Restoring the Mauri of Lake Omapere

New Zealand 2007 / 80min. English, Te Reo Maori with English subtitles.
Director Simon Marler / Producer Simon Marler, Mairi Gunn, Karen Browne

How do you resuscitate the land?

This is a question Simon Marler’s beautiful documentary, Restoring the Mauri of Lake Omapere poses.

Mauri, meaning life spirit, is contained within all objects; trees, rocks, rivers, lakes, us too? It’s a scary thought to think you’ve gone and messed with something like that. But Marler takes us back through the history of Lake Omapere, a small Northland Lake that is no more than three metres high at its deepest point. And through that history Marler shows us the impact we as a people can have on the Mauri of such a vulnerable system. Will it make you think? Possibly.

Certainly it’s a thoughtful doco, the questions posed being whether the voluntary management being undertaken and developed by Lake Ompere’s Trustees, its Kaitiakitanga; meaning guardians for sky, sea and land, will be enough to breathe life back into the lake’s still waters? It’s a poignant thought.

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