| Abstract |
VAKA, DRUA, AND MOANA were created and produced as a trilogy of films that focus on the art of canoe voyaging in the Pacific. VAKA is about the traditional art of canoe building on Fiji, DRUA is about collaboration in double-hulled canoe building among Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and Kiribati and the demise of this art form when steam ships arrived in the Pacific, while MOANA is about the symbol of the double-hulled canoe as a hope for rising sea levels and the human effects of climate change on the Pacific Islands. All three originated from the Oceania Center for Arts, Culture, and Pacific Studies (OCACPS) based at the University of the South Pacific and are informed by scholarly research. They were conceived by Vilsoni Hereniko who was the Director of the OCACPS from late 2008-2010 in collaboration with Peter Espiritu, Igelese Ete, and Allan Alo, all well-known artists working in Oceania. All three productions are extraordinary in that they used huge casts and cost a lot of money to stage and film. These films are particularly important because they demonstrate the beauty and power of the performative arts of Oceania (traditional as well as modern and contemporary) at their best in terms of communicating and disseminating important historical and cultural knowledge about the voyaging traditions of the Pacific. These films are multi-disciplinary as well as inter-disciplinary in their approach to research and dissemination of cultural and historical information employing art forms that are rooted in traditional Pacific cultures: music, dance, oral storytelling, chanting, and indigenous aesthetics. |
