Patupaiarehe

A “Wild West Productions” FILM
WRITTEN BY Daniel West

May 1526 the Spanish ship San Lesmes is blown off course after rounding the southernmost tip of South America. Months later the sole survivor wash’s up on the coast of New Zealand, Francisco a conquistador soon must come to terms with the fact that he is in a land yet to be discovered by his peers and he may never be rescued.
Hinerangi a beautiful Maori woman has been set apart as puhi, she lives apart from the rest of the tribe and is not permitted to indulge in affairs of the heart.
Her Iwi is a small hunter gatherer tribe who are facing a crisis, with the demise of all the large birds they face a winter without food, and they must find somewhere soon to settle so they can grow crops. This will bring them into conflict with other Iwi facing the same dilemma.
When Hinerangi encounters Fransisco she belives him to be a spirit of the forest, who could help her Iwi.
There will be conflict, forbidding love and a myth will be born that of the Patupaiarehe ‘fairy folk - fair-skinned mythical people who lived in the bush of the mountains.
But this is no fairy tale.