Overview

This one hour documentary is to screen in Television New Zealand’s Arts Series ‘Artsville’ in 2010.  As the title suggests, it’s a series about artists and their works.  We have chosen two pounamu carvers.
Lewis Tamihana Gardiner of Te Arawa; Ngati Awa, Whanau a Apanui, and Ngai Tahu,- is regarded as one of the most respected Maori pounamu artists of his generation, winning the bi-annual Mana Pounamu Awards for contemporary Maori design in 1999, 2001, and 2003.  In 2008 Lewis was chosen to design a Hei Tiki for a New Zealand postage stamp.

The other artist featured is Auckland based Joe Sheehan, a pounamu jeweler/sculptor and the inaugural recipient of New Zealand’s Young Artist award. In 2008 he represented New Zealand at the 28th Sao Paulo Biennale in Brazil.

Both artists have been chosen for this documentary for their new and innovative works.  
In many ways, these exciting works align with a new era for Pounamu. New Zealand’s ‘best thing’, the icon that describes us- as us-has been undergoing a watershed time in the last decade. As a consequence, a recent history in which Pounamu was sometimes undervalued and often sold cheaply as tourist trinkets is disappearing.

Ownership, or more correctly guardianship, has been restored to Southern Maori. Once again the Kaitiaki, are those whose ancestor’s lives revolved around Pounamu.
This documentary shall observe the new life Pounamu has been awarded.
Pounamu-The Stone in our Bones- talks to the people whose lives are and long have been, woven alongside the Stone.  We think it is timely that New Zealanders learned more about Pounamu.  How and why have the Tangata Whenua valued it so for so long? Where is it found? How is it used?  What of its future?

It’s the aim of Poumanu-The Stone in our Bones- to bring to New Zealand television viewers a new reverence for this Stone, so that it might sit better in its rightful place as the most prized Taonga of Aotearoa.

Art’s Laureate, Order of New Zealand recipient and West Coaster, cinematographer Alun Bollinger is to shoot this tale.  Director is Gerard Smyth, nominated as “Best Director” finalist  in this years Qantas Television Awards.