576 the Contemporary Pacific • 27:2 (2015) Vilsoni Hereniko *
576 the contemporary pacific • 27:2 (2015) Wild felt familiar. I had experienced film, disguised as an ordinary road the same feelings in countless other movie. As such, it is a film that is easy mainstream movies. In The Pā Boys, to overlook, even at film festivals however, my emotional responses where it might be possible to discover emanated from the deep recesses of a fearlessly independent voice. my being, which very few films have When you accidentally stumble been able to touch. Rotumans call this on an authentic voice, like I did, you place huga, which literally translates know you’ve finally experienced as “inside of the body, esp. of the the film you have always hoped to abdomen”; Hawaiians call it the na‘au see when you go to the movies but while Māori call it the ngakau. thought the day would never come! It is in one’s gut that the truth of This was how it was with me. the ages resides. This kind of knowing vilsoni hereniko cannot be explained logically or ratio- University of Hawai‘i, nally. It is a knowing that is activated Mānoa when one experiences a universal truth, which in The Pā Boys, is this: *** For these Māori young people to be truly healed, they needed to reconnect Jonah From Tonga. 2014. Televi- with and learn about their ances- sion series, 180 minutes, dvd, color, tral pasts in order to become more in English. Written by Chris Lilley, humane, more compassionate, better produced by Chris Lilley and Laura human beings. This is the universal Waters, and directed by Chris Lilley message, told not through a sermon and Stuart McDonald; distributed but through a musical story about by hbo.
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