AUCKLAND (Pacific Media Watch): While debates about the causes of climate change swing back and forth, the plight of those affected by it was played out tonight at the Pacific Media Centre at AUT University.
Film producer Lyn Collie screened There Once Was An Island: Te Henua e Nnoho, a revealing story about a whole island people that face "losing their whole world" due to rising sea levels.
The film has won a host of international awards and as Collie described it, “it’s not a piece of journalism per se; it’s a different kind of story.”
To stay or to leave
It is in fact a full-length documentary without a word of narration. The people of the island tell the story of their history and their current dilemma of whether to stay or move their whole identity to another place.
While Kiribati was in the news earlier in the week for taking out insurance in the form of purchasing land in Fiji, the film proved the issue is even more at the doorstep of inhabitants of Takū, or the Mortlock Islands.
For 1000 years, residents of the shallow atoll have never experienced such a threat as now. It is half a kilometre long, and one metre above sea level.
It is so remote that the one ship the Autonomous Bougainville Government is able to send around islands only visits three times a year and arrives without notice.
Taro planting has a limited future due to the affects of saltwater on the crops and the makeshift sea walls built to keep the waves out of houses are actually preventing sandbanks from rebuilding.
King tides and flooding
The film has dramatic footage of king tides hitting the island, flooding houses and ruining huts and school classrooms.
For an outside observer, it may seem like a simple issue of moving island. That is a stark reality facing an indigenous Polynesian people whose lives are totally tied to their land.
And the major prospect is Buka Island, home to a Melanesian people with a different culture and way of life. And the government’s negotiations of making a plantation there available are far from completion.
Taberannang Korauaba, editor of the Kiribati Independent, praised Collie on the presentation of the film, particularly the benefit of the protagonists telling their own story so that “we are there with them.”
Lack of media awareness
Korauaba, who has produced a research study on the problems of media reporting in Kiribati on climate change issues, said the key benefit was that the people had been able to communicate the issue to the outside world.
“As a journalist, it’s very hard to apply this principle, as we have seen in the film, because of deadlines, and problems with a lack of resources,” he said.
He contrasted the documentary to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which was a "Westerner's view", saying he hoped There Once Was An Island would generate as much publicity about the issue.
Henry Yamo, a masters student at AUT University and a journalist from Papua New Guinea said there were other cases of threats from rising sea levels that are yet to be documented, and that this was an impressive start.
No lack of government funds
He responded to a comment from one of the film’s main characters that the government did not have the funds to assist them.
“In fact, the government does have the money to do the things that need to be done, but the problem is they are spending it on things that don’t need to be done,” he said.
“Now hopefully the government can see the plight of their people.”
Collie said the film has been screened at more than100 film festivals, being shown across Europe, Africa, even in Papua New Guinea, and would soon be shown in the United States, where it was hoped to have the biggest audience.
“They are the biggest emitters of carbon, so that would be fitting,” she said.
She said the people of Takū were a “smart, articulate group of people” and it was easy to let them tell the story.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
Alex Perrottet
