Guest post by David Stringer, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Department of Second Language Studies.
“I am water, only because you are the ocean.” — from “Kissing the Opelua” by Donovan Kūhiō Colleps
Over the last decade or so, there has been an ocean swell of indigenous filmmaking highlighting the resilience of traditional societies and environments. The film and conversation series Islands of Resilience presents us with beautiful visions of struggle, transformation, and revitalization. The island peoples at the heart of these films have their own unique languages and cultures but the same intimate connection to ancestral environments. In the context of current global threats to cultural and ecological diversity, there are many documentaries made by Western filmmakers about indigenous communities, which, while often valuable, nevertheless treat such people as “other,” as objects of study. However, this new wave of storytelling gives center stage to indigenous voices themselves. They tell their own truths and allow images to confront the imagination directly, without ushers to guide outsiders to assigned viewpoints. In many cultures, storytellers hold a story stick as a sign of their right to speak; it matters who is holding the stick.
The series consists of two films followed by a conversation with filmmakers. While the two movies share certain themes, they also differ significantly in important respects.
Tanna (2015) immerses the viewer in the worldview of a single community in the village of Yakel, in Vanuatu. This is the first film ever to be shot entirely on location in Vanuatu, and the Australian directors served as allies enabling these voices to be heard. The villagers themselves articulated this story of forbidden love based on real events, served as casting directors, forged the dialogue in their native Nauvhal language, and played the roles in the film that they have in actual village life. Although the setting is supremely local, we instinctively recognize the universals of human intimacy, the quiet intensity of lovers on the run from a society set against them, and a pristine environment holding fast against the forces of globalization.
Gender is a significant theme in this film and conversation series. Tanna documents and poeticizes a tragedy that led to a social transformation for women. Previously, tribal disputes could be resolved by arranged intermarriage. The desires of individual women were utterly subsumed by the perceived priority of the well-being of the community. Following the events depicted in the film, the rules were broken and reimagined. A communal decision was reached to respect the right of a woman to refuse subjugation to an unloved groom and her right to choose her own partner. One underlying thread of the narrative is that resilience of traditional culture can be served by compromise and change from within.
In contrast to Tanna’s close-up of self-contained indigenous village culture, Vai (2019) zooms out to capture a wider panorama of Pacific identity. This ambitious portmanteau project involved nine female filmmakers, was shot in seven countries, and relates the story of one woman named Vai, played by eight actors at eight pivotal moments in her life. We don’t need to see Vai as a single person; rather she emerges as an amalgam of female experience in cultures where colonialism has disrupted intergenerational transmission of knowledge, families are regularly separated as children leave for education or employment, and individuals seek to reconnect with ancestral cultures as they reclaim their heritage. The dialogue, in English, Fijian, Māori, Samoan, and Tongan, changes language with each location. Amazingly, this all works, thanks in part to the marvelous acting, the same gorgeous cinematography throughout, and the ease with which we can lose ourselves in the drama of the moment.
Vai also invites us to reconsider questions of gender and ethnicity, not only in the film but in the filmmaking process itself. It served as a platform for female empowerment at every stage of production, and the writers and directors are all New Zealanders with indigenous ancestral links to each of the Pacific Islands where they set their stories. The film intelligently eschews simplistic notions of racial or ethnic purity. Several vignettes implicitly acknowledge the intricacy of contemporary identity in communities that have been transformed by colonialism, and this sense of complexity is enhanced by the frequent shifts in location and language.
The distinct narratives of the film share emotional strands of displacement and diaspora but are woven together in a way which reaffirms indigenous resilience, the agentive force of women, and diverse storytelling. Each part of the film dramatically conveys how an individual can rise to meet the challenge of maintaining identity, cultural heritage, and connection to the land in the face of global capitalism and socio-economic injustice. This ultimately uplifting film offers not only stories of struggle but visions of emancipation.
Both films are notable for their superb cinematography. In Tanna, the viewer is plunged into a world of sun-dappled forest glades, volcanic purple mist, and liminal rocks where land meets sea and sky. Vai is characterized by similarly transporting images of Pacific environments, although it is often the camerawork with characters that dazzles, as we watch emotions play out on the expressive faces and in the body language of Vai from childhood to old age.
The final event in the series involves a conversation with filmmakers Matasila Freshwater and Marina Alofagia McCartney, two of the directors of Vai, and IU doctoral candidate Natasha Saelua, an experienced advocate for Pacific Islander communities. Matasila Freshwater was voted 2019 New Filmmaker of the Year (Screen Production and Development Association, New Zealand), and is well-known for her original work in animation. Marina Alofagia McCartney has had a wide-ranging career and is currently exploring Moana Pasifika identity and filmmaking through her doctoral studies at Auckland University of Technology. Natasha Saelua is a doctoral candidate in Higher Education and Student Affairs at IU and a founding board member of the national organization Empowering Pacific Islander Communities. The audience will be invited to consider not only what is unique about these films, but how they relate to the current wave of indigenous reclamation of voice, image, and the story stick.
Vai will be screened at IU Cinema on October 19. All tickets have been distributed for this event. There will be no standby line for this sold-out screening. A Conversation on Islands of Resilience: Voices Making Waves, featuring Vai filmmakers Matasila Freshwater and Marina Alofagia McCartney and IU doctoral candidate Natasha Saelua, will take place as a Zoom event in the IU Cinema Virtual Screening Room on October 21. Tanna was previously presented as a virtual screening on September 9.
The series Islands of Resilience was curated by David Stringer of the Department of Second Language Studies, with support from IU Cinema, Themester, and the Asian Culture Center.
This is an abbreviated version of an article that first appeared in the October 2021 edition of The Ryder Magazine.
David Stringer is an associate professor of Second Language Studies at the College of Arts and Sciences, and an affiliate of the Integrated Program in the Environment. His research focuses on language acquisition, language attrition, and bilingualism.