Victoria University of Wellington's Stout Research Centre and Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision have come together to host the New Zealand premiere public screening of the restored 1926 film Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age.
The feature-length film will premiere on 1 September in Wellington and will be followed by a free, day-long public symposium to discuss the film with Pasifika filmmakers, writers, artists and academics, and a second public screening.
Moana was filmed by the husband and wife team Robert and Frances Flaherty over 1923 and 1924 in the Samoan village Savai’i.
At the film’s centre is Moana, son of a tribal chief, who journeys towards manhood as he spends a week being tattooed. The film captures the villagers as they fish, hunt, make clothes, feast and dance, providing a rare glimpse of traditional Samoan life.
In 1975, the filmmakers’ daughter, Monica Flaherty, returned to Savai’i to record a soundtrack for the silent film, and in 2014 Moana was restored and digitally remastered by independent film archivist Bruce Posner.
Stout Research Centre director Professor Lydia Wevers says the Centre is delighted to partner with the New Zealand audiovisual archive, Ngā Taonga.
“Moana is a remarkable record of Samoan life in the 1920s and it was described at the time as a ‘living panorama’. It will be fascinating to see what filmmakers, scholars and students make of it now.”
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