New Zealand Day

New Zealand Day Photos

Missoulian coverage of
New Zealand Day

June 14, 2008

Touch Rugby Clinic with the Missoula Maggots
Free to the public. No experience necessary.
Fort Missoula Rugby Pitch
(just west of South Ave. parking lot)

Skills clinic at 11:00 am
Informal "no tackle" tournament begins at 1:00 pm
Full-contact demonstration at 4:00 pm
Open to adults and children (7 and up)

For more information, contact Ashby Kinch - email
721-2227
www.maggots.org

"Palmerston North" Pizza Party
The Bridge Pizza - 600 S. Higgins Ave.
5:00 - 7:00 pm

Introducing the "Palmerston North" Pizza
New Zealand Beer and Wines

New Zealand Films
Roxy Theater - 718 S. Higgins Ave.
7:30 - 9:30 pm, suggested donation: $3

Hawaikii (11 minutes)
Conversing with Aotearoa (14 minutes)
Dances of Life (60 minutes)

New Zealand All-Blacks vs. England
in a Summer Tour Test Rugby Match
Bodega - 221 Ryman St.
9:00 - 11:00 pm

Hawaikii

For a young Maori girl it’s the first day at school, first day without the security of her parents. Raised with Mäori culture as her basis she is about to enter a foreign environment with little or understanding of their culture nor they of hers.

Her father is a hard working man who provides as best as he can for his family but money is always tight. Employed as a railway worker he and his family live in a railway cottage in a railway community. He has been raised in the old ways of Maori culture and raises his children accordingly.

This family is not wealthy but they have something more valuable than money, they have love for each other and a love for their culture and its stories.

Conversing with
Aotearoa

Living in an age of technological integration and urban life, some people turn to the natural world when they realize something in their lives is missing.

In this animated documentary, New Zealanders attempt to fathom the deeply personal connection to their land.

Images and interviews are used to explore both physical and mental wilderness. Among the interviewees are hunters, fishermen, farmers, mountaineers, adventurer-racers, conservationists, ecologists, artists, the Maori, and tourists.

Conversing with Aotearoa was the opening film for the Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival in Palmerston North. Read more about director Corrie Francis.

Dances of Life
For nearly 50,000 years, dances and songs have been an expression of Pacific Islanders' origins, their journeys, their struggles - their very existence. These are their "dance stories" - their Dances of Life. The film journeys to five Pacific islands - New Zealand, Palau, Guam, American Samoa and New Caledonia - to reveal the cultural history and diversity of the Pacific Islands.

Dances of Life views dance through the eyes of the people who practice it as an art form and as a way of life. Unlike dance performance in the West, which focuses largely on physical movement and music, Pacific dance encompasses singing, chanting, poetry and story-telling. There is a striking historic and cultural component to the dancing - these are dances about heroism, violence and war, as well as love and eroticism.

Make the earth tremble

As hard as we can

I am doomed! I will die!

No I am alive! Life is mine!

I will be defeated! I will die!

No! I take back my life. Life is mine!

I am born of distinguished people

Whose legacy shines on me like the sun.

Keep abreast! Keep abreast!

In your ranks hold fast!

Into the shining sun!

- Maori War chant

Special thanks to



NZ Day 2008








NZ Day 2005-2007