POI E: THE STORY OF OUR SONG

Directed by Tearepa Kahi

Asia Pop! / New Zealand / 2016 / comedy, documentary, music / 92 mins / English, Maori with English subtitles / DCP

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POI E: THE STORY OF OUR SONG

UltraStar Mission Valley
Thursday, April 20, 2017 7:00 pm

Description

Opening Night, 2016 New Zealand International Film Festival
Official Selection, 2017 Berlin International Film Festival

Patea is meat-processing country and it’s Maori country. But above all, Patea is Dalvanius country. “New Zealand’s Godfather of Soul,” Dalvanius Prime was the local funk hero who went abroad and found his illustrious name on marquees with Isaac Hayes’ and Tina Turner’s. Imposing and impatient, a dreamer and a sound hustler, Dalvanius returned to Patea on a mission to fuse disco beats and breakdancing with the Maori language, a language he and a generation of New Zealanders had lost to globalization and settler colonialism. And so, in 1983, he joined forces with the poi-flipping choral masters of the Patea Maori Club to produce the first-ever Maori pop hit, a song that beat Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder on the New Zealand charts and is remembered today as the unofficial national anthem.

“Poi E” is cultural reinvention by way of gospel, funk, and Space Invaders, and the story behind it takes flight with the same spirit of communal fun. Packed with music, animated scribbles, and humor, Tearepa Kahi’s jubilant, crowd-pleasing documentary is the sort of populist oral history where its interviewees – whether ordinary folks or superstars like Taika Waititi (What We Do in the Shadows) and Stan Walker (Born to Dance) – are introduced by their nicknames rather than their titles. But the best testimony to the power of “Poi E” is the song itself, heard here through a newly-unearthed early demo, through its individual backing tracks, or through its beloved music video. Ringing from Patea to Auckland to London, the infectious unlikely chartbuster possessed unsuspecting bodies like an arm wave and made the Maori language so hip that even white boys got to shout: “Poooooi E!” –Brian Hu

Co-Presented by: AT&T