Tomairangi Harvey, now 12, is celebrating in Tokyo after winning the Best Young Film-maker award. Photo / Supplied
Tomairangi Harvey, now 12, is celebrating in Tokyo after winning the Best Young Film-maker award. Photo / Supplied
A love for an endangered New Zealand shore bird has won a budding film-maker an international award in Japan.
Tomairangi Harvey, 12, has become the youngest recipient of an award in the 25-year history of the Japan Wildlife Film Festival, held in Tokyo.
Tomairangi, from Christchurch, picked up the Best Young Film-maker gong for her short film Te Ao o te Tuturuatu (The World of the Shore Dotterel) on Monday.
It features colourful drawings she made of the New Zealand shore dotterel, or shore plover, and a story about how it came to be endangered and living primarily in the predator-free Chatham Islands.
A feature of Tomairangi's film is that she narrates the story in te reo Maori.
A translation of Tomairangi's words opens the film: "A long time ago, when Aotearoa was peaceful, there were many tuturuatu. They lived happily and freely at this time.
"But a problem arrived for the birds and the forest. This problem arrived by way of the sea - foreign strangers came and upset the dotterels' world. The birds were preyed on for food by dogs, rats, cats, weasels, ferrets and stoats.
"Following the arrival of the predators, very few tuturuatu remained."
Tomairangi's film was initially made for The Outlook for Someday sustainability film challenge for young people last year, where she also picked up an award.
The idea behind that is to encourage young New Zealanders to think about sustainability and the environment around them.
Speaking to the Herald from Tokyo, where she travelled with mum Christine, Tomairangi said she became inspired to make the film after helping her aunt for a few weekends at the Isaac Conservation and Wildlife Trust in Christchurch.
"We go with her on Saturdays to help her take care of them and I thought they were really beautiful. I really like them and I think not many people know about them."
She hopes to continue to work on making and editing films, with the goal of making it a career one day.
"I like drawing and I still want to be making films about nature. I love nature," the 12-year-old told the Herald.
The film was among just over 1800 entries from 112 countries, later culled back to 48 films chosen as finalists by the festival's judges. They said: "The sympathy, deep feeling and love that [then] 11-year-old Maori girl Tomairangi Harvey feels for the shore dotterel overflows from her animated film and was clearly conveyed to us."
