This Way of Life, the locally produced, privately funded documentary, shot over four years in the Ruahine ranges and at Waimarama Beach in Hawkes Bay has been selected for the NZ Internatioanl Film Festival. The film which was finished just this week follows a maverick Maori family, their six kids and 50 horses as they traverse their lives.

This Way of Life, the locally produced, privately funded documentary, shot over four years in the Ruahine ranges and at Waimarama Beach in Hawkes Bay has been selected for the NZ Internatioanl Film Festival. The film which was finished just this week follows a maverick Maori family, their six kids and 50 horses as they traverse their lives.

Director: Tom Burstyn
Year: 2009
Running time: 85 mins

‘I treat my children the way I would like to have been raised,’ says Peter Karena, none too impressed by the adoptive father who raised him. In this captivating, visually ravishing doco, we watch Peter and his wife Colleen over an eventful four years as they do whatever it takes to provide emotional security and a life in harmony with nature for their six children. As charismatic a subject as any filmmaker could ask for, Peter makes ends meet as a horse-whisperer, builder and hunter. Seeing the children riding bareback through the East Coast dunes or astride a horse moving up a river with their father is like glimpsing the infancy of the classical gods. (Yes, Tom Burstyn’s cinematography is that remarkable.) But is such glorious freedom, a respect for nature and the abundant love of family all a child needs? Never evangelical, Peter and Colleen talk with unassuming vitality about the values they are instilling in their children. You might well leave their company persuaded that the parents of the future should be getting to know horses now.