Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 6 March

Whetū Mārama: Bright Star (Mills/O’Sullivan, 2022)

Over the sum­mer I listened to a BBC pod­cast that fea­tured cos­mo­lo­gist Roberto Trotta talk­ing about his book Starborn: How the Stars Made Us – and Who We Would Be Without Them. In the book – and the con­ver­sa­tion – this emin­ent sci­ent­ist takes on the cul­tur­al com­pon­ent of stars and asks, if we can’t see the stars above us every night, what kind of cul­ture might we have formed?

Imagine if the plan­et was con­tinu­ously covered in cloud. How would we under­stand our place in the cos­mos – even our aware­ness of the cos­mos full stop – and how would have our ima­gin­a­tions, and our soci­ety, have developed. Where would we have found our gods?

And, listen­ing to that con­ver­sa­tion, I was reminded of how it was the stars that first showed us how to nav­ig­ate this plan­et, and how the stor­ies of the great Pacific celes­ti­al nav­ig­at­ors are only recently being redis­covered and now told in films like Whetū Mārama: Bright Star.

It’s a doc­u­ment­ary about the late Māori kaumātua (lead­er) and engin­eer Hek Busby who died in 2019 at the age of 86.

After a long career as a civil engin­eer in the Far North – a phys­ic­al bridge build­er as well as a meta­phor­ic­al bridge build­er – in the mid-1970s he became cus­todi­an of Ngātokimatawhaorua, our largest cere­mo­ni­al waka (canoe), and became friends with the Hawaiian nav­ig­at­or Nainoa Thompson and the amaz­ing Micronesian Mau Pialug, who had ment­ored him.

Inspired by the pair, Busby was determ­ined to prove that Pacific nav­ig­at­ors could reg­u­larly travel those unima­gin­able dis­tances and the only way to do that was to build a waka (Te Aurere) and sail it.

This is a film about bravery and vis­ion, but it is also about the renais­sance of cul­ture and know­ledge. It’s abso­lutely inspri­r­ing and end­lessly fascinating.

But the film also – unwit­tingly, as the film­makers couldn’t have known about 2024 polit­ic­al real­ity back in 2022 – shows us that we have anoth­er kind of nav­ig­a­tion deficit.

When a very frail Busby sits back down after receiv­ing his knight­hood at Waitangi in 2018, then-Prime Minister Ardern reaches out to ten­derly hold his hand, a ges­ture one can­not ima­gine occur­ring now (argu­ably, it’s even an hon­our that one can­not ima­gine being bestowed now).

It is a poin­ted and dis­ap­point­ing remind­er that, here in New Zealand, we were recently on a path togeth­er and that way­find­ing us back to that path is likely to be very dif­fi­cult and pain­ful for a while to come.

Where to watch Whetu Marama: Bright Star

The con­tent below was ori­gin­ally paywalled.

Aotearoa: Streaming on DocPlay or digit­al rent­al at AroVision

Australia: Streaming on DocPlay

Canada, USA & UK: Currently unavailable