Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weniti/The Maori Merchant of Venice (The Merchant of Venice, film, dir Don C. Selwyn, Aotearoa/New Zealand 2002)

Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weniti/The Maori Merchant of Venice (2002) is Aotearoa/New Zealand’s first Shakespeare feature film and the first film ever with dialogue solely in te reo Māori, the indigenous language of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Don C Selwyn, the film’s director, adapted the screenplay from Dr Pei Te Hurinui Jones’s 1946 translation of The Merchant of Venice. The film followed Selwyn’s 1991 staged production of Jones’s translation. Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weniti attempts to reclaim Shakespeare for te Ao Māori (the Māori world). At the same time, the film draws attention to less easily resolved dilemmas of colonisation behind its idyllic surface.