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September
2004
 The
Land Has Eyes/Pear ta ma 'on maf, the first feature film by
Vilsoni Hereniko (Rotuman, Fiji),
premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Hereniko has written
numerous plays and books, and has directed short films. In 1997
he received a grant from the Hubert Bals Fund to write the screenplay
for The Land Has Eyes, which was produced by Te Maka Productions,
a company owned by Vilsoni and Jeanette Hereniko. An accomplished
scholar and a professor of Pacific Islands Studies at the University
of Hawai'I, Hereniko is the editor of The Contemporary Pacific:
A Journal of Island Affairs and was the founding editor of
Tanaloa: Pacific Literature Series. The University of Hawai'i
gave him a Presidential Citation for Meritorious Teaching in 2000,
recognizing the "originality, freshness, and excitement"
that he brings to the classroom. He received a doctorate in literature
and language from the University of the South Pacific in 1991.
The youngest of eleven children, he was raised in Mea on the island
of Rotuma in Fiji and lives in Honolulu, Hawai'i.
"I make films because film is the most powerful medium for
storytelling. Though I'm a professor and have written books, I
find that the masses of people are more likely to see a film than
read an academic article or book. I also believe it is vital that
Pacific Islanders should be producers of their own images and
not just consumers of other people's images of them."
Screened by NMAI
Selected Bibliography
- "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Pacific Studies: Understanding
the Fiji Coup of 19 May 2000." Contemporary Pacific.
15:1, Spring 2003. 75-90.
- Inside Out: Literature, Cultural Politics, and Identity
in the New Pacific. Edited by Vilsoni Hereniko and Rob Wilson.
Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.
- Woven Gods: Female Clowns and Power in Rotuma. Vilsoni
Hereniko. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995.
Image credit: Vilsoni Hereniko
- courtesy of the filmmaker.
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