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Looking Inwards, Looking Back: Tusi Tamasese and Samoan Cultural Production in New Zealand

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Migrant and Diasporic Film and Filmmaking in New Zealand

Abstract

The Samoan diasporic grouping is one of the largest, long established, and most culturally productive in New Zealand. It has reached a level of maturity where writers and directors can look critically, both at the difficult social conditions to which their families had to adapt in the host-country, and to their own cultural contribution to that sometimes painful adjustment. This chapter examines in particular a film by the writer/director Tusi Tamasese, One Thousand Ropes (2016), about a Samoan baker and ex-boxer living in Wellington and the damage his violence has wrought on his family. Working in the context of an ongoing creative collaboration with producer Catherine Fitzgerald, and producing cinema that is both distinctively Samoan yet internationally resonant, Tamasese examines, as he did in his first film The Orator/ O le Tulafale (2011), the nature of masculinity and self-respect at the intersection between customary and modern ways of living.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See the Introduction of this book.

  2. 2.

    It is a coincidence, but a productive one, that this symposium about Flaherty’s Moana was held just 3 months before the release of Disney’s animated film Moana (2017) which tells of the mythical adventures of a young Polynesian woman, Moana, in the company of the demi-god Maui as they voyage across the Pacific. Several Polynesian New Zealanders, including Oscar Kightley, have creative or acting roles in the film. However, in this chapter references to Moana are references to Flaherty’s earlier film.

  3. 3.

    See Zalipour (2016).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Walkato, Hamilton, New Zealand

    Ann Hardy

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  1. Ann Hardy
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Correspondence to Ann Hardy .

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  1. Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

    Arezou Zalipour

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Hardy, A. (2019). Looking Inwards, Looking Back: Tusi Tamasese and Samoan Cultural Production in New Zealand. In: Zalipour, A. (eds) Migrant and Diasporic Film and Filmmaking in New Zealand. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1379-0_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1379-0_6

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