Oceania Heritage: Sāmoa

A massive fa’afetai lava to Jacob Farani-Faga and Sia Farani-Faga for this awesome short film about the book Sāmoa which we made this year. Jake, his wife Sia, and their children recently moved to Sāmoa and his son is in a book we launched in June. Sometimes you meet people you click with immediately as if you’ve known each other all your lives ay. Isn’t that a miracle! We went for a coffee after the book launch, talked for two hours about life, family, faith, and our shared love of story sharing and Jake generously offered to make a little film about the book project we just did. We went back to Robert Louis Stevenson School the next day and shot these scenes with the young people. It’s inspiring watching a master in action, celebrating these Samoan young people and their stories through the medium of film. See the finished film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gByFW716eWM

Similar Posts

  • Ask the Elders

    First day of our project working with Tokelau youth and their families to make some bilingual Tokelau children’s books 🇹🇰 So Tokelau children can go into a library and find books they can see themselves in, written by Tokelau writers, illustrated by Tokelau artists. Where to find stories? I encouraged the young writers to fehili…

  • Wellington visit

    I spent this week visiting schools in Wellington to encourage young people to read. My main message is that books are so powerful they can change your life, as they did for people like Dr Ben Carson and Steven Adams. Whatever your talent, reading helps it grow bigger. There’s a lot of passionate librarians and…

  • Our Normal

    Our Normal is a series of intimate and honest conversations with some of New Zealand’s most talented Paralympians. The athletes tell us about the books, food, music, people, places and taonga they love. They share the challenges they face living with disabilities, and the ways disabilities enrich their lives. And they talk about the assumptions and…

  • In My DNA

    This year I was blessed to do a project with young people from Pacific Advance Secondary School in Auckland. I helped them to share stories of the people, cultures and places that make them who they are, bring them joy and inspire them to be excellent. ‘I appreciate those cultural teachings because they’re part of…