Activist, actor and advocate Anzac Wallace has passed away yesterday at the age of 74.

Anzac Wallace (Ngāpuhi) is lying in state at Ngā Whare Waatea marae in Māngere, the urban marae he helped build in the 1980s. Ngā Whare Waatea chairman, Minister Willie Jackson paid tribute to Matua Zac Wallace last night, describing him as “inspirational”.

“I’ve known him for 36 years, he was a mate of mine. He was wild – an advocate, a speaker, a huge personality.

“I’m honoured as chairman of the marae to have him lie with us. It’s unusual to have tangi here but he felt comfortable in an urban marae setting. It was Zac who asked to lie at the marae.”

Wallace grew up in Mission Bay in Auckland, his family among the first Māori to move into the predominantly Pākehā neighbourhood when his father got a job as a caretaker and then a wharfie, and his mother as a laundress for local families. In a 2018 interview with Marae’s Hikurangi Jackson, Wallace recalled that as a young boy he began breaking into local homes and bringing home glasses, cutlery, linen, and presents for his siblings to make their home look like those of his Pākehā schoolmates. He also admitted breaking into “a prime minister’s house” and stealing a large sum of money.

Eventually he was caught, beginning a 10 year journey of incarceration that began with borstal and ended in a lag in Paremoremo prison’s notorious D-block.

Wallace credits David Lange, a family friend, with helping him turn his life around in prison, saying the former prime minister was a regular visitor.

On his release in 1974, Wallace worked on Auckland’s Māngere Bridge project. He soon rose to site chairman, and played a central role in a dispute around the sacking of 142 carpenters and labourers over an unsatisfactory redundancy. The company refused to negotiate and the stalemate with the workers led to industrial action that lasted two-and-a-half years. During that time, Wallace focused on organising long-term support for worker’s families as well as making huge sacrifices for his own.

During this time film pioneer Merata Mita and her partner Gerd Pohlmann made a documentary about the bridge workers’ strike. As well as featuring heavily in The Bridge, Wallace also narrated it. He went on to star alongside Mita and Billy T James in a television play by Rowley Habib about the protest movement called The Protestors. Then Mita suggested Wallace to director Geoff Murphy for the role of Te Wheke in his 1983 land wars epic Utu.

Utu and specifically Wallace’s performance brought international acclaim, with director Quentin Tarantino naming it among his favourite films and describing it as “hands down the best New Zealand movie of all time.” It was the second ever New Zealand film invited to Cannes.

Wallace went on to star in landmark New Zealand films Mauri and The Silent One, as well as smaller roles in TV. He told Marae he decided to use his profile to help his community.

After finding a number of homeless young people living on a disused plot of land in Māngere, he began a quest to acquire the land and turn it into a multi-use facility and urban marae to help the community. Although he was successful in securing both the land and funding to develop it, he was told in a board meeting by his peers that he had been deemed unsuitable to lead the project. Wallace says this decision broke his heart and led to a move to Australia. He wouldn’t return to New Zealand for 27 years.

While in Australia he was diagnosed with bone cancer. When he returned to New Zealand he promised the first thing he would do is give some people a piece of his mind, specifically those who took what is now Te Whare Waatea marae away from him. He collapsed as a result of medical complications on arriving at Immigration in Auckland. The first person to call and offer help and support was someone on his ‘hitlist’, Willie Jackson, who later offered him a job.

Wallace and his wife Deidre Nehua became pivotal figures in MUMA’s Out the Gate programme supporting recently released prisoners. They feature heavily in The Spinoff’s upcoming documentary series made in collaboration with Story Box, He Kōrero Taumaha Tonu, looking at Māori and the criminal justice system on the 30th anniversary of Moana Jackson’s landmark 1988 report. Wallace made headlines last August when he publicly challenged speakers at a government criminal justice summit, asking ‘Where are Māori?’ in response to the lack of Māori speakers.

Jackson says he was the perfect person to help people find light at the end of the tunnel. “He discovered Ngā Whare Waatea marae – to his credit he found it for us. When he came back from Australia, I employed him and the rest is history. He spent his last years making a huge contribution to the marae. He was a classic case from Paremoremo D block out in the community world, helping others. Who better for them to talk to?

“Who better to give them hope?”

E te rangatira, haere, haere, haere atu rā.

In cinemas now, Vai tells the story of one woman’s life through eight ten-minute shorts, directed by nine Pacific women.

At the Auckland premiere of Vai at Sylvia Park, dozens of attendees line up at the candy bar to buy a drink for the film. After paying, they then continued into the theatre where they discovered that, like all premieres, snacks and drinks were provided free of charge.

It’s a small misunderstanding that represents a much larger reality: Pasifika don’t often get invited to premieres, and Pasifika don’t often make movies to premiere.

As if making up for lost time, Vai has nine Pacific women writer-directors. Produced by Kerry Warkia and Kiel McNaughton, and a sequel of sorts to the critically acclaimed Waru (2017), Vai consists of eight ten-minute vignettes, directed by nine women. Each vignette is largely one shot and set, in order of appearance, in Fiji, Tonga, Solomon Islands, (Sāmoan in) Aotearoa, Cook Islands, Sāmoa, Niue, and Aotearoa.

Vai follows the character Vai from age seven to age eighty. Though her body and location changes with each time jump, her story is consistent. It’s a plot device that works especially well given the shared experiences of women from all Pacific Islands. Niue Vai and Sāmoan Vai really aren’t that different.

For Warkia, the decision to keep each vignette as one shot, like Waru, was easy to make. “Obviously if Waru hadn’t worked we wouldn’t be here,” she said, speaking before the Auckland premiere. “We loved the idea of a single shot and what you can do with that. And how the audience really sits with the actor the entire time, going through everything with them and they can’t escape it.”

The directors all had a cultural connection to their island setting, but there was no system in place to divy up the timeline. “Kiel and I lay awake some nights going ‘oh my god what if they all fight over what part of Vai’s life they want to tell’. One of the directors came in thinking to herself ‘I’m quite happy to fit in where I’m needed to fit in’ so that was incredibly generous. Other people said ‘I actually don’t feel like I have the experience to write to this but I feel really comfortable here in this [other] space.’”

It’s a unique project, sharing a director credit with eight others. Dianna Fuemana (Niue vignette) knew going in that directing on this film wouldn’t include the same overarching control as an orthodox shoot. “We accepted on the first day that they [Warkia and McNaughton] were the ‘Kapeteni’ of our Vaka. We would ‘ama’ and take turns at steering but they would lead us.”

Leading nine Pasifika women directors meant adapting the schedule and budgets to cater to unique needs. Something Warkia believes is long overdue industry-wide. “There’s a real holistic view you have to take with it and I really enjoy that way of working. I really do want to know if you’re a single mother and you’re struggling with your daughter and you actually need her to travel with you and be on set with you. We can do that. We can make that happen. And that’s what we did.

“What do those women need to achieve their full potential because that’s what we need to put in place. Those things have to go into our budgets and we have to understand what that means because they deserve it.”

In film, as in most industries, those most deserving rarely receive the opportunity to excel. Watching Vai, it’s hard to believe that the majority of people seen on screen had never acted before. Eight girls and women play Vai in the film and only one, Fiona Collins in the Sāmoa vignette, had acted previously to this project. It leaves you wondering if you’ll be seeing any of them again.

As Warkia knows all too well, the first response to any call for more diversity in the entertainment industry is simply that the numbers aren’t there. And it pisses her off. “One of the things that drives me crazy is I sat in a drama hui and one of these bloody guys said ‘where are these people that you talk about? Where are the Māori directors?’ He said, “we’ve got diversity in catering, we’ve got diversity in the gaffer team…”

“I literally had just gotten off the plane that morning from Toronto where Waru had its international premiere to go to this meeting to listen to this fucking white guy talk about ‘where are they?’ It’s super insulting and it’s ridiculous. The door has been shut for so long for women and even longer for women of colour. You need to open that goddamned door and you need to go out and you need to find them. Because they’re making shit happen in their communities and families.”

From the families and communities to the world. Vai’s screenings at SXSW and the Berlin International Film Festival were all sold out. It received widespread positive reviews despite showing to audiences about as far removed from a Solomon Islands lagoon as you could get. For ‘Ofa-Ki-Levuka Guttenbeil-Likiliki (Tonga vignette) it’s no surprise but a welcome vindication.

“Our stories told our way is perfectly fine and it doesn’t need to be tweaked or refined to suit an ‘international audience’. We often try to conform or fit a particular way of storytelling with the fear that if we tell it like it is, only a Pacific or indigenous audience will be interested. The world is ready for our stories and this is just the beginning.”