Toki Pounamu Film Festival

Toki Pounamu Film Festival Review

On Thursday the 14th of November,  the Toki Pounamu team were hosting a film festival at the Regent Theatre, Greymouth.  The film festival was made to show schools videos involving the idea of, ‘Our Place,’ for the schools and students within the Toki Pounamu cluster. People entered their movies they made including the native bush, gold mining, ocean, coal mining, histories, etc. The schools that entered into the event were Karoro School, Greymain School, Saint Patricks, Kaniere School, Paparoa Range, Kumara School, Paroa School and Blaketown School. 

All these schools entered in videos and there was one particular movie I enjoyed. The one I liked the most was the movie made by Saint Patricks. Their movie was about the dangers the environment is facing and what we are doing to help. They talked about the pollution in the oceans throughout the coast wide and even greater, world wide. In their video they interviewed the old mayor, Tony Kokshoorn to gather some information. Tony talked about DOC looking after 80% of the native bush/ environment, building a new recycling pit and Greymouth citizens doing their part to resolve the matter of global warming. The students of Saint Patrick's asked, “If we do not make a change would our next generations have a future?”

 Tony replied, “Yes they would, but not a very good one.” The video they made wa s entertaining and was very well filmed with great sound with clear voices and a great understanding of the movie.

The way the Toki Pounamu team chose the videos to put into the 1 hour time limit that were entered, was definitely a fair decision. Some videos had some  restrictions that were unsuitable for younger students that were attending the film festival event. I agree that this was a good decision they chose to do and I support it.