TVNZ plans big

series on Polynesia

Television New Zealand has in the works a major television series on Polynesia.

Preparations have already featured a landmark gathering in Suva in July of indigenous wri ters and academics from through out the region. They discussed what were the important things about Polynesia to be highlighted in the series.

TVNZ producer George An drews hopes to start filming in earnest in 1984.

The July meeting was con vened by Samoan novelist Albert Wendt, professor of Pacific Lit erature at the University of the South Pacific, at the suggestion of TVNZ. Eleven participants from as far afield as New Zea land and Hawaii, Tahiti and Samoa, were invited. They were brought together in Suva with the assistance of Air Pacific, Polyne sian Airlines, the Fiji Visitors Bureau, and Suva’s Courtesy Inn.

Educationalist John Rangihau and Maori novelist Witi Ihimaera represented New Zealand; Miss Ilima Piianaia, a poet and town planner from Honolulu, spoke for indigenous Hawaiians. Niue was represented by Hima Doug las; Tonga by anthropologist and writer Epeli Hau’ofa; the Cooks

by Majorie Crocombe; American

Samoa by John Neubahl; West ern Samoa by losefa Mai’ava.

Professor Ron Crocombe, direc tor of the Institute for Pacific Studies in Suva, also attended.

Poet Pino Manoa represented the tangata whenua of Fiji, and from Tahiti came Mrs Flora Devatine, a languages teacher who is also attached to the Office Territorial d’Action Culturelle, in Papeete.

George Andrews says he be lieves this was the first time people from throughout Poly nesia had ever been brought to gether to discuss what it means to be Polynesian. “They may have come to talk about a television series,” he said, “but they stayed to celebrate a shared culture,

mythology and language, with

links more powerful than many of them had even imagined.”

Andrews is convinced that the ideas canvassed over this July weekend will provide the basis for a major documentary series that will tell a “marvellous story” at the same time as recording important truths about the shared

experience of all Polynesians.

TVNZ sees the proposed series as a logical follow-up to its successful “Landmarks” prog rams, which told the story of New Zealand in 10 50-minute episodes.