Barry Barclay Movies
- 1991
Although the Maori have fared perhaps the best of all the indigenous peoples who have had their homeland overrun by Europeans, many of their ancient cultural artifacts were stolen in the early years of colonization and were shipped all over the world. In this story, an old Maori woman remembers the story of some carvings which were stolen in this fashion and is campaigning for them to be returned. At the same time, a Maori writer visiting Berlin feels something which makes him feels that his ancestors are present with him in the German city. He eventually tracks down the source of these feelings in the form of the carvings, which are being kept in a museum. The writer and his uncle, who is also in the city, band together with others to liberate the carvings and return these beacons for the ancestral spirits to their proper home. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Günter Meisner
- 1987
Norman Fletcher plays an New Zealand medical-school graduate of the 1940s, who, at the request of his father, pays a visit to his home town. Fletcher has a particular affinity for the local Maori population--and small wonder, since his late mother was Maori (a fact hitherto unkown to him). After a young villager dies of leukemia, Fletcher decides to forego the posh practice that had been planned for him to remain with his new-found friends. Ngati is notable as the first film to be written and directed by Maoris. Despite a few technical and performing crudities, the results are well up to the high standards of other New Zealand-based productions of the era. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Wi Kuki Kaa, Judy McIntosh, (more)
- 1985
Seven years in production, this informative and thought-provoking study brings together the relationship between plant genetics, plant source material in Third World countries, and the manipulation of plant genes by U.S. and European scientists for the betterment of crop production and quality. Director Barry Barclay and Irish-born plant geneticist Erna Bennett argue that the industrialized countries have a moral and ethical obligation to make sure the "fruit" of their research helps the countries that supplied them with the materials in the first place -- and not just their own wealthy nations. One of the examples given is Nicaragua, where improved maize plants developed from resources taken out of that country in the 1960s have never been given back to the Nicaraguan farmer -- in this case, because of the U.S. embargo.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
