Moana
About Moana
In Safune, on Savai'i in Samoa, Robert Flaherty films daily work in the villages: fishing, cooking, and the making of tapa. The young man the film calls Moana goes through the tattoo that marks him an adult. The scenes are staged. The lead was paid for the tattoo.
Cast & crew
More about Moana
Flaherty directed and photographed his next film after Nanook of the North. The U.S. release was 7 January 1926. Seven reels, 6,133 feet. He dressed participants in traditional tapa. The manhood sequence is a Samoan tattoo, and the young man who underwent it was compensated.
Themes
Reviews
John Grierson, writing as The Moviegoer in the New York Sun on 8 February 1926, used the word "documentary" for this film. That review is where the term entered English-language film criticism.
Look
Flaherty shot the film himself in the villages of Safune, on Savai'i, including the tattoo sequence.
Music
The 1926 release is silent. Monica Flaherty's 1980 version adds ambient sound, spoken Samoan, and traditional singing.
Preservation
Monica Flaherty's soundtrack version was completed between 1975 and 1980. A digital restoration matched to that track was shown at the New York Film Festival on 30 September 2014.
Notes
- Moana is a Samoan word for deep sea or deep water.
- Names on the credits include Ta'avale, Fa'amgase, Tama, T'ugaita, Pe'a, and Leupenga.
- Flaherty's daughter Monica finished a sound version in 1980, Moana with Sound, with Jean Renoir and Richard Leacock. It was first shown in public in Paris in 1981.
- Bruce Posner, Sami van Ingen, and Thomas Bakels digitally restored the picture and Lee Dichter matched it to Monica's track. That version played the New York Film Festival on 30 September 2014.
Scenes
- Fishing and cooking in Safune, filmed as the day's work.
- The tattoo that marks Moana's passage to adulthood.
Influenced by
- Nanook of the North (1922)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Moana (1926).webm)
