The cinema of the South Sea emphasizes the new DOC

The Asian Pacific Film Festival in Los Angeles is probably America's main starting point for Pacific Islander, Asian and Asian American Productions. The 41^st The annual Laapff will take place in various LA companies from May 1st to 7th and presented by Visual Communications, a media organization based in LA, the “Mission is to develop and support the voices of the filmmakers of the Asian American and the Pacific islander and media artist who enable and challenge the communities. Perspectives.

As a film historian/critic, who has included three film history books with Luis Reyes, who records the screen image of Hawaiians and other islanders from Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia, I concentrate on the “P.”. It is exciting to see how the cinema of the South Seas is growing, since more and more indigenous filmmakers contribute to this film genre, which has been dominated by “Haole-Wood” since 1898-and white filmmakers, the films full of celluloid stereotypes in the South Seas that express the white dominant majority of culture. As Laapff proves, more and more islanders are creating filmmakers from, over and for natives.

Mythical realism: Te Puna ora (the source of life)

Te Puna OraVirginie Tetoofa's 75-minute film in which a country and a cultural struggle in Moorea in French-occupied Polynesia are detailed and for a long time belong to the most beautiful islands in the world. Moorea is the tiny island about 12 miles from Tahiti with a jagged skyline made of shark tooth -shaped emerald mountains, which are permanently draped by melting marshmallow clouds. Naturally, Te Puna Ora Has many picturesque recordings of Cook's Bay, valleys, sky, underwater et al., But the camera from Tetoooooooooo brings us beyond the beauty to show the problems that are praised under the surface under the surface in a place that is long praised as earthly paradise.

While the tourism industry is expanded and more outsiders (presumably mostly French) settle there in the territory repressed by Paris in overseas, the traditional lifestyle of Mooreans is penetrated. The construction of new over-the-water bungalows for tourists not only threatens the life of the sea, but also about the public beaches that freely enjoyed their ancestors with limited access for locals. Te Puna Ora Poetically, the indigenous cosmological unity of Polynesians presses this sensitive balance with the land, sea and heaven and as increasing ingress of people from the reef.

Tetoooofa makes this creative by staging the documentary film material that she has shot from Mooreans for several years, to draw attention to your concerns, with relaxation of the old Polynesian myths about the traditional deities that are shown in a travel canu. This creation of legends gives a feeling of sacred cosmology that binds Islanders with their islands, and like not sustainable development (including the possibility of mining from Tiefsee) this feeling of unity.

As in the myth, the contemporary Moorer in a long braid to uniform demonstrators in a manifestation on the beach, which indicates the umbilical cord that connects them with mother nature. Tetoofa also tells her story by watching three female activists from different generations: Anuavai, who represents the young generation, looks like she had just come out of a Gauguin painting. Poema is a 30-year-old mother who is involved in a dispute, which is caught by this fly on the wall, Tetoofa, in front of the camera when a white French-speaking settler orders the Poema to anchor her boat elsewhere-know her on the Isle of her ancestors. Hinano Murphy symbolizes the older generation, since this eloquent organizer takes its crusade to literally preserve nature and the Polynesian path from Moorea to Manhattan, where she speaks at the United Nations on World Oceans Day 2019.

Through the combination of documentary film realism with mythology, the Tetoofa poetic, born in Moorea, elegantly increases her topic about an indigenous aesthetics and form of storytelling, which could be called “mythical realism”. Your film also exceeds the stereotype “Haole-Wood” of the Polynesian Vahine The love interests of Clark Gable, Marlon Brando and Mel Gibson in various Tinsletown versions The head While Tetoofas Trio may also be beautiful, they are also intelligent, mighty and committed change agents who are struggling to preserve their lifestyle and island. And of course it is an indigenous author, a Tahitian female director who brings this new dimension to the screen image of Polynesia Vahines. Her film is produced by Hawaiian Helmer, Ciara Leina`ala Lacy, another Polynesian woman.

The cinematic self-determination means that the self-not-not on the other on the screen and takes improved images of authenticity and sensitivity. Te Puna Ora It is admirably successful, and it fulfills the mission statement of visual communication and is a milestone in the increasing indigenous tidal wave of the genre of South Sea cinema.

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