Is Oceania in
danger?
The euphoria of the image is a rejoicing of each FIFO. As announced by
the organizers, no censorship, no restrictions... Programming of contradictory
themes. The past salvaged, the present expands its course. Would the Pacific documentary
film be controversial?
Through the narrative
solitary and singular destinies, the vast majority of documentaries are going
to brush an alarmist situation from the point of view of human rights as
respect as the living environment. The biting midges are on.
An all-out FIFO
The Continent on the other side of the world is not as peaceful as it
might seem... The sordid unpacking with the sequels of colonization, the
segregationist independences are additional to a galloping economic
neo-colonialism, with complete impunity and easily on the islands! The Oceania
is an isolated victim, who has not finished a fight with internal or central
authorities. From the Aboriginal reserves to the status of the full citizen, there
are impassable chasms!
The active resistance, it develops non-violent way, as enclaves of
cultural rehabilitation! From lands of artistic freedom by maritime nomadism to
the revaluation of a specific cultural trait, eradicated by the Churches, the
panorama is varied.
The films that hurt
In the series of abuse of
authority, segregation, smacks of colonialism, dispossession of native’s lands
and measures of "human indignity", there are no less than half of the
films (In or off competition). It's a
significant score, dealing with difficult issues. Australia ranks high,
followed closely by Chile with Rapanui. Even if other states do not appear
directly, it seems that the situation is common in Samoa, Hawaii and elsewhere,
if you will follow my innuendos.
Among the current generation of Australian
retirees, some could manage their education and their integration. They owe
that to abusive measures of which kidnapping of native children. A juvenile
judge, Sue Gordon, an aborigine, was torn from her family like many others and
placed in orphanages, solely because of his white skin!!! The fight continues
in full 21st century. It is current. This is not fiction. If the scenario of My Three Families (Australia - Todd
Russell) follows step by step the atrocity of indigenous treatment! It Results
that the victims are completely disconnected from the emotional when they
become adults.
Find one's spiritual paths...
The territoriality conflicts
and exploitation result mainly in the loss of their only sources of income, expropriations
and total silence on industrial disasters. The disappearance of Hela in the
Highlands and burial of victims by land sliding caused by a gas extraction
Company in Papua New Guinea do not move the authorities. A
very short film by Olivier Pollet (Papua - New Guinea-USA -France) entitled When We Were Hela is delivered to us as
an announcement of mourning.
Another beautiful female
figure with Baymarawongga, an Aborigine "Cheffess": she fights
against those who would deprive her community of his cult sites (in Big Boss of Paul Sinclair-France). Rapa Nui, The Secret Story of Easter Island,
takes us into a real gulag with slavery as a long-gone practice from a
barbarous epoch! With forced prostitution or reclusion in leprosarium by the
Chileans! On an island that sheep have peeled and shaved... Again women: in Sovereignty Dreaming (a film of V.
Escalante - France). They are refusing desecration of "paths of dreams" and the installing
a nuclear waste disposal facility.
An invitation card to hell
With the ghettos where the
natives are held and maintained in a status lawless for most Pacific States
(whether or not they are independent States or under alien domination), the
audience can feel like on The Island of
Doctor Moreau of HG Wells! Except it's not science fiction! The FIFO plays
a leading role in this disclosure of programmed eradications.
Movies in-between
Some films leave us hanging
on. Makes you wonder if sometimes the narcissism of the film director does not
trump about it! In other cases, the documentary does not bring much to a mere TV
show already replayed a thousand times! Some documentaries are presented as a
stripping of old photographs and an attempt to enhance vitality with novelties.
About Destremeau,
A Polynesian Destiny (French Polynesia, Pascale Berlin & Steph Jacques’s
film), young Tahitians interviewed, came with their training group, feel
somewhat foreign. First, because the Tahitian people assisting in defense
(including in mounting guns on the slopes) are completely absent in the image. Then,
because the today’s Tahitians are shown ignorant. Finally, because "it is
a political settlement exclusively Franco-French and for which Queen Pomare's
advice is ignored.”
Through on their dreams
With Chimeric Horizons (French - Gilles Dagneau) the exoticism, is dying
this taste for elsewhere? Since the first writing such as The Iliad and the Odyssey, the myth of the journey is anchored in
the cradle of civilization, is it doomed? Is seen as repudiation by the motherland
the quest for simple values? Does it lead inevitably to the degradation? The
portrait of the exiles contrasts with the conformist identity of the French
Hexagon.
Completely at odds with
their original province, these Pacific homeless prefer to die in the sun. They
don’t look like conventional popa'a Farāni (metropolitan white foreigners)
living in Polynesia (in the wake of colonialism or the public service, and
often decked out with incongruous or creepy preconceptions). Is the world so
closed that they survive only if they become transparent? Is the documentary of
the late utopias (coconut-paradise-island)? Is their downgraded stateless
status that made them win the 1st Prize of the Jury of the 12th edition of
FIFO?
With Bobby, the Polynesian Cultural Renewal (French Polynesia, Jeff
Benhamza), after singing the music at the beginning of the film, the audience
returned a little frustrated... The pace of the documentary and its approaches
flatten the brightness of a Figure whom they expected something better than
honor too reverential.
The films which make you feel good
The discovery, symbiosis,
universalism, the vision of a separate community, the intact values: we do not
know that with? Now we no longer know what is more important: a successful
alert or action?
In the category prevention,
the purpose is rather mixed with Tribal Scent
(Musca Carmelo -Australia) between customary sandalwood use and its industrial
business; Life on the Reef (Nick
Robinson-Australia) does not comment further on this so-called balance between
protection and destruction of the environment.
Atypical models
With Les Etoiles of the Pacific (France - Régis Michel), the tour of the
Magic Circus of Samoa, it is not only the chronicle of an adventure but the
experience of a cultural enterprise with multiple nationalities. A community of
southern hemisphere promotes its human values.
The way this circus manages
its maritime nomadism is reminiscent of the Odyssey of the Pacific populating.
Harking back to the ancestral tradition of travelers, it has set up a
contemporary solution to the isolation of the islands. Or how to convey the
artistic works on this continent which includes more sea than lands.
Link between the past and the present, it succeeds on
the balance between narrative and particular
aspects of the circus. But the film remains unnoticed, although it reflects the
triumph of humanism in a micro-society.
Sport for All!
Out in the Line Up of Ian W. Thomson (Australia) breaks the subhuman taboo. Sport no
longer belongs to the sponsors who defend a puritan conservatism. The picture
prudish is selling well. Extremely disturbing subject in Oceanian surfing... it
tells the long and painful quest for recognition of gay surfers. Too hammered
prejudices, too unconscious insults, kill the "gliding" generations
by abandonment or suicide. This documentary enters fully in the mouth of the
Billabong "Monster" at Teahupoo (Tahiti).
We applaud at the FIFO after each movie show.
Actors and directors on stage, it was a standing ovation for Kumu Hina (Hawaii - Dean Hamer), the
film and the eponymous person. A transgender who does not reflect the
stereotypes, who does not try to seduce, but wants to update the cultural and
artistic values, often truncated by evangelism: it's a superb lesson.
She's "She", this
"being in the middle" as she likes to say. "It's not that
simple." And bravo to the jurors who awarded the 2nd Jury Prize and the
Audience Award... for approving the artistic, empathic and emotional qualities
of the film and have agreed this freedom of transgression!
Films that annoy or reality
This year, it seems that the
FIFO is not restricted only to expected image of the original Oceania. It
selected the "hidden face" of Oceania: that which is interwoven, and
complex.
Be yourself ...
The opinion of the audience
is divided; sometimes even opposite. Personal views sometimes are rivaling with
that the screen offers. Mentality is what is most difficult to change, rooted
in childhood through education, irremovable.
By the subjects it explores,
will play the role of education the documentary film? Currently few
documentaries have falsified the information. Verified, they can just be
partial... It attempts to reconcile the
opposite viewpoints.
If in Chimeric Horizons (Gilles Dagneau), transsexuality triggers the
hilarity among a 40-year-olds public, the next day, a father brought his young
daughter to see Out in the Line Up
(Ian W Thompson), which treats sexism and machismo in the world of surfing.
It's never too early to be aware of the law!
Beyond words…
On global crisis background,
the filmmakers do not make cleavage for the matters of the past few years
between the "poor whites" and the aborigines. The ethnic segregation
is aberration; these outdated criteria leave painful traces but they must be
addressed. The Oceanian Film Festival reflects and makes visible the
minorities. The questions remain open.
Pacific’s spectators being
both public and subjects of films, it is not surprising that they assume their
roles without restriction. Against the big monopolies which continue to make
money on the funeral (an extremely juicy and inexhaustible industry!) they want
to manage, with no taboo for death, no distance. Tender of Lynett Wallworth (Australia), is another form of peaceful
revolt.
True to what it had announced
on, the 12th FIFO is engaged in an unpredictable patchwork. It surfed on the
wave of transgression ... even beyond what we could imagine!
Thank you for these new
benchmarks. These images that make up piece by piece the unexpected view of
today's Oceania... with his actors, his witnesses, his viewers.
An article
of Monak
See also:
Copyrights
Monak and Julien Gué. Ask for the author’s agreement before any
reproduction of the text or the images on Internet or traditional press.
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