, directed and co-produced a documentary film, subtitled a number of Māori & NZ films and translated a Māori novel into French. Since 2018, I have been closely involved with The Wairoa Māori Film Festival. I am Associate Professor of French at Waipapa Taumata Rau, The University of Auckland, where my broad teaching and research is predominantly in the field of cinema and translation (literary and audio-visual). In the last 10 years, my interest has gradually shifted from French and European Cinema to Māori and indigenous film. In 2020, I created my university’s first course devoted entirely to Māori cinema, Decolonising The Screen in Aotearoa, currently in its 3rd iteration. During the 1980s I lived and worked in Kanaky-New Caledonia and have kept close ties with the country ever since. I was greatly privileged to know and work with prominent Indigenous Kanak writer, activist and political leader, Déwé Gorodey, who sadly passed in 2022. Among our most recent collaborations was a multi-language 53-minute documentary film, Déwé Gorodé, Writing the Country / écrire le pays (2015), narrated by Witi Ihimaera, which I wrote, directed and co-produced. This film has screened at Festivals and Symposia in New Caledonia, France, Canada and Australia, and on television in New Caledonia. Since 2018, I have been Chair of Kaporangi Kiriata Māori Film Arts Trust and Co-director of the Wairoa Māori Film Festival. With my whanaunga, Leo Koziol, founding artistic director of WMMF, we have curated (and I have translated) many short film programmes, which we have taken to Festivals in France, Australia and Canada.