Kim Webby's The Price of Peace is a powerfully affecting re-examination of the Ruatoki raids that achieves something rather special: maintaining a personal, even intimate, focus on its central figure Tame Iti, it locates the 2007 police raids in the wider context of Tuhoe history and the process of reconciliation.
Webby, a former television reporter now living and working as a naturopath in her birthplace of Opotiki, has a strong connection to Tuhoe: her mother was the public health nurse in Ruatoki for two generations and Webby, who calls herself "an outsider on the inside", has known the Iti family for 20 years.
"I always thought [the raids] would finish with a police apology and so I just kept going," she said this week. "It took seven years, which was somewhat longer than I had anticipated."
In one of the film's most moving scenes, Webby and her cameraman were present when Police Commissioner Mike Bush came to Iti's home last year to apologise for police actions.
She says she hopes that the film will illuminate a side of the story that has not been told. "[Errol Wright and Abi King-Jones' 2011 film] Operation 8, which I really liked, was a very political film, but this is a very personal one.
"I wanted people who don't know Tame to know him and for people to understand something of Tuhoe history. People who have an entrenched view about Tame may not go but I really hope that people have a think and maybe learn something new. It may change some perspectives."
Sarah Grohnert's unassuming and watchful observational doco, Ever The Land, makes an excellent companion piece. Ostensibly a film about a building project - and it is compelling enough on that ground alone - it delivers much more ... a portrait of the Children of the Mist. Taken together, these two films offer a rare and fascinating glimpse into the world of Tuhoe, the people and the land.
