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Directors: Ofa-ki-Levuka Guttenbeil-Likiliki, Amberley Jo Aumua, Becs Arahanga, Dianna Fuemana, Marina Alofagia McCartney, Miria George, Matasila Freshwater and Sharon Whippy
Fiji/Tonga/Solomon Islands/Kuki Airani (Cook Islands)/Samoa/Niue/Aotearoa (New Zealand)
| 2019 | 90 mins | Fiction | Various w/English subtitles
Sponsored by Lisa Schamberg and Pat Robins
Feature film Vai ranges across the Pacific —?from an eight-year-old girl's drama-filled day in Fiji, to a sacred moment in an Aotearoa forest. Vai, meaning water, is a portmanteau feature film made by nine female Pacific filmmakers filmed in seven different Pacific countries. The film follows a journey of empowerment through culture over the lifetime of one woman, Vai, played by different Indigenous actresses in each of the Pacific countries. The result is neither straightforward narrative nor polemical abstract, but instead a meditation on womanhood and vanishing traditions The task of each writer-helmer was to create a 10-minute vignette from a fictive woman’s life, each segment advancing a decade or so forward, deploying a single continuous shot where possible.