Finding the spirit within

Te Waimarie Kessell plays young Meredith Gallagher, chosen by the land to be its guardian, in Kaitangata Twitch. Photo / Supplied

She's written more books than she can recall off the top of her head but Margaret Mahy says she was shy about writing children's novel Kaitangata Twitch.

Maoridom was not something that she had been allowed to explore as a child growing up in a very English family in very English Christchurch.

"As a child [all things Maori] were certainly dismissed by many of the adults around me, as if they were things that were dying out of our culture entirely. Or as if they didn't deserve to be included," recalls Mahy, now in her 70s.

"My mother used to boast that Christchurch was the most English city in New Zealand, she was just brought up in the way of the times to think of England as the supreme country of the world. Thank goodness it's changed."

Mahy's sister ended up marrying a Maori man. And Mahy, who has always felt the culture was part of her understanding of what it is to be a New Zealander, later wrote Kaitangata Twitch, a thriller for children loosely based on Maori ideas of the sacredness of the land.

The book is one Wellington-based film and television director Yvonne Mackay (Duggan, The Insiders Guide to Happiness, The Insider's Guide to Love and Mahy adaptations such as Cuckoo Land) has wanted to adapt since it came out in 2005.

"I'm pretty fascinated with the slightly thriller aspect, the fantasy aspect, the fact that the world of Margaret Mahy is very unusual," Mackay says.

Kaitangata Twitch's lead character is a young girl named Meredith who lives in a racially mixed family - though, as in many Mahy books, this is never explicitly acknowledged or explained.

The Maori mother (Miriama Smith) has drifted from her cultural roots and it is the Pakeha father (Charles Mesure) who so desperately wants to protect the area from a Maori property developer (Blair Strang) who has no feeling for the land.

The land has a mind of its own, says Mahy's story, and a history of twitching and devouring anyone who treats it badly. It also has the power to choose who it wants to act as its guardian, or Ahi Kaa. The current guardian (George Henare) is getting old and is too weak to fight the latest smarmy developer who plans to bring a monstrous subdivision to the point. The land seems to have young, dreamy, adventurous Meredith Gallagher in mind.

Being the chosen one who must live on the island for the rest of her life is a very tall order for a young 12 going on 13-year-old star of a book, Mackay says.

"I thought, 'how fantastic, the whole idea of knowing who you are by being Maori'. In this particular instance Meredith has to pick the Maori side of herself and not be frightened of it, not being afraid of the role of Ahi Kaa."

Fortunately Maori Television and various funding agencies were as excited as Mackay. Kaitangata Twitch is Maori TV's biggest drama production. It was jointly funded by NZ On Air, Te Mangai Paho (the Maori broadcasting funding agency) and Maori Television. Its 13 half-hour episodes cost approximately $6.2 million. And it would seem to have paid off. Kaitangata Twitch has already picked up a platinum award in the children's/family television category at the Houston World Fest and is nominated as a finalist in the Prix Jeunesse awards - known as the Cannes of children's TV - to be presented in Germany next month.

Already screening in Canada, the show begins on Australia's ABC 3 in October and Sweden has bought screening rights. We get to see it tomorrow night.

It has taken four years to get to this point, Mackay says. After securing Gavin Strawhan, Michael Bennett and Briar Grace-Smith to write the script and then the funding to film the series, Mackay set out to find the perfect setting to bring the script alive.

They found it on Banks Peninsula, which is more or less where the book was set.

Mahy says she was thrilled they had chosen to film it in a location that was the one she had in mind when she wrote it.

Kaitangata is a real place, which usually goes by its English name, Mason's Pt. Mahy says it is a little peninsula that was traditionally a prime spot for Maori to collect food and fish. Her daughter, husband and grandchildren live there.

For Mackay, the other bonus of filming in the area was that Mahy, who lives nearby in Christchurch's Governors Bay, was able to join her on set every day.

They had two chairs - one emblazoned "Director", the other "Writer" - placed side-by-side through the four months of filming.

Mahy says she was thrilled to be able to watch the adaptation unfold, complete with te reo additions to the script which were not in the book.

Te reo coaches and Maori advisers were part of the production, from the script-writing stage. When filming around the caves, which are of huge cultural significance to Maori, tapu had to be lifted and put to rest afterwards, Mackay says.

Mahy says she is pleased the TV show has been able to emphasise and develop the Maori element. "It is there in the original story but it is an area I felt quite shy about writing, in case I accidentally got something wrong or suggested things that Maori people felt were inappropriate."

It helped that Meredith, played by 13-year-old Te Waimarie Kessell, speaks fluent Maori, having attended full Maori immersion or bilingual schools for most of her life.

It also helped that she was confident in front of the camera. She comes from quite the acting family - her aunt is actress Simone Kessell, her mother has worked in the wardrobe department of sets - and Te Waimairie Kessell was introduced to television when she was just a few days old, appearing on Shortland Street.

When she was 5, she became the face of Te Mangai Paho's promotional clips, one of which will play before Kaitangata Twitch airs tomorrow night.

Kessell is vivacious and headstrong like her character and loved filming the creepy bits of the film and any action. "Any scary bit, I was like, 'ooh, this is going to be good'," she says.

Aside from cultural issues, it's also a story about what young people can achieve when they believe in themselves.

Mackay says it's this philosophy that keeps bringing her back to Mahy: "She stands for young people facing life for themselves, they don't immediately look around for the closest adult to fix their problems. They call upon the inner strength of themselves. I once [told her] that was what I loved about what she stood for in her books and she said, yes, 'I am there for the young people doing it for themselves, at least in their imaginations'.

"Some young people can't solve their own problems because their life is very tough in reality, but in their own imaginations, Margaret is saying, they can be the hero of their problems and their life."

LOWDOWN

What: Kaitangata Twitch, the Maori television adaptation of Margaret Mahy's book, directed by Yvonne Mackay and starring Te Waimarie Kessell, George Henare, Miriama Smith, Charles Mesure, Blair Strang
Where and when: Maori Television, Sunday, 7pm.