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ABSTRACT
Cultural policies that promote film production and exchange in small island states face numerous challenges (including training, funding, and infrastructure). Yet, in the Pacific, Indigenous film-making is a key strategy for redressing reductive framing of the region during the colonial period (which continues today), and the last 20 years has seen a growing movement towards greater Pacific Island film production. In addition, the creative industries (including film) are currently being explored as an alternative development pathway although this has met with mixed response from governments in the region. In this changing context, and recognising the political importance of Indigenous film production, this paper analyses the strategies of film-makers and other non-state actors in developing a regional film sector across Oceania – strategies of connection that potentially bring filmmakers and audiences together across the great ocean.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. The major issue with the Creative Economy Reports’ claim that ‘developing’ countries’ share in the global economy is growing is that this is misleading: the vast majority of that growth is caused by China, the biggest exporter of creative goods in the world, while ‘least-developing countries’ and ‘small island developing states’ see very little growth in creative industry exports (De Beukelaer Citation2014).
2. The Merata Mita Fellowship, launched in 2016, is named after the late Māori film-maker Merata Mita, who served as an advisor and artistic director of the Sundance Institute NativeLab from 2000 to 2009. Fellows receive a monetary grant and a year of support, which includes a trip to the Sundance Film Festival, mentorship, and access to various services offered by the Sundance Institute. See: https://www.sundance.org/programs/indigenous-program.
3. Although Landman and Ballard also note that attention to the contexts of reception helps to reveal ways in which interpretation and audience engagement may have contested or disrupted a straight narrative of domination and control, with film possibly becoming a ‘middle ground’ between cultures (Citation2010, 10).
4. Two of Wendt’s fictional works were made into feature films in Aotearoa/New Zealand: his novel Sons for the Return Home, and stories from Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree: And Other Stories.
5. The series can be viewed here: https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/tala-pasifika-1995/series.
6. That struggle continues to be articulated through the national Māori Television network and through two prominent Indigenous film festivals (Māoriland and Wairoa) held annually in Aotearoa/New Zealand which emphasise the distinctiveness of Indigenous film, and build networks of solidarity with Indigenous communities. In 2018, the New Zealand Film Commission launched its first official strategy for collaborating with, and supporting, Māori film-makers ‘Te Ruataki 2018–2021ʹ.
7. Although debate about the term Fourth Cinema continues (Pearson and Knabe Citation2015), it is taken to refer to a ‘cinema that seeks to establish the pre-eminence of the voice of the indigenous’ (Milligan Citation2015, 351).
8. In 2019, NZFC launched He Ara Development Fund that supports established filmmakers to tell Māori and Pacific Island stories on screen. New Zealand teams or companies who apply must have a history, which shows that they are ‘established’, and they must also meet certain representation requirements (for either Māori or Pacific Island stories).
9. The report is based on interviews with 90 different stakeholders in seven PI countries: Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, PNG, and the Marshall Islands.
10. One of the arguments made for investment into the cultural industries in the Pacific is that ‘most of [tourism’s] promotion has been done on the back of cultural industries, with no direct economic returns to cultural producers’ but it is also recognised that ‘tourism provides the main income source for most cultural producers’ (George and Mitchell Citation2012, 22). Given the significance of the Pacific tourism industry to island economies, and the interdependence of these sectors, ensuring that the industry grows in ways that are culturally sustainable is important to avoid cultural commodification.
11. International partners in Canada (Nunavut Film Development Corporation; Canada Media Fund), Greenland (Greenland Film Makers), Sápmi (International Sámi Film Institute) and Russia (Archy Film, Yakutia) have joined to create the fund, which will support the development and production of indigenous film projects in the Arctic region, as well as support co-productions and build capacity through collaborations with film institutions, companies, producers and universities. See http://aiff.no.
14. These include the Pawa Meri documentary series (six documentaries by six female directors, showcasing six inspiring women, role models in their respective communities); the Yumi Kirapim Senis (six short films highlighting stories of gender-based violence and other social issues, and the successes of work being done by individuals and organisations to combat those issues); and the development of a full-length narrative feature film, Aliko & Ambai, part of a gender-based violence project but which also trained students in every phase of feature film production. The latter aimed to encourage the ongoing production of low-budget feature films in PNG.
15. Within Indigenous cinema globally, short films, experimental films, and documentaries tend to dominate, but there are far fewer feature-length dramatic productions due to issues of resourcing and training although this is beginning to change (Pearson and Knabe Citation2015, 8–10).
17. Four of the films were selected to screen at the Hawaii’ International Film Festival, and all six screened at the Māoriland Film Festival in Aotearoa.
18. Vai (Whippy, Whippy and Guttenbeil-Likiliki et al. Citation2019) is a portmanteau feature film with 8 vignettes directed by 9 Pacific women, who live in, or are citizens of, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and hence eligible for NZFC funding. See: https://www.nzfilm.co.nz/films/vai.
19. The Māoriland Film Festival has a vision, to ‘celebrate[s] Indigenous voices and storytelling in film’. It brings together filmmakers and industry professionals from Indigenous communities around the world for a programme of screenings, workshops and special events, and has strong links with Indigenous film-makers in settler-colonial states: in Australia, the USA, Canada and in the Nordic states.
21. See: https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/386753/png-film-challenges-repression-of-women.
22. See: https://maorilandfilm.co.nz.
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Notes on contributors
Polly Stupples
Polly Stupples is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand. She is co-editor, with Katerina Teaiwa of Contemporary Perspectives on Art and International Development (Routledge, 2017). She is the leader of the current research project ‘Stretching the celluloid ceiling: women in the Pacific film industry’ of which this paper is part. The project is supported by the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund.
Katerina Teaiwa
Katerina Teaiwa is Associate Professor in Pacific Studies and Gender, Media and Cultural Studies in the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University, and Vice-President of the Australian Association for Pacific Studies. She has a background in interdisciplinary Pacific Studies, visual and performing arts, and anthropology. She is co-editor, of Contemporary Perspectives on Art and International Development (Routledge, 2017), and author of Consuming Ocean Island: Stories of People and Phosphate from Banaba (Indiana University Press, 2014).
Christiaan De Beukelaer
Christiaan De Beukelaer is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Policy and Head of the Arts and Cultural Management Program at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of the book Global Cultural Economy (Routledge, 2019, with Kim-Marie Spence) and Developing Cultural Industries: Learning from the Palimpsest of Practice (European Cultural Foundation, 2015). He is also the editor of Cultural Policies for Sustainable Development (Routledge 2018, with Anita Kangas and Nancy Duxbury) as well as Culture, Globalization, and Development: The UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, with Miikka Pyykkönen and JP Singh). He is currently working on UNESCO and the Making of Global Cultural Policy, a collaborative research project (with Deborah Stevenson and Justin O’Connor), funded by the Australian Research Council.
T. Melanie Puka
T. Melanie Puka is a PhD student in Geography at Louisiana State University. She undertook her Master of Development Studies thesis at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand, on the topic of Oceanic imaginaries in film and development: lenses of collaboration and practice. That research was supervised by Dr Stupples and funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund.