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Films

Pacific Traditions Society and our partners have worked on several short and full-length film projects over the years. Check out these highlights to learn more about traditional voyaging, the process of building vessels, and ancestral knowledge in a few Pacific island communities.

UNWTO - Fijian Drua
02:52
We, the Voyagers: Our Moana (Trailer)
03:49

We, the Voyagers: Our Moana (Trailer)

We are the crew of Lata, the Polynesian culture-hero who built the first voyaging canoe and navigated across the Pacific. We use only ancient designs, materials, and methods, and we invite everyone to reconnect with ancestors and sustainable lifeways. Join us in the real Moana! In our isolated Polynesian community, we live the story of our ancestral culture-hero, Lata. To make a voyage our living Lata welcomes men, women and children as crew, including hard workers with skills, persons of bad character, and a tame anthropologist. We bless the vessel and sailors, learn how to set the sails, and navigate into challenging seas and weather. We find our way in the open ocean by interacting with patterns of winds, waves, stars, and other signs that ancestors show us when we need them. We arrive at islands and learn what happened to family members since the last voyage some generations earlier. We reconcile, reaffirm our love for each other, and look to our future together. “Our Moana” is part two in a series. Part 1, "Our Moana" is available here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ourvaka All profits go towards the Solomon Islands-based Vaka Valo Association. They rely on fund-raising from these films to support their voyaging education programs and to produce part 3 in this film series. We are happy to have these films shared in a group setting, including in an educational context, or community screenings. To guarantee that people who do not have $4.99 USD, like many students, can see these films, we are providing special free access to anyone who asks. Please fill out this form for an access code: https://forms.gle/gNKY7vuyEQWKqFV58
WTV Our Vaka 30 sec trailer
00:31

We The Voyagers: Lata's Children

We The Voyagers is a two-part film series created in collaboration between the Pacific Traditions Society and the Halau Vaka Taumako Association. The following is a statement and film story from the Taumako team: "We are the crew of Lata, the Polynesian culture-hero who built the first voyaging canoe and navigated across the Pacific. We use only ancient designs, materials, and methods, and we invite everyone to reconnect with ancestors and sustainable lifeways. Join us in the real Moana! We, the Polynesian voyagers of Taumako, Solomon Islands, share our history, motivations, and skills, through story-telling, canoe building, and wayfinding. We recall our ancestors, who made the greatest of human migrations. We use only the designs, materials, and methods of our culture-hero, Lata, who built the first voyaging canoe (vaka) and navigated to distant islands. When Europeans took over we became isolated. To help us regain sustainability, Chief Kaveia, our most experienced navigator, led us in training new generations to plant gardens, feed workers, make rope from plants, weave and sew sails, protect our trees, adze parts for voyaging canoes, and lash them together. Kaveia also enlisted an anthropologist to help us make this film. After he died in 2009, we built a vaka and Chief Holani, Kaveia’s former crew, became our new Lata and prepared us for the test of an open ocean voyage. The story of Lata teaches us that everyone is welcome in Lata’s crew, and that we can avoid making certain mistakes as we strive to connect with long-lost family and new friends on faraway shores. In our isolated Polynesian community, we live the story of Lata. To make a voyage our living Lata welcomes men, women and children as crew, including hard workers with skills, persons of bad character, and a tame anthropologist. We bless the vessel and sailors, learn how to set the sails, and navigate into challenging seas and weather. We find our way in the open ocean by interacting with patterns of winds, waves, stars, and other signs that ancestors show us when we need them. We arrive at islands and learn what happened to family members since the last voyage some generations earlier. We reconcile, reaffirm our love for each other, and look to our future together."

Part one: Our Vaka

We, the Voyagers: Our Vaka

We, the Voyagers: Our Vaka

Play Video

Part two: Our Moana

We, the Voyagers: Our Moana

We, the Voyagers: Our Moana

Play Video

Sailau

Sailau is a documentary film and social impact campaign based on the 2016-17 voyage: The World’s First Circumnavigation of the Island of New Guinea in a Traditional Sailing Canoe. This is an incredible project by our friends at Pasana Group voyaging school, led by Chairman Sanakoli John in partnership with explorer Thor P. Jensen.

The film had its world premiere at the DocEdge Festival in New Zealand and has already won prizes internationally – including the Maritime Film of the Year 2024 and Nordic Adventure Film of the Year 2024. The full-length film should be made available online in 2025.

Learn more at sailaufilm.com

SAILAU Trailer

SAILAU Trailer

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Heirs of Lata

Heirs of Lata is a fundraising video we made in 1998 with the Vaka Taumako voyaging school in Taumako, Solomon Islands. It showcases the process of building traditional voyaging canoes.

Heirs of Lata - The Vaka Taumako Project

Heirs of Lata - The Vaka Taumako Project

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