FIFO 2015: prize list

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:

http://tahiti-ses-iles-et-autres-bouts-du-mo.blogspot.com/2015/03/fifo-at-tahiti-12th.html

  

 

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.