Moana — 90 Year Old Film of Samoa Back to Life (1926)

Moana was filmed by the husband and wife team Robert and Frances Flaherty over 1923 and 1924 in the Samoan village Savai’I, and is the first feature-length film to be noted as having “documentary value.” In 1975 Monica Flaherty returned to Savai’i to create a soundtrack for her parents’ silent film. At the film’s centre is Moana, son of a tribal chief, who journeys towards manhood as he spends a week being tattooed. The film captures the villagers as they fish, hunt, make clothes, feast and dance. Moana is thought to be the first feature film made with panchromatic black-and-white film rather than the orthochromatic film commonly used at the time in Hollywood feature films. Moana was filmed in Samoa (then under the Western Samoa Trust Territory) in the villages of Safune district on the island of Savai’i. The name of the lead male character, Moana, means ’deep sea, deep water’ in the Samoan language. In making the film, Flaherty lived with his wife and collaborator Frances H. Flaherty and