'Kaugere, A place where nobody enters' documentary director Stephen Dupont wins this year’s FIFO. Photo: FIFO
The 21st International Pacific Film Festival (FIFO, Festival International du Film Océanien) held its closing ceremony at the weekend, with Australian-PNG documentary Kaugere: a place where nobody enters topping the list with the Grand Prix du Jury.
The 60-minute documentary, directed by Stephen Dupont, focuses on daily life in one of PNG capital Port Moresby's slums, where most essential public services have collapsed and lawlessness and crime seem to be the only remaining rules.
It however offers a glimmer of hope by showing the benefits of some social rehabilitation programmes focusing on sports, especially rugby.
Another Australian-produced documentary, Circle of Silence', focusing on the shady circumstances surrounding the murder of five Australian journalists in Timor-Leste in the mid-1970s and co-directed by Luigi Acquisto and Lurdes Pires, received a "special prize" from the Jury.
A New Zealand 27-minute documentary, Homesteads - Mahika, directed by Piata Gardiner-Hoskins, received the prize for best short movie, as did 23-minute Taratoa Stappard-directed "Taumanu", another NZ-produced short movie in the short fiction category.
Another notable award went to a Cook Islands documentary, Beneath the Moana: exploring deep sea mining in the Pacific, focusing on the controversial deep sea mining burgeoning industry, including in the Cook Islands.
This year's competition, from 2 to 11 February 2024, was partly disrupted by tropical cyclone Nat's passage over the main island of Tahiti.
This year, once again, competitors were representing a variety of Pacific countries and territories (Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, Hawaii and Timor Leste).
There were ten films in competition, 7 short documentaries and thirteen short fictions, all dealing with various issues such as environmental impact of climate change in the Pacific, nuclear, identity, history, tradition, arts and violence.
Prizes were awarded by a seven-member international jury chaired by New Zealand Maori director-producer Briar Grace-Smith.
French Polynesia’s President Moetai Brotherson and Wallès Kotra, a founding father of the FIFO. Photo: FIFO
Call for fund to preserve Pacific's identities and cultures
On the margins of the festival, the Pacific's movie and TV industry players took part in workshops and seminars with this year a renewed call to set up what is described as a "Pacific Audiovisual Fund" that would provide some financial and technical public aid to moviemakers from all the Pacific region.
One of the founding fathers of the FIFO, Kanak personality Wallès Kotra (who over the past thirty years has held key positions within French public broadcasting group France Televisions), stressed the need, more than ever, to promote the production of Pacific stories by Pacific authors and producers, in an attempt to protect the region's rich identities.
"In the age of Amazon and Netflix, another kind of tsunami is very real: this huge flow of global images coming to our screens from everywhere, inundating the Pacific and causing our cultures, our languages to be gradually submerged", he told colleagues during these sessions.
"To fight against climate change is necessary, but we also have to fight for our islands' visibility. It's not because we are small that we have nothing to say...This is what the FIFO is all about", he stressed, recalling the very same message was delivered over twenty years ago when the FIFO was launched.
The inaugural [www.fifotahiti.com FIFO] was held in 2003 in Papeete.
Next year's competition is scheduled to take place from 31 January to 10 February in Papeete.
Wallès Kotra, a founding father of the FIFO. Photo: FIFO