Moana

The true definition of the cinematc genre 'documentary' has been debated since the early years of film when moving photographic images first recorded remote cultures living far from Western civilizations. Can staged events for film of long-ago abandoned habits still be regarded as a way of explaining how the ethnological practices of an exotic group of people live their daily lives?

Robert J. Flaherty first movie, 1922 "Nanook of the North," gave a glimpse of how an Artic Northern Indigenous people conducted their daily way of living. A couple of years later, contracted this time by Paramount Pictures, Flaherty and his crew set out to photograph a culture they assumed was untouched by modern conveniences in Pacific Samoa. Much to their surprise, despite the Polynesians living the life of tropical comfort, they were governed by a western-style form of government wearing contemporary clothing more like those found in Hawaii at the time. Still, Flaherty worked his magic by demonstrating how the island natives practiced centuries-old customs in his January 1926 "Moano." The movie's title was named after the male lead in the feature film, meaning 'deep sea, deep water.'

In a February 8, 1926, New York Sun review of Flaherty's work, John Grierson wrote, "'Moana,' being a visual account of events in the daily life of a Polynesian youth, has documentary value." This was the first time the term 'documentary,' taken for the French 'documentaire' was used to describe such a genre in cinema. Because of the way Flaherty manipulated the movie's characters, events and reenactment of their customs, today's critics are apt to label his work as a "docufiction," which describes filmmakers' managing the scenes filmed. Flaherty's justification in reenacting long-ago practices is done to give a better understanding of the exotic customs and natural events of these distant people.

The excitement of a majority of documentaries is to show how people survive against harsh elements or battle large beasts of nature in order to survive. Flaherty's initial observation of the Samoans was their environment offered no drama, that their way of living was relatively easy. So the filmmaker, besides capturing the stunning beauty of the tropical island, resorted to filming a way of life that was still labor-intensive in some respects. But he had to tweak other aspects of their day-to-day living to keep his viewers' interest.

Flaherty rearranged the members of the family he was following, injecting other Polynesians into the unit for their photogenic qualities and their acting abilities. Flaherty wanted to show a long-abandoned practice of introducing juveniles into manhood by the painful ritual of a body tattoo. He paid a teenager a large sum of money to be the guinea pig to undergo the ordeal. He also swapped the Samoan's modern clothes for traditional ones such as tapa cloth and topless attire.

A secondary documentary without the reshuffling of facts could easily have been following Flaherty's trials of filming with the basic visual technology available back then. Transporting 16 tons of filmmaking equipment, including color cameras and film stock, Flaherty's crew underwent quite an ordeal on this remote island. Beside camera malfunctions, Flaherty designed his movie to use the more vivid panchromatic black-and-white film, which he had to be develop on the island. Trouble was the more complex process of panchromatic unknowingly leached its silver nitrate into the water inside the cave Flaherty used as a darkroom. He drank some of the water, sending him to the medics to cure his ailment. He also found his raw film contained some spots on the negative, forcing him to discard several batches of footage.

Upon "Moana's" release, American audiences didn't warm up to the exotic scenes of the Pacific. But Europeans lapped up the tropical themes of Flaherty's feature film, assuring the future of documentaries could find an enthusiastic market for the newly-defined genre. In 1980, Flaherty's youngest child, Monica, who was brought over to Samoa in 1924 with her father, went back to record the sounds and dialogue of the island's village life. With the traditional songs of its people, Monica matched the audio with Flaherty's original, although much of the original film composite was denigrated. A few decades later, a more pristine and longer copy of 'Moana" was discovered. Matching Monica's soundtrack with the newly restored version presented the true essence of Flaherty's ground-breaking documentary.