Thanks to all who participated in our Summer 2020 series! The discussion series is now concluded, but you can still watch the video-taped introductions by our film experts and the films on your own time. Throw a DIY watch party! For more information on the series: Virtual International Film Festival.
Video introduction by SHASS faculty for each film are available to the public. Links to the featured films are open to current MIT students, faculty and staff.
Introduction to the film
By Megan Black
Watch the film
Watch the film here: The Hunt for the Wilderpeople
About the film
Black’s pick is: The Hunt For The Wilderpeople. Dir. Taika Waititi. The Orchard, 2016.
From acclaimed New Zealand director Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok, What We Do in the Shadows) comes an award-winning new comedy. Julian Dennison stars as Ricky, a defiant young city kid who finds himself on the run with his cantankerous foster uncle (Sam Neil) in the wild New Zealand bush. A national manhunt ensues, and the two are forced to put aside their differences and work together. Features Julian Dennison, Rachel House, Rhys Darby, Rima Te Wiata, Sam Neill.
“One of the most sincere and funny portraits of family life to come along in a while.” – April Wolfe, L.A. Weekly
“Every once in a while, a small, unheralded film comes along, so smart and funny, such a pleasure to experience, you can’t believe your luck. “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” is such a film.” – Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times
Country: New Zealand. Genre: Comedy. Awards: Winner of Best Narrative Feature at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Winner of an Audience Award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Winner of Best Film at the New Zealand Film and TV Awards.
Speakers
- Associate Professor of History at MIT
Megan Black is a historian of U.S. environmental management and foreign relations in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is the author of The Global Interior: Mineral Frontiers and American Power, which analyzes the surprising role of the U.S. Department of the Interior in pursuing minerals around the world—in Indigenous lands, formal territories, foreign nations, the oceans, and outer space.