media reviews 561 also recognized: negative physical video, involving footage from Ger- effects resulting from kava overuse many. This hails the beneficial effects are mentioned, although not a lot is of a particular named brand of kava made of the negative social effects of tablet, and highlights the ground- kava abuse, which result in a serious breaking scientific work of the partic- anti-kava stance being adopted by ular named pharmaceutical company some women’s and church groups. that has produced it, and whose However, the critical modern issue experts are given the final word on results from the evolution of kava numerous occasions. Has an attrac- from a recreational narcotic beverage tive, appealing survey of the role of into a commercial pharmaceutical kava in Oceanic society been sub- product of incredible potential. Kava verted into a commercial promotion has long been a cash crop serving for the German laboratory, its prod- domestic markets, but its further uct, and its plans to develop huge development into an international kava plantings outside the Pacific? commodity, which accelerated into a This possibility, and the fact that my boom market in the late 1990s (and own university sponsored it, is a little then crashed, perhaps temporarily, at troubling, so I think I’ll find a local the end of 1998), has raised impor- kava bar and have a shell to set my tant matters relating to intellectual mind at rest. property rights and associated ques- robert early tions of the export of kava plant University of the South Pacific, Vanuatu stock and the development of kava growing outside the Pacific. While the *** claims of the kava-growing nations of the Pacific to some kind of propri- Kilim Taem. 50 minutes, vhs, color, etary ownership of kava are given 1998. In Bislama, with English sub- expression in the video, they are titles. Directors, Anthony Mullins, drowned out by the more numerous Randall Wood; producer, Jan Cattoni; voices of kava entrepreneurs and distributor, unicef, Fiji. Email: traders, as well as the representatives [email protected] of the pharmaceutical sector, who per- suade the viewer that a natural plant Kilim Taem (Killing time) is a docu- can never be protected as an item of mentary based on interviews with intellectual property. young people in Vanuatu’s capital, Having been convinced, viewers Port Vila. It addresses the problems may have second thoughts. Have the young ni-Vanuatu are currently fac- idyllic scenes and mystical sounds ing, especially in urban areas. Fifty romanticized nature’s soporific, and percent of the population of Vanuatu entranced them into concurring with is under eighteen; half of them have the Pacific region losing control over been born since Vanuatu achieved the production and marketing of this independence in 1980. The problems commodity? This nagging suspicion is young people now face did not exist enhanced by the realization that a even ten years ago, and, until this film somewhat psychodramatic subplot was made and screened, most people has been interspersed throughout the in the country had not noticed the 562 the contemporary pacific • fall 2000 critical, rapid changes taking place. organizing locations and individuals Young people themselves noticed, of to be interviewed, and shooting the course, and in the mid-1990s coined footage, as well as assisting with an ironic self-description, designating lighting and sound. Editing was car- themselves as “spr,” or as the “spr ried out at the Vanuatu Cultural Cen- Kampani.” The initials stand for tre, so that young people influenced spirim pablik rod (hitting the road), many decisions about the way in the “spr Company” is a play on the which the film was put together. The idea of a business—these are the peo- Young People’s Project was the inita- ple whose work it is to walk the tive of the anthropologist Jean Mitch- roads of Port Vila. ell working in collaboration with the All the people who appear in the director of the Vanuatu Cultural Cen- film are under twenty-five years old, tre, Ralph Regenvanu. Mitchell’s both interviewers and interviewees. achievement in directing the research They speak with remarkable openness program on which the film is based is and freedom, and a number of con- very considerable. troversial issues are raised, notably in The central issue the film addresses relation to police brutality, political is unemployment and its consequence, instablity, and crime. What is perhaps idleness. Young men walk the streets, even more remarkable is the way in watch videos, make and drink home- which people speak vulnerably about brewed alcohol or kava, engage in their hopes, dreams, and disappoint- ae-soping (window shopping), go ments. One girl speaks of her dream dancing. Young women tend to do to have a job, so much a dream that housework in the settlements around she cannot even imagine what that Port Vila, and often get pregnant very job would be. Young men long for the young. Some interviewees talk about dignity of self-employment. A young how poverty leads them to thefts of woman interviewed in Port Vila garden produce and household goods. prison, whose constantly twisting The problem of education is also a fingers expose her humiliation with focus. Many young people have painful clarity, explains that she stole received only a basic education because she was, in effect, too shy to because their parents were unable or hustle for work. unwilling to pay school fees. How- The film was made by a group of ever, even secondary education does young filmmakers from Griffith Uni- not guarantee a job, and where people versity in Australia, in conjunction do find work, it is unlikely to be con- with and at the invitation of the Van- comitant with their educational level. uatu Young People’s Project, which is This is the first generation of ni- based at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre. Vanuatu who do not have a strong It aims, through strategies such as and enduring link to land in the research, video production, and advo- islands. Affiliation to a place (cap- cacy, to provide a forum in which tured in the Bislama expression man young ni-Vanuatu can speak out. ples) is basic to ni-Vanuatu identity. Through it young people participated Here, for the first time, are people in all aspects of the film production, who may never have been to their including planning, selecting, and home island and who, even while they book reviews 563 will identify themselves as belonging Vanuatu audience with whom I have to it, have no sense of real connection watched this film, but the intent of to it. The commonplace public rhet- the filmmakers seems more mocking. oric that the unemployed should go The focus on tourists seems somewhat back to their islands has a hollow ring strange. It does, however, provide a for this generation, as it does for those lighter note in contrast to the much whose island is already too small for more serious material such as the role its population. Despite this, kastom, of the police. There is also a problem island-based knowledge and practice, with the way footage of kastom cere- is the central positive concept in this monies is introduced; differences film. Young people speak about kas- between islands and ceremonies are tom as providing them with a sense of not always clearly marked, and the identity, as linking them to land they overall effect can be confusing. There may own in the islands, and as offer- are also rather too many emotive ing, in chiefs, a form of community shots of small children crowding the leadership far more acceptable to camera in the narrow alleys of the set- them than the police. The film cuts tlements. More significantly, the sound back and forth between the settle- mix appears at times to have been ments of Port Vila, and footage of made with subtitles in mind. It is often kastom ceremonies in the islands. difficult to hear a Bislama speaker There is a strong positive assessment over the top of music or other back- of kastom as giving meaning and pur- ground sound. pose to life. A number of groups in Such criticisms pale before the the settlements practice kastom dances achievement of this film—the giving and ceremonies, both for themselves, of a voice to the young people of Port and also for tourists, and interviewees Vila. It was shown on television in talk about the value such kastom Vanuatu (in the Cultural Centre pro- groups have for them. gram slot), and followed by a televised For all the strength and merit of panel discussion featuring a number of the content of Kilim Taem, it does national leaders, such as the commis- have some problems. One of them is sioner of police. It was also discussed that it opposes young people not to on the front page of the government other ni-Vanuatu (the employed elite newspaper. A number of government in town, or those secure in the islands) and church initiatives have taken but to tourists and to a tourist view of place in response to it, the effective- Port Vila. This opposition is unexam- ness of which has yet to be assessed. ined, and is itself somewhat ambiva- The seriousness of this response lent. There are long beautiful shots of reflects the importance of this film. Port Vila harbor taken from a tourist It is one that anyone interested in resort, but there is a lot of visually the contemporary Pacific will find constructed criticism of tourists, for painfully illuminating. example as they watch kastom shows. lissant bolton An elderly female tourist bopping to Australian National University the music of a street singer has drawn an affectionate laugh from every ni- ***