Filmmaker and PBS producer Leya Hale has received the 2020 Sundance Institute Merata Mita Fellowship. Named in honor of the late groundbreaking Māori filmmaker Merata Mita, the annual fellowship comes with cash grants, a trip to the Sundance Film Festival, and access to Sundance Institute’s programs and mentorship. N. Bird Runningwater, Director of the Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Program, announced the news earlier this week.
“This annual fellowship celebrates the enormous artistic contributions and memory of our beloved colleague and friend Merata Mita, who was a mother, an activist, documentarian, and the first Indigenous woman to write and direct a dramatic feature film,” Runningwater stated. “Further, it underlines Sundance Institute’s ongoing global commitment to supporting Indigenous artists. The selection of Leya Hale as the 2020 recipient reflects the incomparable talent, productivity, and lifelong creative and artistic energy in everything that Merata accomplished throughout her life.”
Hale is of the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota and Diné Nations. She serves as a producer at Twin Cities PBS and has directed docs “The People’s Protectors,” “Reclaiming Sacred Tobacco,” and “Everybody Belongs… Out of the Basement.” She won an Upper Midwest Emmy for the former. Hale is an alumna of the Sundance Film Institute Knight, Big Sky Film Institute Native Initiative, and Sundance Film Institute Creative Producing fellowships.
Born in 1942, Mita is known as New Zealand’s first Indigenous female filmmaker. She was dedicated to telling Indigenous stories on-screen and chronicled protests, police brutality, and inequality in her work. “Hotere,” “Mauri,” and “Patu!” are among her directing credits. From 2000-2009, Mita served as an advisor and artistic director at the Sundance Institute Native Lab. She died in 2010 at the age of 67. Last year, her son, Hepi Mita, premiered a doc about her, “Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen,” at Sundance.
