Michael Jonathan has achieved an incredible career spanning almost three decades, excelling as a cameraman, director of photography, and director in the realms of television and film. His work has been highly acclaimed, particularly his remarkable contributions to documentaries and short films. As he prepares for the release of his debut feature film, Ka Whawha Tonu (Struggle without End), I picked his brain on the process of bringing this significant piece of Maori history to the big screen, the personal connections that shaped the film, and the challenges and triumphs he faced while transitioning from documentaries to his first feature film
Congratulations on your debut feature film. The film is set during the 19th century Maori-Colonial wars, specifically the Battle of Orakau. Why was this period in history what you chose to be the backdrop of your debut? And what about this moment in time spoke to you as a filmmaker, and as a Maori person yourself?
Well, you know, as a filmmaker, and making film and television documentaries and drama series for about 32 years now. So ever since I was 18 years old, I've been just making content, and I always wanted to make a film but I just wanted to make a film that was meaningful for me and my family. So being Maori — I wanted to do something about my family history. And so Orakau or the Battle for Orakau was part of that. And my great, great great grandmother was a part of that battle, she was a survivor of the invasion of nearly more than 2000 Imperial troops against 300 Maori. So she survived. And I've heard also, her husband who was my great, great, great grandfather was also there. And we just found that out recently. So even more of a connection to that battle. That was what I wanted to put all my time into, was to create that version — or my version, or the Maori version — of that battle
That's incredible that you found out recently that another of your family members was part of the battle, I'm sure that was quite a powerful moment for you. With the battle and the research for it, how did you begin looking into it? Specifically, from a filmmaking point of view? And what led you to weaving this tale of the two teenagers who mirror each other in a way, as a sort of like coming of age scenario? How did that come to play?
Well, you know, when you do something historical, you have to go and find the people who survived the battle or the descendants. And so I visited many of the descendants. And sometimes with a welcome and sometimes we're not so welcoming sort of vibe going on. And so I just sat there with the families and just listened. And basically just just made notes or recorded interviews that we could use is references to, to their side of the battle. When you're working with multiple tribes, and I've worked with maybe eight Maori tribes that were part of that battle, and all of them are very different. They work in different ways, and so seeing them face to face is the best thing to do for any sort of research is to go and be there and not just do it over the phone. My story to them was "Look, this is about your ancestor, but they may not be a big feature in film. We're going to encompass all your ancestors around a fictional story that, you know, we can follow together, and we don't have to be so accurate." So all their ancestors are on a peripheral, they may be in the back of a shot. Temuera Morrison's character, he's always got bodyguards in the back of them, and they're their actual ancestors from that battle. I can talk more once the film comes out, and I can say which one they actually are. But that was my treatment going into it. It's just, how do we deal with it. You know, I'm getting people now on Facebook and Instagram going, "Oh, what about my ancestor he was there," afterwards I said "They are there, but they're not a big feature of the film." And so that's the way I've had the treat it depends. Can You can do a film about every ancestor in that battle, but we're just trying to encompass and cause interest and conversation around those events.
That kind of leads me to my next question you touched on it a little bit. You were able to shoot the film entirely in New Zealand from what I found, and I read in an article that many of your cast and crew like yourself, are descendants from people involved in the battle itself. So could you talk about how significant it was for you to have so many personal ties with your cast, your crew and yourself with ancestors? And how important that was to you?
With the film Ka Whawhai Tonu, that's an opportunity for the descendants to have their kids and men and women who were part of that battle in the film.And it was important for us to have the descendants of the battle only because there was an opportunity for them to fill the shoes of their ancestors. And amongst the battle will probably be the closest they'll ever get to their ancestors who fought in the battle. So, it's an awesome opportunity, and now they get to see themselves in the movie. They'll be in the background or in the foreground, or passing by or in blown up. It's a historical thing for us that we get to our be ancestors. Even for me as a director, one of the first big scenes we did, I just saw my ancestors on screen, and I was weeping all the time. I was like, "It's dusty in here, what's going on here?" My assistant was going "Are you okay?" "Maybe it's just some tissues, just give me some tissues. So I can just wipe the dust out." But everyone felt the same. So all the crew, once they saw the monitor and what we were creating, they were like, wow, this is something so special, something totally different. And something they all wanted to be a part of.
Did you hire them knowing that there was this link? Or was it just when you started working on the project? Like these stories just started coming up from everyone working on it?
I did my research as to who I wanted to be my heads of department. So people I've worked with in the past, they're already aligned with my kind of methodology, which is like, just be chill, get on set — no one's gonna yell at each other. That's something I'm just not into,. If I saw that on set from someone, I would just go "Hey, don't do that here." So I just needed people to be like me, basically. And we had amazing heads of departments. One that was instrumental on another film called Utu and his name's Shane Redford, he is the production designer. He's the oldest in our crew and had the most knowledge and just kind of knew everything. So every time I step into a scene, and he'd come with me, with all these books, and I've got to read all these pages before we start the scene, so I always had lots of references. One I'm going to mention is the wardrobe department. And so Te Ura Hoskins just had fun making all these amazing kind of Victorian costumes, juxtaposed with Maori wardrobe. I just said for her to just go for it and just give me what she got, and the stuff she built was amazing. The Moko design is really detailed, and so needed to be indented. Our makeup team, who were another real instrumental team to get this Moko design done up. So it looked real. And they come up with this new technique that they could just do it in an hour or two, rather than four hours or six hours, which is how much it takes for one person. We had an amazing team, and I trusted them all just said, do your best. That's all I asked for. And it was awesome.
From what I've seen in the press pictures, like the costumes and makeup, like really stood out to me — it's just so detailed and looks incredible. And I just I can't wait to see it honestly on the big screen and not from my small computer laptop.
Oh, yes, totally. It's made for the big screen.
So you've had over 30 years of experience In the film industry, so compared to your previous work that has largely been documentaries, and television, how different was your approach to filmmaking than with a feature film? And could you talk about how and when you realize you're ready to make your debut feature film?
That's a really good question. I think that's always been the goal. I watched Utu when I was nine years old with my mother. And she took me to this very violent film, at nine years old, and it blew my mind. It made me cry, and made me angry. I recall my mother going to me, "Why are you crying? What's going on with you?" I just loved the film, and it inspired me to become a filmmaker. And from then, I just knew that was the goal: To make that film. And so you already know the rest of the story. You know, when preparing for it, we just had to push every sort of boundary. We put an application to our film commission, and there are all these sort of trust issues like "He's a first time director, he hasn't done any feature films." And I just kept saying "Well the first one, we need to get to the first one to be able to say the second one." I've done a slate of short films and documentaries, and I suppose I love documentary because it's random and you go with the flow — you can kind of manipulate things a little bit while it's going on at the same time. That excites me because it's real. And then stepping into the drama stage, that was all about just making sure I get the right actors . I don't have a huge amount of experience with actors, but all I knew was to choose people who were already that character. It's a big tidbit, one that Taika (Waititi) uses all the time, and it just makes life a whole lot easier — to cast people who are already their character. One of the characters, she wasn't on my radar for her audition, but when she introduced herself at the end, I was like, "Oh, there she is." I just kind of mold her and tell her a few things that she needs to get herself without me stepping into her role too much. So it felt flawless to me, that transition from documentary to going into full on drama. And that's a feelings thing all at the same time — you pick it up once you got good stuff when you're shooting documentary, but now it's drama, you're in control of everything. And so with all your 30 years of experience, you just know what each department is doing. So when I give them this Bible, and I say: I want it to look and feel like this, and these are the colors and the palette is right here. And they just responded and knew what page I was on straightaway. It was flawless. I didn't have any problems just walking into a set and going "We're going to do it like this." I've got a DOP background as well. And even that, you might have to go and grab the camera off the DOP because those shots weren't working. And I would never ever do that because our DOP is amazing. I just always suggest and then collaborate with my team on what's the best approach. And we just get in there and do it. Times are friend actually, so when you're under time pressure there's no choice but to bring your close HOD friends around you and say: we're going to do it like this, and if it doesn't work, let's go this way. And then it ends up being better for some reason or another.
How long did it take to shoot the film actually?
We shot the film in six weeks. And then we had a pickup shoot for maybe like, one and a half weeks. So, we knew we were going to do pickups, and we just needed to wait until we got somewhere in a cut where we could really make it more efficient with the time and get exactly what we need.
For such an action-heavy movie, that's quite a short time to be filming.
When you're expecting like 300 extras out on set, you know you're excited to do these big battle scenes. And I'm like "Cool, let's get there in the morning. Awesome. How many extras do we have? We've got 37 extras?" Not the 300 I was wanting, but I'm like "Okay, cool. No, we can work with that. Can you guys go with it?" There was a couple of people in the background going "No! We can't work with that." But there's a couple of 'yes' on the side. So I thought "Yeah, we can work with that." So we just do with that. And what you do is make people run around in circles. (laughs) Say "Maybe you're gonna run this way, then you're gonna run that way. And you're gonna wait for a bit and then you put someone else's hat on you run that way." We're just kind of winging stuff like that. We just had to be creative. It's fun.
You're just making people do laps.
You know, sometimes they're like, "What are we doing? How long are we going to do this? I mean, we've been doing it for five minutes." Keep going, you know?
Although I haven't watched the film yet, I'm assuming that it will have lots of dramatic movements. But there's definitely going to be a lot more emotional points. From either one of those, what were some of your favorite scenes to shoot from the film? And why without spoiling the film, obviously. But if you could tell us a little bit about the scenes?
Temuera Morrison is just absolutely amazing in this film. He's a really good friend of mine and a relation as well. And he just kills it in this film he's just amazing. So all of his scenes are my favorite scenes. The story is about this boy and a girl. I love kind of hidden romance between a boy and a girl, (different) war teams and stuff. So there's moments of that in the film — about wanting to know more a girl or a boy. It's just curiosity, that kind of kicks in for the viewer of the audience who have been in a similar situation. I love that stuff — teenage love and curiosity, the 'when are we going to get together', 'are we going to pasch'. Those sorts of things. And so I made those as magical as I could to just entice the viewers to go or remember this in their life moment. That stuff was really cool. There's some really emotional bits in the film that intentionally set the tone of the film. The first frame to the music, which was done by Tiki Taane, who's an amazing artist. He collaborated with Arli Liberman, and both created just absolutely brilliant compositions. It took a little while to see which direction we were going and then again, good old time pressure was on us. They made this amazing soundtrack. And so the tone of the film starts at the first frame, and people know the tone. It's very familiar — it's kind of sad but happy. And we just have to go there with the brutality of war, what it does for people and the impact. And why we do those sorts of things? All those questions get asked in the movie.
I want to ask you about the title of the film itself. 'Struggle without end' comes from the 1990 book. With the book and your film, a major theme in both of them is about reclaiming history and telling it from your perspective. Could you tell me how significant the title is to the film, to your work and just to yourself?
Ka Whawhai Tonu - Struggle Without End is the title that we chose. It's the struggle. The title can also be translated as 'to fight forever'. And us as Maoris, indigenous people have to fight forever in the modern world that we live in. So it's something that reflects everything. Every battle that's going on: Palestine, from the Kanak people in New Caledonia, to our mob friends in Australia that are going through all sorts of stuff, Pacifica, and Native Americans and Native Canadians, and to the Sami people in the North. We all going through these struggles and so, Ka Whawhai Tonu. You take it for what you want: you're either going to struggle further or you're going to fight forever. To me, it means 'when will we ever stop saying that?' You know, 'when will be the day when we can say we don't have to struggle forever, or we don't have to fight forever?' It's reflections of equality, that it's okay to partner with us, it's okay to co-govern. So that said the title is really deep. It's really deep and goes on so many levels. And even though we had a bit of struggles with just like calling it Ka Whawhai Tonu and questioning if certain people overseas are gonna be able to pronounce it. From this battle, Rewi Maniapoto, the chief, yelled this out to people, to William Meir and the British. He said "ka whawhai tonu mātou," which is we will fight you forever. "Mō ake ake ake!," — forever and ever and ever. I suppose that's what we mean by echoing the voices of our ancestors, because we still say that thing during our protests, our marches, our disagreements with our own government, and to fight forever. My wish will be, and I probably won't see it in my lifetime, would be looking forward to the time where we don't need to say that anymore.
As a student publication, we have a lot of aspiring filmmakers amongst our readership. So what's one thing that you hope audiences and these young directors and young writers take away from watching your film?
It's all in the title really — Ka Whawhai Tonu — fight on forever and ever and ever. And, this is what I did since I was anine year old. I watched Utu by Jeff Murphy and it blew my mind. I knew what I wanted to do, from then on, to become a filmmaker, to do the same thing and inspire people. So I just kept on that track and just didn't stop and got to a roadblock, and just went around or through it. And you'll get all sorts of things from people saying 'you can't do this because you're this and that,' and I just won't listen. Movements are created by people objecting, to you to putting up roadblocks and say just keep going. People will make rules — they say can be broken. Or we just go straight through the middle of those rules and find a way. So it's all about not giving up. And as cheesy as it sounds, it's been a my motto for a long time. And it's true. Just can't give up.
