CPL sponsors the Inaugural Pasifika Youth Short Film Competition
In late July and early August 2022, Poporazzi Productions held two award ceremonies in Rotorua and Auckland, celebrating the inaugural Pasifika Youth Short Film Competition. During the two Award Celebration Evenings, 14 categories were honoured to loud applause and families celebrating with traditional song and dance!
Centre for Pacific Languages was the proud sponsor for the Best Pasifika Language Film where 50% of content had to be in a Pacific language. Tuiloma Gayle Lafaiali’i (CPL CEO) says “to see our young people telling their stories through their heritage languages and promoting their culture was uplifting and CPL says this is just one innovative way for revitalising our languages and cultures for our NZ born Pasifika communities.”
The winner of the Rotorua BEST Pasifika Language Film was Henele Akau’ola (Rotorua Intermediate) with his short film 3 Skux Kasini.
The winner of the Auckland BEST Pasifika Language Film was James Fidow (De La Salle College) with his short film Back to the Family
This competition was the brainchild of Esera Tanoa’i and Tupe Solomon-Tanoa’i, after they were looking for a way to support their own daughters who were working in this space.
Tupe explains the “Alofa Awards” and highlights that the inspiration for the competition came from their daughters Telesia and Tuasivi whose love for filmmaking developed when they entered a short film competition during the first [COVID] lockdown. She said that the girls didn’t get the outcome they were hoping for in that competition, but the important thing was they had made films they could be proud of.
To contribute to the celebrations of the 2022 Samoan language week, Telesia shared her short film “Brown Mirror” a Samoan-English bilingual short film, which received over 100,000 views including thousands of likes and hundreds of comments from people who were deeply moved. Tupe goes on to say that from that experience, they learnt that we needed a space for our kids to express themselves, where their short films could be shared and celebrated. So Tupe and Esera decided to create their own competition; one that valued Pacific ways of storytelling, Pacific languages, and the experiences of our youth.
Establishing and running this competition involved 130 kids from Auckland, Rotorua and Tauranga taking part in a series of workshops, resulting in 43 short films!
But regardless of whether prizes were taken home, all the young people were celebrated! Completing a short film is a significant achievement and telling your story is its own reward. To be a creative is to spend many years honing your craft. The real competition is not between each other, it’s between the film you make this year, and the film you make next year!
The premier sponsor for the competition was the Ministry of Education via their Pacific Innovation Fund as well as a range of category sponsors, of which CPL was just one. Tuiloma says “this shows how a collaboration between organisations can come together to support an idea to bring it to fruition in a larger and more meaningful way when we pull together resources. We were blessed to play a small part in achieving a significant outcome for our young people."
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Source: Excerpts taken from Tupe’s Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/tupe.solomontanoai
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