Moana (1926 film)
- Fa'angase
- Pe'a
- Ta'avale
- Tu'ugaita
Moana ( Subtitle: A Romance of the Golden Age) is an American documentary film by Robert J. Flaherty from 1926 he is a glorified romantic notion of traditional way of life of Pacific islanders Samoa. .
Action
Exemplary everyday life is represented in the village on the island of Savaii Safune. The images are classified by theme procurement of food and work equipment ( taro and coconut harvest wild boar hunting with the case; fishing and clamming ), processing / crafts ( Manufacture of wearing apparel; boat building ), food preparation ( use of fire, wrapped in leaves fish with coconut meat cooked in a hot stone ) and arts and culture (dance with men and women; ritual dance; ceremony of tattooing ). As a counter- point in-between images are cut from a stormy sea.
Background
After the popular success of his film Nanook of the North, which was very profitable because of low production costs, offered Jesse L. Lasky of Paramount Pictures Robert Flaherty, to make a film of the same kind in a place of their choice anywhere in the world. By Frederick O'Brien (1869-1932) popular South Seas literature there was a general interest in the South Pacific culture. Flaherty had consulted with the author, who recommended him as Samoa westernized yet the least area of Polynesia.
Flaherty traveled in April 1923 with his family by boat from San Francisco to Samoa and remained there until December 1924. The influence of the colonizers and Christian missionaries had the original culture there is already severely repressed. Flaherty finally turned in the village on the island of Savaii Safune with panchromatic film, which was particularly well suited for shooting in the wild. Mid- 1924 stated Flaherty that the footage was not usable by the use of unsuitable water during development. From July to December 1924, he made the recordings again. Some traditions that are no longer that belonged to the active cultural life of the islanders, as the tattoo ceremony, Flaherty was re-enacting. The film should be structured according to the narrative scheme of Nanook of the North to an exemplary locals, but the ubiquitous " paradise " states, were an act " man vs. nature " not to. Alone with the shots stormy sea Flaherty then tried to depict life in the struggle against the forces of nature.
Moana had on February 7, 1926 at New York's Rialto Theatre on Broadway Premiere. In a movie review in the New York Sun on February 8, 1926 John Grierson wrote the film " documentary value " to what is considered the beginning of the use of the term " documentary" for such films. Unlike the Nanuk film Moana was not a box office success.
After Moana Flaherty returned twice more to filming in the South Pacific back. For MGM, he turned in 1928 with WS Van Dyke in Tahiti White Shadows in the South Sea, but the production left before its conclusion. In 1929 he traveled with Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau to Tahiti and supported him during the recording of taboo on Bora Bora. The collaborative work of Murnau and Flaherty failed in September 1930 different ideas about whether a proper course of action to be implemented or the story should purely thematically derived from local conditions out, and the film was eventually passed by Murnau alone at the end.