copyright 2021, Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media
Jump Cut, No. 60, spring 2021

Indigenous feminism revitalizing the long take:
Waru and The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open

By Missy Molloy

Waru (2017) is an Aotearoa New Zealand-set film comprised of eight 10-minute long takes, each written and directed by a Māori woman (the directors in shot order are Briar Grace-Smith, Casey Kaa, Ainsley Gardiner, Katie Wolfe, Renae Maihi, Chelsea Winstanley, Paula Jonesand Awanui Simich-Pene). The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (2019) is a “real-time" film co-written and directed by Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn and presented as a single long take; the 13 long takes that constitute the bulk of the film are shot and edited to disguise the cuts.[1] [open endnotes in new window] Waru tracks the ripple effects of a child’s abuse-related death on his community, while The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open focuses on Rosie (played by Violet Nelson), a pregnant teenager living with her abusive boyfriend, and Áila (played by Tailfeathers), a concerned stranger who witnesses Rosie’s abuse, then urges her to seek help. While these films’ long takes are technically proficient and innovative, I argue that their primary function is to develop themes about urgent social issues rather than to inspire marvel at their virtuosity. Thus in this essay, I use formal analysis of Waru and The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open to indicate the connections between the films’ stylistic features and their representations of Indigenous women’s experiences.  Furthermore, my analysis of long takes in Indigenous films that originated in NZ and Canada highlights essential rather than incidental links between the two cinemas in anticipation of ambitious international co-productions helmed by Māori and First Nations women filmmakers on the horizon. [1a]

The two films analyzed here share several notable characteristics:

• they are primarily authored by Indigenous women;
• Indigenous women play the lead roles; and
• they effectively utilize long takes to communicate intersectional challenges Indigenous women face in the present.

The particular use of long takes in these films serves to strengthen them as Indigenous feminist filmmaking. My close analysis of several lengthy takes from each film demonstrates the makers’ revitalization of the long take, and adaptation of itin pursuit of analogous sociopolitical goals. And while these films recall aspects of cinematic realism historically associated with long takes, especially in regards to theories of feminist filmmaking that developed alongside second-wave feminism, these films also break new ground by meticulously orchestrating story, mise-en-scène and camera movement to situate viewers in close proximity to realistically rendered experiences of contemporary Indigenous women. They do so in the service of a specifically twenty-first century Indigenous feminism that is currently gaining traction in indie, activist, and transnational spheres of film production.

The indirect and intimate long takes of Waru’s “Mihi” and “Em”

Waru is an anthology film that producers Kerry Warkia and Kiel McNaughton developed with a plan to commission writer-directors to author eight long takes that tell distinct, yet related stories.[2] Embarking on the project in 2009, Warkia and McNaughton devised the film’s inciting incident: “A child dies at the hands of a caregiver and during the tangihanga [te reo Māori for “funeral’] the wider whānau implodes.”[3] Whānau means “family” in te reo Māori, but the concept includes “extended family” and can also refer to a “community of related families who live together in the same area.”[4] The logline’s “whānau” implies the latter, Warkia and McNaughton inviting Māori women applicants to propose characters and stories that would directly or indirectly involve the death of Waru (which means “eight” in te reo Māori). In theory, the indirect stories would testify to the strong impact of child abuse on the wider community.

An article about Waru published in New Zealand newspaper Stuff opens emphatically with “New Zealand has the worst rate of child abuse in the developed world.”[5] Warkia and McNaughton have stated that the intention behind Waru’s premise was to “communicate the shared feelings we have towards child abuse in Aotearoa [te reo Māori for] New Zealand.”[6] After securing modest funding from the NZ Film Commission,[7] they invited proposals for the long takes that would become a single, collaborative feature. After accepting eight applicants, Warkia and McNaughton hosted a pre-production retreat for Waru’s directors to develop their screenplays and enhance connections across the anthology.[8] The Waru project stipulated the following “non-negotiable” constraints: each shot

“[1] had to have a female Māori lead, [2] the story had to connect to the death of a child, [3] all the stories had to take place within the same 10-minute timeframe, and [4] the vignette would be one continuous shot.”[9]

In Waru’s final cut, the following features enhance connections between the eight shots:

• Waru’s voiceover narration, “When I died, I saw the whole world,” opens the film and replays in the final shot;
• the same press photo of Waru (with and without the accompanying news broadcast) appears in several takes (Figure 1);
• the same non-diegetic titles—9:59 am, quickly replaced by 10:00 am (same font, same on-screen placement, see Figures 2 and 3)–open each shot, signaling a new sequence and communicating that all eight shots are diegetically simultaneous;
• the film’s score maintains a subtle presence that augments tonal similarities among the shots;
• Drew Sturge is the director of photography, Rajneel Singh the editor, and Riria Lee the production designer for all eight long takes[10]; and
• several actors appear in multiple segments (for example, Waru’s distraught mother appears in Shots 1 and 5).

Upon release, critics praised the originality of Waru’s concept and execution[11]; the fresh perspectives it presented on the difficult subject matter of NZ’s high child homicide and abuse rates[12]; and the creativity stimulated by the constraints, in particular the long take specification.[13]  

My analysis concentrates on Shots 3, “Mihi,” and 4, “Em,” which, of Waru’s eight shots, focus most explicitly on motherhood and represent, in my view, the most sophisticated responses to the film’s constraints. Directors Ainsley Gardiner (“Mihi”) and Katie Wolfe (“Em”) were among the most experienced in film production at the start of the project (other Waru directors entered pre-production with experience mainly in screenwriting, producing, and/or theater [14]). Gardiner has produced several of the most successful twenty-first century NZ films, including Boy (Waititi 2010) and The Breaker Upperers (Sami and van Beek 2018), and prior to “Mihi,” had written and directed an award-winning short, “Mokopuna” (2009), that screened at 16 international festivals. Her professional biography (available on NZ On Screen’s website) indicates that Indigenous feminism fuels her film practice: Gardiner “[seeks] stories by two groups who have often battled to be heard on-screen: Māori and women.”[15] Waru offered Gardiner the opportunity to combine the two, and to stretch her directing capabilities by meeting the constraints:

“I was reluctant to be involved at first, I felt aggrieved that we were bringing these amazing wahine — or female — Māori filmmakers together and a story of abuse was the one we were going to tell. But I decided to do it to develop my directing skills — I am more often a producer than a director — and I liked the idea of working within constraints that were not of my making.”[16]

The title character “Mihi” is out of gas at the start of the sequence (Figure 4). After having difficulty connecting to the school office to report her children absent (“My kids, they’re sick,” she declares tersely after the answering machine finally beeps), she exits her car, carrying the baby seat in which her youngest child sleeps, and approaches the front door. On her way into the house, she dials “Work and Income” (NZ’s social services department) to request help accessing fuel (Figure 5). In the next (and lengthiest) segment of the 10-minute shot, Mihi is on hold with Work and Income, the service’s muzak providing a diegetic score that accompanies her frantic search for spare change: in the kitchen drawers (Figure 6), under the couch cushions in the semi-connected living room (Figure 7), and eventually, under the refrigerator (Figure 8).

Mihi’s two hungry young daughters interrupt her rummage through the kitchen drawers; their request for “something to eat” motivates another harried search, this time in the kitchen cabinets. She gives them each a plain slice of white bread, but they aren’t satisfied, so she opens a can of corn and hands it to them (Figure 9). While still on hold and scrounging under the sofa cushions, Mihi finds a school permission slip, which obviously upsets her. Appearing semi-defeated, she stares out the window (Figure 10), the camera refocusing to register her sudden awareness that her neighbor is watching (Figure 11). “Keep your bloody nose out of it,” she angrily mutters, retreating away from the window and back into the kitchen, then becoming even more discouraged when she pours the last drop of milk into her coffee (Figure 12). Now totally overcome, Mihi slides down the wall (Figure 13) and lies on the floor (Figure 14). Her vantage (from the floor) compels an under-the-refrigerator search, but the small change that produces only intensifies her despair.

The entrance of her adolescent daughter, Harmony, through the back door and appearing dejected, kicks off the long take’s third (and final) act. They have an altercation, during which Mihi’s call becomes disconnected (and she loses her place in the hold line). Harmony is angry at Mihi for failing to sign the school permission slip for a Museum trip scheduled that day and for failing to pay her fees (Figure 15, “I couldn’t go [on the trip] anyway,” Harmony mutters). On the other hand, Mihi is angry at the school for sending students who can’t pay for the trip home and at Harmony for her disrespect. “You’re not the mom,” Mihi angrily reminds her (Figure 16), a statement Harmony throws back in her face a minute later (Figure 17) after Mihi demands that Harmony go pick up the baby, his crying audible from another room (off-screen).

The long take climaxes when the enraged Mihi grabs Harmony by the shoulders and slams her roughly against the hallway wall near the open front door (Figure 18). At that precise moment, the “nosy” neighbor appears behind them in the doorway, surprising Mihi with offers of fuel (from her lawnmower), food (proffering a plastic grocery bag, Figure 19), and help with the baby. The neighbor’s unexpected arrival (and help) deflates the violent emotions she interrupted; Mihi lets her into the house to get the screaming baby, hands Harmony food from the bag, and gently (albeit wearily) directs her outside to play with her sisters. The camera subsequently follows Harmony outside and becomes unmoored (apparently magically, the technique accomplished with grace, Figure 20). Mihi is visible leaning in the doorway, observing her children (Figure 21), while the camera floats upward, leaving Mihi in the distance (Figure 22) and eventually off-screen. The take ends with an image of the sky above the houses and tree-line (Figure 23).

Waru’s third vignette effectively communicates that for Mihi, motherhood is a compound of frustration, unceasing demands, disappointment, and exhaustion, which Gardiner expresses by showing that while Mihi is always moving (and rarely still), she is hindered from accomplishing most of her goals because new challenges distract her, often exacerbating existing problems. So for example, while searching for spare change to purchase fuel, which she needs to drive her younger children to school, Mihi finds a permission slip that she had forgotten. When Harmony’s arrival intensifies that problem, a fight develops between Mihi and Harmony that terminates the “Work and Income” call, thus impeding a solution to the fuel problem through the enhancement of another, unsolvable problem. Gardiner explains that her own experiences informed Mihi’s story:

“I have spent years on the DPB [NZ’s Domestic Purposes Benefit, which mainly serves solo parents], where my whole spirit was broken. I was demoralised, my way of seeing the world altered. And while I was lucky enough to have a middle-class education and knew that despite my misery I was not a lost cause, while I had my imagination and storytelling that allowed me to retain hope, and though I was surrounded by friends and family, I felt very alone in my struggle.”[17]

The story Gardiner tells in Waru’s third take draws attention to Mihi’s formidable challenges, which appear perpetual, and to small acts of kindness, which can be decisive for people ground down by a daily fight to survive and by societal contempt for those on benefits.

Gardiner’s emphasis on “imagination and storytelling,” in her comment about the film’s inspiration, is evident in a fantastic element that enhances the narrative complexity of the sequence (which would have been an accomplished long take in the style of neorealism without this element). It involves a dragon, which Mihi evokes through sound effects, animation superimposed onto the live action footage, and dialogue. In the first dragon reference (early in the take), Mihi notices her neighbor while exiting the car, and when the camera pans left to approximate a point-of-view shot from Mihi’s perspective, the sound of a lightly audible dragon’s growl complements the childlike sketch of dragon’s breathe emitting from her neighbor’s nose (Figure 24).

Shortly after, Mihi tells her two young daughters that their school is closed because it “got attacked by dragons” (rather than admit that they can’t go because the car is out of fuel). Later, while Mihi is on hold and desperately searching for change, it becomes clear that her daughters have integrated the dragon tale into their play (Figure 25). “Shh! You’re gonna wake your brother,” Mihi chastises. “We’re chasing the dragon,” they exclaim, one costumed in a red cape and both wielding stick/swords. “I’m using mind control,” the older girl brags. “What’s your superpower, Mom?” “Invincibility. I’m invincible,” Mihi answers. “Invincible?” asks the younger in confusion. In response, the older misinforms her: “It means no one can see her.”

Several minutes later, when Mihi is sprawled on the kitchen floor in defeat, a second animation, of a dragon’s tail shooting out from under the refrigerator before quickly retracting (and also accompanied by the faint dragon sound effect) compels Mihi to pursue it (Figure 26). However, that search also ends in disappointment, which the hold line’s muzak amplifies along with the sporadic interruption, “Someone will be with you soon. Please hold” (delivered in an emotionless computer-generated voice). The invincibility/invisibility mix up resonates here, when Mihi’s imagination fails her, and later, during Harmony and Mihi’s altercation when Mihi pursues Harmony into the hallway, pleading, “Can you even hear me? . . . Stop ignoring me!” (Figure 27).

The element of fantasy that the dragon injects into “Mihi” creatively conveys Gardiner’s belief about the value of imagination, which was pivotal in the challenges she faced while on benefits. It also communicates that imagination alone cannot protect the socially vulnerable from feeling invisible. Furthermore, invincibility requires more than imagination, “Mihi” carefully suggests. It requires social support that legitimately feels supportive rather than isolating and judgmental (Gardiner having described her own years on the DPB as spirit-breaking).

Gardiner’s careful staging of Mihi, a mother struggling to make ends meet, in her home and via long takes is reminiscent of Chantal Akerman’s groundbreaking 1975 feature film, Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. R. Patrick Kinsman’s article on Jeanne Dielman, “She’s Come Undone,”[18] states,

“One of the most immediately noticeable characteristics of the film is its reliance on cinematic minimalism, manifested as long takes and medium shots. Jeanne (Delphine Seyrig) is almost always in the frame, but wanders in and out” (218).

Replace “Jeanne (Delphine Seyrig)” with “Mihi (Ngapaki Moetara)” and the statement applies to Waru’s third take, although the camera increases its distance from Mihi at several noteworthy points in the 10-minute sequence. Also like Jeanne Dielman, “Mihi” has formal properties that prioritize its main character’s domestic labor, closely attending to the gestures and expressions that communicate her experience. Teresa de Lauretis argues that in Jeanne Dielman,

“narrative suspense is not built on the expectation of a ‘significant event,’ a socially momentous act . . . but is produced by the tiny slips in Jeanne’s routine, the small forgettings, the hesitations between real-time gestures as common and ‘insignificant’ as peeling potatoes, washing dishes or making coffee – and then not drinking it” (159).[19]

Jeanne and Mihi are constantly in action, yet their actions display the discontinuities and disruptions of a distinctly maternal subjectivity, and their stories challenge conventional notions of significant events and suspense in cinematic storytelling (as de Lauretis implies through scare quotes).  

While the hint of fantasy adds depth to the portrait of Mihi’s subjectivity, the movement of the camera independently of Mihi says something about Waru, Shot 3’s perspective on the social problem of child abuse in NZ. For the majority of the sequence, the camera remains close to Mihi, framing her in medium and/or medium close-up, which enhances the conspicuousness of its independent movements. For instance, it lingers on the small pile of change on the counter after Mihi exits frame left, tracking in and slightly right to capture Mihi in the living room (Figure 28), or it tracks Harmony’s angry retreat from Mihi. Yet the most noteworthy camera movement away from Mihi is the final retreat from the house and into the sky. The Waru score becomes audible in this finale, signaling the sequence’s imminent end and enhancing the drama of its conclusion.

The 1 minute, 40 seconds of score that plays until “Mihi” cuts to black is available here: https://soundcloud.com/laurenkingproductions/waru-mihi-neighbourly-deed?in=laurenkingproductions/sets/waru-original-soundtrack-score. The emotional electronic composition (by Lauren King) gradually fades in at the background of the sequence’s turning point, when Mihi’s neighbor offers much needed assistance (thereby overturning Mihi’s interpretation of her interest as judgmental).

The Waru score and sky imagery correspond with aspects of Waru’s opening and closing, thereby connecting Shot 3’s conclusion to the position on domestic violence advanced by the anthology as a whole. Just after the Waru title card and before the opening of Shot 1: “Charm,” Waru states via voiceover narration, “When I died, I saw the whole world.” Waru repeats the line at the start of the final sequence, Shot 8: “Titty and Bash,” this time with additional text, including, “I see the people in their houses . . . When I died, I was flying” (this line whispered). This line resonates with Mihi’s finale, connecting the score’s presence and camera’s drift upward, away from Mihi’s troubles and into an aerial view, with Waru, the child victim of domestic abuse. In “Titty and Bash,” which ends with two sisters interrupting a scene of domestic violence to liberate their young whānau, Waru whispers, “I see the people.” I read this line as reassurance that even if Mihi and the other Waru protagonists feel invisible, they are nonetheless seen; a non-judgmental and compassionate gaze encompasses and connects their struggling community. According to Waru’s complex ethical vision, victims of domestic violence, like Waru, and those dangerously on the edge of enacting such violence, like Mihi and Em, are empathically linked.

Thus while “Mihi” and “Em” are feminist in the compassion towards socially disadvantaged mothers that they model and in their endorsement of efforts to understand rather than demonize them, Gardiner and Wolfe advocate specifically for Māori women, insisting that these mothers suffer from systemic racism in addition to sexism. Waru’s most explicit confrontation with systemic racism occurs in Shot 6, “Kiritapu,” which features a Māori woman working in the media who is isolated from her Pākeha[20] colleagues and subjected to constant demands to explain the overrepresentation of Māori in child abuse cases. In the most dramatic instance of workplace racism depicted in the sequence, a female colleague casually poses the rhetorical question, “Hey Kiri, why do Māori keep having babies if they just kill them, I mean, what the fuck?” The silently seething Kiri erupts in the shot’s finale during a live broadcast, proclaiming that child abuse in New Zealand is “everyone’s problem,” not Māori’s alone (Figure 29). In fact, Waru precisely pinpoints social isolation and condemnation as principal causes of tragedies like Waru’s death. 

Cheryl Suzack describes Indigenous feminism as follows:

“It focuses on the intersections between colonialism and patriarchy to examine how race and gender systems overlap to create conditions in which Indigenous women are subjected to forms of social disempowerment that arise out of historical and contemporary practices of colonialism, racism, sexism, and patriarchy leading to social patterns of 'discrimination within discrimination' (Kirkness, 1987–1988, p. 13) that disproportionately affect Indigenous women” (261).[21]

In an interview with Women and Hollywood, Gardiner explained the response she hoped “Mihi” would incite in viewers:

“It was important to me to ask people to be honest about their own struggles as a way to understand the issues surrounding child abuse more compassionately. I wanted them to identify with Mihi (played by Ngapaki Moetara) and understand how we are only ever on a knife edge with our own humanity: the ability to make really bad choices is within all of us. Then imagine if you’ve never been taught how to make good choices, or you’re stuck in a cycle of poverty, or abuse, or generations of abuse, or loss of culture — [imagination is] the beginning of understanding, I think. And it’s where the conversation about child abuse needs to start. First with comprehension and understanding, then with compassion, then with solutions.”[22]

Waru’s imaginative and collaborative framework allows for a range of portraits that illustrate the intersectional challenges disadvantaging contemporary Māori women, with particular attention placed on the co-productive dynamic between systemic poverty, addiction and abuse.

The aims Gardiner articulates are relevant to the entire anthology yet resonate most strikingly with “Em,” placed directly after “Mihi” in the series of long takes. Deborah Young’s review suggests thematic overlaps between the two sequential sequences:

“Ainsely Gardiner’s [is a] wrenching account of a single mother [Mihi] who hasn’t enough money to buy gas for her car or food for her kids. A complementary piece on motherhood is Katie Wolfe’s about a hip young singer [Em] who comes home at dawn, falling down drunk, and discovers her baby has been locked in the house, alone.”[23]

Prior to directing “Em,” Wolfe had worked steadily in film and television since the early 1990s, and had directed two award-winning shorts, This is Her (2008) and Redemption (2010), both of which screened at Sundance Film Festival (among many others) and the latter won an imagineNATIVE jury prize.[24] Wolfe found the long take constraint stimulating, and was the only Waru director who approached the long take as a lengthy, near-silent action shot.

“For me, the writing process was dictated by the one-shot, I don’t think everyone worked that way . . . I remember the feeling of adrenalin before each take –there was so much set up and so much that could go wrong.”[25]

At the start of Shot 4, Em is about to be dropped home in the morning after a night out. The car-full of young people she is in exuberantly sing, and a comment from the driver to Em (seated in the passenger seat) refers to her participation in a successful performance. Em, extremely intoxicated, sings along loudly to the radio (Figure 30), though she sobers up slightly when they arrive at her house, where she strongly discourages the driver from pulling into the driveway. She also rejects his offer of help when she struggles to exit the car (Figure 31). After the car pulls away – Em yelling, “I love you, fellas,” slurring her words – a difficult journey up the driveway to the front porch ensues.

For nearly a minute of screen time, Em staggers, falls (Figure 32), and eventually drags herself onto the front porch. Then, a dramatic shift occurs when she realizes that she is locked out of the house (Figure 33) and her baby is inside alone. These sobering facts gain her some clarity, and she spends the next several minutes desperately trying to get into the house: banging on windows (Figure 34) and checking locks; unsteadily climbing a ladder to reach a window and falling; pulling a sharp branch out of her leg after the fall (Figure 35), then hobbling towards the back porch; and frantically upending (one by one) a massive pile of shoes (Figure 36) in search of the spare key. When she finds it, she lets out a triumphant gasp before eagerly unlocking the back door (Figure 37). During Em’s exterior search for a way into the house, Waru is visible through a window on a news broadcast (Figure 1). Em also passes the smoking remnants of a backyard fire, which indicates that a social gathering of some kind only recently concluded (Figure 38). In addition, she lapses into a drunken reverie (Figure 39), which is audibly punctuated by a piercing electronic sound effect; she nearly falls asleep (Figure 40), but wakes with a jolt, immediately panic-stricken at the sound of her inaccessible baby’s crying (the diegetic sound resumes, replacing the non-diegetic sound effect, with a jagged cut).

Three kindred compositions stand out in “Em’: in each, Em peers into the house from outside, a neglected child visible in the interior. In the first case, Waru appears on the television (Figure 1). In the second, Em, precariously balanced on the ladder, catches sight of her baby swaddled in blankets on the kitchen floor (Figure 41) and coos, “Momma’s coming,” before falling out of frame with a crash (the camera tilting slowly down in the wake of Em’s fall to catch her sprawled in the grass, nauseous and in pain, Figure 42). And in Shot 4’s final (and most remarkable) composition, Em has purposefully positioned herself outside the house and the baby inside, just on the other side of the glass from where Em lays herself down to sober up (Figure 43). The visual symmetry of these three compositions communicates their significance; they stress Waru’s and the baby’s vulnerabilities inside the home, while Em’s position outside looking in (first unintentionally, then on purpose) conveys ambivalence in her capability as a caretaker. Though Em clearly loves her baby, her alcohol consumption poses a threat. Just before lying down outside across from her baby, Em picks up the beer bottle she had carried from the car and breaks it (Figure 44).

While the multiple layers of the three “through the window” shots and the final composition’s special poignance stand out in the sequence, a second trio of images complements them—in these, Em falls flat, wholly incapacitated. On the first occasion (Figure 32), Em collapses just after exiting the car. The second and third instances are rendered with more drama, the second due to the ironic juxtaposition of Em falling out of frame while cooing “Momma’s coming” (with the camera’s pause before pursuing Em down to the ground enhancing the tension between Em’s desire to go to her baby’s aid and her inability to do so). The third instance occurs after Em has managed to unlock the door and pick up her baby. She nearly passes out (for the second time in the sequence) while cradling her baby on the floor and leaning against the refrigerator. After managing, with considerable effort, to get herself and the baby upright (Figure 45), Em staggers several times before slamming into the wall and falling flat on the floor, eventually appearing upside down in the frame (Figure 46) in a rare close-up (most of the sequence frames Em in medium and medium-long shots to accommodate the emphasis on her constant movements).    
 
Writing for the British Film Institute (in the November 1999 issue), Janet Bergstrom comments on Akerman’s groundbreaking and “personal way of screening women,” in the process quoting Akerman on her approach to representing “the mother’s gestures.” Akerman said,

“I was looking with a great deal of attention and the attention wasn’t distanced… For me, the way I looked at what was going on was a look of love and respect… I let her live her life in the middle of the frame… I let her be in her space.”[27]

The compositions in “Em” illustrate the approach Akerman describes, and the space, attention and respect it entails. 42 years separate the releases of Jeanne Dielman and Waru. However, harsh social judgments levied against mothers are not less common now than then; in fact, a growing body of literature suggests that high social media usage intensifies mothers' feelings of inadequacy and awareness of social judgment, negatively impacting their mental health.[28] Asked to comment on planning and making “Em,” Wolfe singled out the final composition (Figure 43) as “a really strong image” in her conception of the “mini-action film”:

“I had written it that the camera was behind Em looking at Karena, the baby. On the day, the DOP (director of photography) flipped the shot and put Karena in the foreground, [and] it was so much better.”[29]

The camera lingers on this composition for the final moments of “Em,” while the Waru score resumes for the first time in the take (and plays for 31 seconds until Shot 4 cuts to black: https://soundcloud.com/laurenkingproductions/waru-em-no-more?in=laurenkingproductions/sets/waru-original-soundtrack-score). Had this image proceeded as Wolfe originally intended, it would have reiterated the pattern of the other multi-layered window compositions (Figures 1 and 41), that is, privileging Em’s perspective (the view over her shoulder) and placing the child at a distance. The spontaneous inversion here is impactful because it suddenly shifts the focus from Em’s perspective and actions, which the 10-minute take had favored until this point. Furthermore, the non-diegetic score’s audibility while Em sobs blocks the diegetic sound from this side of the glass. The apparently content baby is now between viewers and Em—a bold composition that reinforces Waru’s view that care for children is the responsibility of the entire community (and nation). 

The integration of the score intensifies the empathy for Em already evoked by every aspect of the sequence’s camerawork and mise-en-scéne. The high-contrast imagery, which lights up Awhina Rose Ashby’s face so that it appears to glow, and the unconventional framing (in particular, in Figures 43 and 46) enhance the passionate and committed performance Ashby delivers as Em. Em’s story, which was, according to Wolfe, based on a book by “a mother whose children have been killed,” recalls Charm’s struggle (in Waru: Shot 1) not to blame Waru’s young mother for his death. In Waru, “Mihi” and “Em” most directly confront the difficult circumstances of struggling mothers who are socially disadvantaged and lack sufficient support; in addition, their neatly inverted scenarios—Mihi unable to leave home, and Em barred from getting in—communicate the ambivalence of domestic space for struggling mothers. Their long takes reorient viewers in the hope of, on one hand, inspiring fresh vantages on mothers like “Mihi” and “Em,” and on the other, undermining dominant racist and sexist ideologies that unjustly place blame on women like them for cycles of poverty, addiction, and abuse that are (as Waru: Shot 6’s Kiri insists) “everyone’s problem.” 

The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open

Robin Bourgeois’ review of Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism, and Culture encapsulates the broader context of Indigenous feminism that The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open engages:

“Indigenous feminisms . . . operate from the position that social justice 'can be attained only through specific attention to gender and must be considered as an integral part of, rather than a subsidiary to, struggles for liberation.' The pluralism of feminism, here, is intentional, reflecting the position that 'a single, normative definition of Indigenous feminism remains impossible because Indigenous women’s circumstances vary enormously throughout colonizing societies, where patriarchy dominates, and in Indigenous communities with distinct histories and cultural traditions.'”[30]

My analysis of The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open hones in on the film’s “attention to gender” and the diversity of Indigenous women’s experiences in contemporary Canada through its feature of two protagonists, Rosie and Áila, whose “circumstances vary enormously.”

The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open’s plot derives from an experience Tailfeathers had in Vancouver, which she dwelled on for years after and was eventually driven to adapt to film. Asked in a Vogue interview to comment on the motivation of the film’s long take shooting style, Tailfeathers replied,

“I wanted to make a film that would happen in real time, so that we have just the simple, short experience that these two strangers had together, and then we’d leave it where we leave it, so that the audience would walk away with the same feelings that probably the young woman and I were left with.”[31]

Rosie (Figure 47) is in her late teens and very pregnant, and lives with her abusive partner (Figure 48) and his mother, appearing to have few, if any, alternative options, while Áila (Figure 49) is at least a decade older and financially independent, and lives alone in a comfortably furnished apartment.

A nearly 12-minute prelude introduces the two leads, mainly via lengthy tracking shots that frame Rosie (Figure 50) and Áila (Figure 51) in similar compositions. These firmly establish the characters’ juxtaposition, which is fundamental to the film and its “real time” execution. At 11:52, the film’s title card (Figure 52) appears immediately prior to Áila encountering a barefoot and distressed Rosie (Figure 53) on the street in the middle of a violent encounter with her boyfriend, whose presence is remarkably peripheral. While his threats are frequently audible off-screen, only a single brief and blurry image of him (Figure 54) features in this tense scene, which jump starts the 90-minute sequence shot that dominates the film. The film’s drama hinges on Áila’s efforts to persuade Rosie to seek social assistance (Áila advocates, in particular, for Rosie to admit herself to a women’s shelter that they visit together). However, the intensity derives as much from tensions that simmer between the two women as from the question of whether or not Rosie will follow Áila’s advice and pursue alternative living circumstances for herself and her unborn child.

The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open’s long takes are formally distinct from the eight shots that constitute Waru. Brian Henderson’s “The Long Take” helps clarify the technical difference between the two films:

“The long take rarely appears in its pure state (as a sequence filmed in one shot), but almost always in combination with some form of editing” (7).[32]

In fact, according to Henderson’s assessment, "Mihi" and “Em” would qualify as “pure,”[50] the long take constraint established by Warkia and McNaughton in the spirit of what Mette Hjort calls “Sincere submission to the rules” (in a chapter on Italian for Beginners’ negotiation of the Dogme 95 rule-based framework).[34] The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open, on the other hand, belongs in the more common category of long takes executed with “some form of editing,” which Henderson describes as follows:

“The long take is not in itself a principle of construction . . . but is part of a shooting style, or characteristic way of shooting and building sequences” (7, emphasis in original).

According to Henderson’s anatomy of the long take, The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open would not be “pure,” but shot in a long take “shooting style” that approximates a sequence shot (i.e. a single take that encompasses multiple scenes and locations) but includes 12 hidden cuts (which are distinct from “expressive cuts,” the main focus of Henderson’s article).

The urgency of “real time” was Tailfeathers and Hepburn’s main aim, which they achieved in collaboration with DP Norm Li, leading actor Nelson, and a small crew. They never set a strict “pure” long take target, and dramatic effect had priority over technique. Li sheds light on the thinking behind the film’s "shooting style":

“[Tailfeathers and Hepburn] initially described the project to me as a long single shot allowing the actors to have a full emotional arc . . . By allowing scenes to breathe, their hope was to embrace and capture any unexpected moments. We all agreed that the film should be less about the technical feat of a single take and more about being part of the continuous experience with these two women . . . First and foremost, the directors felt that by having the actors perform from start to finish continuously over 90 minutes, it would create a heightened state of immediacy and urgency.”[35]

While the film’s co-leads are both First Nations women who live in Vancouver, the story and its execution underscore stark differences in the conditions of their lives and the social benefits and opportunities they are able to access. As described by Karen Han,

“The rapport between the two women is uneasy, not just because they’re strangers, but because they seem to be complete opposites. Áila leads a comfortable, stable middle-class existence, and has just been fitted for an IUD. (She’s decided she doesn’t want to have children, even though her boyfriend does.) Rosie lives with her boyfriend and his mother, has no local support system, and is heavily pregnant. Subtler differences make themselves known as the movie progresses, as when Rosie notes that even though they’re both First Nations, Áila looks much whiter.”[36]

The decision to introduce Áila in the process of having an IUD inserted is provocative (Figures 55, 56, 57, 58); on one level, it sets up a direct contrast between the reproductive realities of the two women, who exercise different levels of control and choice in their sexual lives. On another level, the IUD/late-stage pregnancy contrast represented by the two leads draws attention to reproductive autonomy as a critical social justice issue for Indigenous Canadian women. An article in the Alberta Law Review reports that

“Not only do many Aboriginal women have difficulty accessing health care services, they also suffer from more reproductive health-related ailments than their non-Aboriginal counterparts . . . Aboriginal mothers tend to be younger than non-Aboriginal mothers, they tend to have more children . . . [and] Canada’s Aboriginal women confront significantly more reproductive health concerns and face a marked disparity in access to needed medical care compared with non-Aboriginal Canadian women” (722).[37]

The IUD insertion scene is ambivalent in tone regarding Áila’s reproductive autonomy. The coldly unpleasant mise-en-scéne of the gynecologist’s office in conjunction with the doctor’s rote and invasive interrogation of Áila’s sexual history establish the experience as highly unpleasant, which the pregnant mother and needy baby infographic strategically placed behind Áila punctuates. The physical pain of IUD insertion only exacerbates the unpleasantness for Áila. Difficulty accessing health care services is only part of the problem Indigenous Canadian women face in relation to reproduction, the scene suggests; the routine operation of health care in practice, which subjects many women to censure in its enforcement of sexual norms, places special pressure on First Nations women, which Áila’s middle-class appearance only partly protects her from and which, viewers can imagine, would bear down with greater force on Rosie.    

The intersectional pressures that shape Rosie’s experiences are poetically alluded to in the film’s extraordinary title (Figure 52), which is borrowed from First Nations Canadian scholar and writer Billy-Ray Belcourt’s essay poem of the same name.[38] In Belcourt’s work, “The body remembers when the world broke open” simultaneously evokes birth and violence, two of the film’s major concerns, and functions as a sort of poetic thesis for the film, which, through Rosie’s characterization in particular, emphasizes the material weight of trauma (emotional and physical) that the body stores; this, the Rosie/Áila juxtaposition suggests, determines the scope of choices an individual is able to contemplate in determining their experience. Belcourt writes,

“To be Indigenous is also to be hurt on the way out, if the ‘way out’ is crowded by the past’s razor sharp edges.”

Although Belcourt’s essay poem is not explicitly about the traumas of pregnancy or birth, Rosie seems to be modelled on one of the poem’s most affective lines:

“A body can only jar so many spirits and trauma before it glitches, leaks, and splits at the seams.”

Rosie’s introduction—when she moves to make room for the baby carriage, smiling softly off-screen in the baby’s direction—indirectly suggests that she is looking forward to her own baby’s birth. However, the cut (several minutes later) from her unstable home life (where she is threatened with imminent abuse) to Áila at the gynecologist stresses that the older woman’s decade-plus experience negotiating the social regulation of her sexuality has led her to view maternity with significantly less enthusiasm. In other words, the film presents maternity with the ambivalence akin to that of the medical infographic (Figure 55). While there is something appealing about the pink-clad pregnant mother’s protective embrace of the infant housed inside her, the image of the gape-mouthed baby is alarming, and the placement of the figures strangely elides the trauma of birth. Belcourt’s line, “To be Indigenous is also to be hurt on the way out, if the ‘way out’ is crowded by the past’s razor sharp edges,” resonates with the painful history Rosie visibly carries and the violence she suffers in the film’s present, which is prelude to her child’s entrance into the world (its “br[eaking] open”).

Rosie and Áila’s transit through a series of public and private spaces in the film’s sequence shot accentuates the varying degrees of protection and threat these locations offer Rosie; locations include, for instance, a public bus, a doctor’s office, the city street, a taxi, and the women’s shelter in addition to their apartments. The question of whether safe “shelter” for Rosie exists is the implicit enigma the film intentionally mobilizes and leaves unresolved. The charged dynamic between the two women after Áila brings Rosie home with her illuminates the social impasses the film is designed to communicate. The pair spends the longest time in Áila’s apartment, and it is there that their strikingly different circumstances come into conflict.

The camera’s odd placement and careful distance from Áila and Rosie (Figure 59) accentuates the tense silence that precedes Áila’s hesitant question, “So what do you think you wanna do?” After Rosie reiterates her aversion to the police, Áila suggests the shelter as “a place to stay for awhile.” Rosie immediately rejects this option (which she later considers). After another pause, Áila awkwardly revives the lopsided conversation:

            “So you got anybody lookin’ out for you, Rosie?”
            “I look out for myself.”
            “And the baby?”

Ignoring this question, Rosie suspiciously asks whether Áila works for “MCFS,” the Ministry of Child and Family Services (an institution Rosie clearly mistrusts). “No,” Áila declares. The discussion suddenly derails when Rosie points out that Áila has bled through her jeans: “You’re gonna get it on your couch,” Rosie chastises. After the camera pans left to briefly register Áila’s embarrassed rush to the bathroom, it quickly reverts to Rosie, to capture her furtive transfer of cash she stole minutes earlier (out of Áila’s wallet) from the pocket of the borrowed sweatpants she is wearing to her backpack (Figure 60).

The relatively distant vantage of the living room segment is maintained after the pan left and back, but a slight change in position affords a better view of Rosie moving the cash, then anxiously waiting for Áila’s return. Here, the medium/medium-long shot framing of Rosie markedly contrasts the much closer positions of the camera to Rosie minutes earlier in the sequence, when she took advantage of an opportunity to sneak Áila’s wallet out of her handbag (Figure 61), and just before then, when the camera tracked Rosie into the bathroom, where she changed into Áila’s clean clothes and stole prescription drugs from her medicine cabinet. Rosie initially pauses upon entering the bathroom, taking a moment to reassure herself that the baby wasn’t harmed during the violent encounter they just escaped. She then places protective hands over her stomach in a manner that resembles the mother pictured in the medical office infographic (Figure 62).

On multiple occasions, the dialogue between the two women highlights that Áila does not possess clothes or shoes that fit Rosie (whose clothes had gotten wet and soiled and who ran shoeless to escape her boyfriend’s sudden aggression). Áila’s lack of materials to suit Rosie’s basic needs alludes to the inadequacy of Áila’s perspective on the circumstances of Rosie’s life and how they might be improved. Alternating between close and more distant perspectives on Rosie during this sequence varies the viewer’s proximity to Rosie and her actions. The close position to her very pregnant and battered body transmits the desperate impulse to protect herself and baby, while the longer view enables reflection on Rosie in broader contexts than her own self-protection, including the efforts of others (such as Áila and Child and Family Services) to try to provide support so that Rosie and her child don’t have to depend solely on Rosie’s instinct for self-preservation, which negative experiences of foster care have clearly honed. The camera placement and movement in relation to Rosie is crucial to the film’s complex stance on her predicament, which highlights how the abuse and its aftermath appear to Rosie moment by moment, while she carefully weighs difficult options. The accessibility of the money and prescription pills seem to be their primary appeal for her, while longer term and unknown scenarios inspire caution. 

Nelson has spoken about harnessing painful personal experience in her outstanding performance of Rosie:

“My mom went through an abusive relationship, and I witnessed it as a kid . . . I went through foster care, and now every time I watch the film, I think back to the emotions I was feeling when we filmed it, because I used my own personal story and my mom’s story to connect to Rosie more. Now, watching the film, I think about what my mom went through, and about how this film can help other Indigenous women feel that they can get out of these situations if they want to.”[39]

The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open met the goal the filmmakers had in mind for the long takes–that “having the actors perform from start to finish continuously over 90 minutes . . . would create a heightened state of immediacy and urgency.” This success is due in large part to the actor’s generous and risky mobilization of her own experiences to enhance the cinematic vitality of her character (which is reminiscent of the influence Gardiner’s experiences had on “Mihi’).

Conclusion

De Lauretis' “Aesthetic and Feminist Theory: Rethinking Women’s Cinema” excerpts Akerman’s oft-cited statement from a 1976 Camera Obscura interview:

“I do think [Jeanna Dielman] is a feminist film because I give space to things which were never, almost never, shown in that way, like the daily gestures of a woman. They are the lowest in the hierarchy of film images . . . But more than the content, it’s because of the style. If you choose to show a woman’s gestures so precisely, it’s because you love them” (118).[40]

In this essay, I have highlight the extraordinary attention to Indigenous women that long takes in Waru and The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open display. While these films’ shooting styles resemble those of feminist classics of narrative cinema, their emphases on the diversity of Indigenous women’s experiences in the present distinguish them from canonical films that effectively utilized long takes to highlight the systemic difficulties women face in patriarchal societies.

As Huhndorf and Suzack put it,

“Indigenous feminist analysis and activism must aim to understand the changing situations, the commonalities, and the specificities of Indigenous women across time and place [. . . and] must seek ultimately to attain social justice not only along gender lines, but also along those of race, class, and sexuality.”[41]

These films’ representations of Mihi, Em and Rosie via long takes achieve precisely the “Indigenous feminist analysis and activism” Huhndorf and Suzack advocate. In a conversation about “Mihi,” Gardiner states,

“The root cause of all suffering is isolation and disconnection, then add poverty and it is a wonder anyone can find their way back from the edge. . . Mihi’s story comes from the isolation of the struggle and my desire for our communities to develop empathy and understanding. If you can’t understand how it is possible for [child abuse and neglect] to happen, then you can not be part of the solution.”[42]

These films written and directed by Indigenous women model alternative approaches to the long take that eschew the ostentation of long take execution in films that have dominated cultural conversations about this “shooting style” in the twenty-first century.

Film criticism (as represented, e.g., by film journalism in prestigious publications such as The New Yorker and The Guardian) tends to celebrate muscular long takes in high-budget films directed by men with men also in the DP role (such as Children of Men, El secreto de sus ojos/The Secret in Their Eyes, and Birdman, to name a few). Moreover, the latter are mainly war and/or action films with men as their protagonists. In contrast, Waru and The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open feature Indigenous women as protagonists and focus on the challenges they face in domestic and local community settings. They do not recreate known histories, as do several highly praised twenty-first century long takes (in Atonement and 1917, for example); they represent fictionalized versions of contemporary realities that have not yet been subjects of cinematic fixation. They also exemplify Bazin’s concept of realism as expressed by Daniel Morgan:

“Realism is not a particular style, lack of style, or set of stylistic attributes, but a process, a mechanism—an achievement” (445). [43a]

Joyce Green described the international development of Indigenous feminism as follows:

“A number of women from Indigenous communities in the U.S., Sápmi (Samiland), Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia also seemed to be using a feminist analysis, or drawing on feminist theories or organizing principles, in political and community activism and in their writings.”[44]

The evolution Green identifies in theories of Indigenous feminism is also visible in the emergence of Indigenous feminist cinema, which has gained significant traction in recent years as Indigenous women filmmakers from a variety of national and cultural backgrounds have produced works that illuminate the intersectional challenges of Indigenous women.

The feature of such films in the same festivals, such as imagineNATIVE, Māoriland, and the Samí Film Festival, alongside the intercultural exchanges these festivals actively promote, evidence the productive and transnational conversation Indigenous feminist cinema participates in.[45] At present, Indigenous women filmmakers are inspiring each other to tell stories about women who have not been well-represented by Hollywood or smaller national cinemas like Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand. Gardiner, when asked to share the “best [professional] advice” she received, answered,

“Merata Mita, a legend in our industry, and the last [and first] Māori woman to write and direct a feature film in New Zealand (“Mauri”), told me that filmmaking is a privilege afforded to very few. That privilege is a huge responsibility.”[46]

The overlapping successes of Tailfeathers, Tracey Deer,[46a] and the Waru directors represent the welcome expansion of that privilege, which has been achieved through the collaboration of Indigenous film professionals (and in fact two Waru directors, Gardiner and Briar Grace-Smith, were awarded the Sundance Institute’s Merata Mita Fellowship in 2019 to develop their co-directed feature film, Cousins, which premieres early in 2021).

Indigenous feminist cinema is driven by pragmatism rather than theory, and aims to enhance the cultural visibility of Indigenous women by representing them in films that travel. Just like NZ social services fail to adequately support women like Mihi, high budget cinema has neglected their stories. However, the recent prominence of multimedia social justice campaigns spearheaded by Indigenous people, e.g. protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline and in defense of the Black Hills, suggests a sea change in Indigenous screen activism. The transnational cinema network operating in close proximity to imagineNATIVE with affiliations around the globe stimulates, supports, and promotes collaborative Indigenous-authored projects, such as The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open, Waru and Warkia and McNaughton’s subsequent anthology films. This essay suggests that the shared features of these films are not incidental; rather, they demonstrate the blossoming of Indigenous feminist cinema and the utility of the long take as an Indigenous feminist tool.

Notes