Congratulations to all of the Toi Whakaari winners in the  AFTAs (Aotearoa Film and Television Awards) and Aotearoa Film and Television Craft Awards, announced last week at glittering ceremonies in Auckland:

Best Production Design in a Feature Film

Winner: John Harding (contract tutor) – Predicament

Best Costume Design in a Feature Film

Winner: Lesley Burkes-Harding (contract tutor) – Predicament

Best Lead Actor in a Feature Film

Winner: Rawiri Paratene (Acting Graduate 1972) – The Insatiable Moon

Rawiri Paratene, one of the stars of Whale Rider (Koro), is on a roll at the moment.

Having just played the character of Kaiteke in What Really Happened: Waitangi (Peter Burger, 2011) he is now going on to star in the NZ International festival of the Arts with his te reo production of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. After the festival in Wellington it goes up to farewell performances in Auckland, before travelling on to represent New Zealand in a world first at London’s Globe theatre, in Globe to Globe – a multi-lingual Shakespeare festival featuring 37 productions in 26 different languages from around the world.

Paratene recently spent a  six month-long season at the Globe, playing Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet, and he has a long association with Shakespeare, going back to a production of Hamlet at the Mercury Theatre  when he was  just 15. He calls it a “life-changing event”, and credits it with being the reason he originally got into acting.

“I was mesmerised by the words, which spoke to me with clarity and relevance. They no longer sounded like a foreign language. I could understand what the play was about."

He went on to enrol in the acting course at Toi Whakaari, graduating in 1972 as the first-ever M?ori graduate, and went on to lead the Performance for Camera Programme at Toi Whakaari from 1999 – 2001. Just as active as a writer, director, producer and tutor, he has since carved out a name for himself as one of New Zealand’s most active and versatile figures, with multiple awards for both stage and screen.

He formed Auckland company Ng?kau Toa as a vehicle for this new version of Troilus and Cressida, which features a 14-strong cast containing many of our most respected  M?ori actors, specially created haka and waiata, and what has been described as an “exquisite” translation by T?hoe writer Te Haumihiata Mason. The play, set during the Trojan wars, follows the love between a Trojan prince and maiden and features struggles of power, hierarchy and honour between some of history’s greatest characters. Paratene plays Pandarus, and the play is directed by Rachel House and Wetini Mitai-Ngatai.