Minginui

Built in the 40s to accommodate Forestry Department workers the small town of Minginui in the North Islands Whirinaki Forest lost its sawmill in the 80s as the logging of native forests was brought to a halt and ownership of forestry moved to the private sector In 1990 the government gifted the land and buildings to Ngati Whare Now 280 people inhabit the rundown village living off the land and their benefit payments Adam Luxton and Summer Agnews remarkable and disquietingly aestheticised documentary portrait of the town is the antithesis of Florian Habichts Kaikohe Demolition interacting only fleetingly with the inhabitants When theres social activity a powhiri the haka before a rugby match or just kids clambering on and off a roof these filmmakers evince something like historical distance framing ritual and play in the eternal overarching melancholy of mist and forest Theirs is an eerily beautiful picture of torpor isolation and decay and of Maori culture